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Title: The Quest of the Historical Jesus
Author: Schweitzer, Albert
Language: English
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The Quest of the Historical Jesus
A Critical Study of its Progress From Reimarus to Wrede
By
Albert Schweitzer
Privatdocent in New Testament Studies in the University of Strassburg
Translated By
W. Montgomery, B.A., B.D.
With a Preface by
F. C. Burkitt, M.A., D.D.
Norrisian Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge
Second English Edition
London
Adam and Charles Black
1911
CONTENTS
Preface
I. The Problem
II. Hermann Samuel Reimarus
III. The Lives Of Jesus Of The Earlier Rationalism
IV. The Earliest Fictitious Lives Of Jesus
V. Fully Developed Rationalism—Paulus
VI. The Last Phase Of Rationalism—Hase And Schleiermacher
VII. David Friedrich Strauss—The Man And His Fate
VIII. Strauss’s First “Life Of Jesus”
IX. Strauss’s Opponents And Supporters
X. The Marcan Hypothesis
XI. Bruno Bauer. The First Sceptical Life Of Jesus
XII. Further Imaginative Lives Of Jesus
XIII. Renan
XIV. The “Liberal” Lives Of Jesus
XV. The Eschatological Question
XVI. The Struggle Against Eschatology
XVII. Questions Regarding The Aramaic Language, Rabbinic Parallels, And
Buddhistic Influence
XVIII. The Position Of The Subject At The Close Of The Nineteenth Century
XIX. Thoroughgoing Scepticism And Thoroughgoing Eschatology
XX. Results
Index Of Authors And Works
Footnotes
[Cover Art]
_First Edition published March 1910_
PREFACE
_The book here translated is offered to the English‐speaking public in the
belief that it sets before them, as no other book has ever done, the
history of the struggle which the best‐equipped intellects of the modern
world have gone through in endeavouring to realise for themselves the
historical personality of our Lord._
_Every one nowadays is aware that traditional Christian doctrine about
Jesus Christ is encompassed with difficulties, and that many of the
statements in the Gospels appear incredible in the light of modern views
of history and nature. But when the alternative of __“__Jesus or
Christ__”__ is put forward, as it has been in a recent publication, or
when we are bidden to choose between the Jesus of history and the Christ
of dogma, few except professed students know what a protean and
kaleidoscopic figure the __“__Jesus of history__”__ is. Like the Christ in
the Apocryphal Acts of John, He has appeared in different forms to
different minds. __“__We know Him right well,__”__ says Professor
Weinel._(_1_)_ What a claim!_
_Among the many bold paradoxes enunciated in this history of the Quest,
there is one that meets us at the outset, about which a few words may be
said here, if only to encourage those to persevere to the end who might
otherwise be repelled halfway—the paradox that the greatest attempts to
write a Life of Jesus have been written with hate._(_2_)_ It is in full
accordance with this faith that Dr. Schweitzer gives, in paragraph after
paragraph, the undiluted expression of the views of men who agree only in
their unflinching desire to attain historical truth. We are not accustomed
to be so ruthless in England. We sometimes tend to forget that the Gospel
has moved the world, and we think our faith and devotion to it so tender
and delicate a thing that it will break, if it be not handled with the
utmost circumspection. So we become dominated __ by phrases and afraid of
them. Dr. Schweitzer is not afraid of phrases, if only they have been
beaten out by real contact with facts. And those who read to the end will
see that the crude sarcasm of Reimarus and the unflinching scepticism of
Bruno Bauer are not introduced merely to shock and by way of contrast.
Each in his own way made a real contribution to our understanding of the
greatest historical problem in the history of our race. We see now that
the object of attack was not the historical Jesus after all, but a
temporary idea of Him, inadequate because it did not truly represent Him
or the world in which He lived. And by hearing the writers’ characteristic
phrases, uncompromising as they may be, by looking at things for a moment
from their own point of view, different as it may be from ours, we are
able to be more just, not only to these men of a past age, but also to the
great Problem that occupied them, as it also occupies us._
_For, as Father Tyrrell has been pointing out in his last most impressive
message to us all, Christianity is at the Cross Roads. If the Figure of
our Lord is to mean anything for us we must realise it for ourselves. Most
English readers of the New Testament have been too long content with the
rough and ready Harmony of the Four Gospels that they unconsciously
construct. This kind of __“__Harmony__”__ is not a very convincing picture
when looked into, if only because it almost always conflicts with
inconvenient statements of the Gospels themselves, statements that have
been omitted from the __“__Harmony__”__, not on any reasoned theory, but
simply from inadvertence or the difficulty of fitting them in. We treat
the Life of our Lord too much as it is treated in the Liturgical
__“__Gospels__”__, as a simple series of disconnected anecdotes._
_Dr. Schweitzer’s book does not pretend to be an impartial survey. He has
his own solution of the problems, and it is not to be expected that
English students will endorse the whole of his view of the Gospel History,
any more than his German fellow‐workers have done. But valuable and
suggestive as I believe his constructive work to be in its main outlines,
I venture to think his grasp of the nature and complexity of the great
Quest is even more remarkable, and his exposition of it cannot fail to
stimulate us in England. Whatever we may think of Dr. Schweitzer’s
solution or that of his opponents, we too have to reckon with the Son of
Man who was expected to come before the apostles had gone over the cities
of Israel, the Son of Man who would come in His Kingdom before some that
heard our Lord speak should taste death, the Son of Man who came to give
His life a ransom for many, whom __ they would see hereafter coming with
the clouds of heaven. __“__Who is this Son of Man?__”__ Dr. Schweitzer’s
book is an attempt to give the full historical value and the true
historical setting to these fundamental words of the Gospel of Jesus._
_Our first duty, with the Gospel as with every other ancient document, is
to interpret it with reference to its own time. The true view of the
Gospel will be that which explains the course of events in the first
century and the second century, rather than that which seems to have
spiritual and imaginative value for the twentieth century. Yet I cannot
refrain from pointing out here one feature of the theory of thoroughgoing
eschatology, which may appeal to those who are accustomed to the venerable
forms of ancient Christian aspiration and worship. It may well be that
absolute truth cannot be embodied in human thought and that its expression
must always be clothed in symbols. It may be that we have to translate the
hopes and fears of our spiritual ancestors into the language of our new
world. We have to learn, as the Church in the second century had to learn,
that the End is not yet, that New Jerusalem, like all other objects of
sense, is an image of the truth rather than the truth itself. But at least
we are beginning to see that the apocalyptic vision, the New Age which God
is to bring in, is no mere embroidery of Christianity, but the heart of
its enthusiasm. And therefore the expectations of vindication and judgment
to come, the imagery of the Messianic Feast, the __“__other‐
worldliness__”__ against which so many eloquent words were said in the
nineteenth century, are not to be regarded as regrettable accretions
foisted on by superstition to the pure morality of the original Gospel.
These ideas are the Christian Hope, to be allegorised and
__“__spiritualised__”__ by us for our own use whenever necessary, but not
to be given up so long as we remain Christians at all. Books which teach
us boldly to trust the evidence of our documents, and to accept the
eschatology of the Christian Gospel as being historically the eschatology
of Jesus, help us at the same time to retain a real meaning and use for
the ancient phrases of the Te Deum, and for the mediaeval strain of
__“__Jerusalem the Golden.__”_
_F. C. Burkitt._
_Cambridge, 1910._
I. THE PROBLEM
When, at some future day, our period of civilisation shall lie, closed and
completed, before the eyes of later generations, German theology will
stand out as a great, a unique phenomenon in the mental and spiritual life
of our time. For nowhere save in the German temperament can there be found
in the same perfection the living complex of conditions and factors—of
philosophic thought, critical acumen, historical insight, and religious
feeling—without which no deep theology is possible.
And the greatest achievement of German theology is the critical
investigation of the life of Jesus. What it has accomplished here has laid
down the conditions and determined the course of the religious thinking of
the future.
In the history of doctrine its work has been negative; it has, so to
speak, cleared the site for a new edifice of religious thought. In
describing how the ideas of Jesus were taken possession of by the Greek
spirit, it was tracing the growth of that which must necessarily become
strange to us, and, as a matter of fact, has become strange to us.
Of its efforts to create a new dogmatic we scarcely need to have the
history written; it is alive within us. It is no doubt interesting to
trace how modern thoughts have found their way into the ancient dogmatic
system, there to combine with eternal ideas to form new constructions; it
is interesting to penetrate into the mind of the thinker in which this
process is at work; but the real truth of that which here meets us as
history we experience within ourselves. As in the monad of Leibnitz the
whole universe is reflected, so we intuitively experience within us, even
apart from any clear historical knowledge, the successive stages of the
progress of modern dogma, from rationalism to Ritschl. This experience is
true knowledge, all the truer because we are conscious of the whole as
something indefinite, a slow and difficult movement towards a goal which
is still shrouded in obscurity. We have not yet arrived at any
reconciliation between history and modern thought—only between half‐way
history and half‐way thought. What the ultimate goal towards which we are
moving will be, what this something is which shall bring new life and new
regulative principles to coming centuries, we do not know. We can only
dimly divine that it will be the mighty deed of some mighty original
genius, whose truth and rightness will be proved by the fact that we,
working at our poor half thing, will oppose him might and main—we who
imagine we long for nothing more eagerly than a genius powerful enough to
open up with authority a new path for the world, seeing that we cannot
succeed in moving it forward along the track which we have so laboriously
prepared.
For this reason the history of the critical study of the life of Jesus is
of higher intrinsic value than the history of the study of ancient dogma
or of the attempts to create a new one. It has to describe the most
tremendous thing which the religious consciousness has ever dared and
done. In the study of the history of dogma German theology settled its
account with the past; in its attempt to create a new dogmatic, it was
endeavouring to keep a place for the religious life in the thought of the
present; in the study of the life of Jesus it was working for the
future—in pure faith in the truth, not seeing whereunto it wrought.
Moreover, we are here dealing with the most vital thing in the world’s
history. There came a Man to rule over the world; He ruled it for good and
for ill, as history testifies; He destroyed the world into which He was
born; the spiritual life of our own time seems like to perish at His
hands, for He leads to battle against our thought a host of dead ideas, a
ghostly army upon which death has no power, and Himself destroys again the
truth and goodness which His Spirit creates in us, so that it cannot rule
the world. That He continues, notwithstanding, to reign as the alone Great
and alone True in a world of which He denied the continuance, is the prime
example of that antithesis between spiritual and natural truth which
underlies all life and all events, and in Him emerges into the field of
history.
It is only at first sight that the absolute indifference of early
Christianity towards the life of the historical Jesus is disconcerting.
When Paul, representing those who recognise the signs of the times, did
not desire to know Christ after the flesh, that was the first expression
of the impulse of self‐preservation by which Christianity continued to be
guided for centuries. It felt that with the introduction of the historic
Jesus into its faith, there would arise something new, something which had
not been foreseen in the thoughts of the Master Himself, and that thereby
a contradiction would be brought to light, the solution of which would
constitute one of the great problems of the world.
Primitive Christianity was therefore right to live wholly in the future
with the Christ who was to come, and to preserve of the historic Jesus
only detached sayings, a few miracles, His death and resurrection. By
abolishing both the world and the historical Jesus it escaped the inner
division described above, and remained consistent in its point of view.
We, on our part, have reason to be grateful to the early Christians that,
in consequence of this attitude they have handed down to us, not
biographies of Jesus but only Gospels, and that therefore we possess the
Idea and the Person with the minimum of historical and contemporary
limitations.
But the world continued to exist, and its continuance brought this one‐
sided view to an end. The supra‐mundane Christ and the historical Jesus of
Nazareth had to be brought together into a single personality at once
historical and raised above time. That was accomplished by Gnosticism and
the Logos Christology. Both, from opposite standpoints, because they were
seeking the same goal, agreed in sublimating the historical Jesus into the
supra‐mundane Idea. The result of this development, which followed on the
discrediting of eschatology, was that the historical Jesus was again
introduced into the field of view of Christianity, but in such a way that
all justification for, and interest in, the investigation of His life and
historical personality were done away with.
Greek theology was as indifferent in regard to the historical Jesus who
lives concealed in the Gospels as was the early eschatological theology.
More than that, it was dangerous to Him; for it created a new
supernatural‐historical Gospel, and we may consider it fortunate that the
Synoptics were already so firmly established that the Fourth Gospel could
not oust them; instead, the Church, as though from the inner necessity of
the antitheses which now began to be a constructive element in her
thought, was obliged to set up two antithetic Gospels alongside of one
another.
When at Chalcedon the West overcame the East, its doctrine of the two
natures dissolved the unity of the Person, and thereby cut off the last
possibility of a return to the historical Jesus. The self‐contradiction
was elevated into a law. But the Manhood was so far admitted as to
preserve, in appearance, the rights of history. Thus by a deception the
formula kept the Life prisoner and prevented the leading spirits of the
Reformation from grasping the idea of a return to the historical Jesus.
This dogma had first to be shattered before men could once more go out in
quest of the historical Jesus, before they could even grasp the thought of
His existence. That the historic Jesus is something different from the
Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures seems to us now self‐
evident. We can, at the present day, scarcely imagine the long agony in
which the historical view of the life of Jesus came to birth. And even
when He was once more recalled to life, He was still, like Lazarus of old,
bound hand and foot with grave‐clothes—the grave‐clothes of the dogma of
the Dual Nature. Hase relates, in the preface to his first Life of Jesus
(1829), that a worthy old gentleman, hearing of his project, advised him
to treat in the first part of the human, in the second of the divine
Nature. There was a fine simplicity about that. But does not the
simplicity cover a presentiment of the revolution of thought for which the
historical method of study was preparing the way—a presentiment which
those who were engaged in the work did not share in the same measure? It
was fortunate that they did not; for otherwise how could they have had the
courage to go on?
The historical investigation of the life of Jesus did not take its rise
from a purely historical interest; it turned to the Jesus of history as an
ally in the struggle against the tyranny of dogma. Afterwards when it was
freed from this πάθος it sought to present the historic Jesus in a form
intelligible to its own time. For Bahrdt and Venturini He was the tool of
a secret order. They wrote under the impression of the immense influence
exercised by the Order of the Illuminati(3) at the end of the eighteenth
century. For Reinhard, Hess, Paulus, and the rest of the rationalistic
writers He is the admirable revealer of true virtue, which is coincident
with right reason. Thus each successive epoch of theology found its own
thoughts in Jesus; that was, indeed, the only way in which it could make
Him live.
But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each
individual created Him in accordance with his own character. There is no
historical task which so reveals a man’s true self as the writing of a
Life of Jesus. No vital force comes into the figure unless a man breathes
into it all the hate or all the love of which he is capable. The stronger
the love, or the stronger the hate, the more life‐like is the figure which
is produced. For hate as well as love can write a Life of Jesus, and the
greatest of them are written with hate: that of Reimarus, the Wolfenbüttel
Fragmentist, and that of David Friedrich Strauss. It was not so much hate
of the Person of Jesus as of the supernatural nimbus with which it was so
easy to surround Him, and with which He had in fact been surrounded. They
were eager to picture Him as truly and purely human, to strip from Him the
robes of splendour with which He had been apparelled, and clothe Him once
more with the coarse garments in which He had walked in Galilee.
And their hate sharpened their historical insight. They advanced the study
of the subject more than all the others put together. But for the offence
which they gave, the science of historical theology would not have stood
where it does to‐day. “It must needs be that offences come; but woe to
that man by whom the offence cometh.” Reimarus evaded that woe by keeping
the offence to himself and preserving silence during his lifetime—his
work, “The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples,” was only published after his
death, by Lessing. But in the case of Strauss, who, as a young man of
twenty‐seven, cast the offence openly in the face of the world, the woe
fulfilled itself. His “Life of Jesus” was his ruin. But he did not cease
to be proud of it in spite of all the misfortune that it brought him. “I
might well bear a grudge against my book,” he writes twenty‐five years
later in the preface to the “Conversations of Ulrich von Hutten,”(4) “for
it has done me much evil (‘And rightly so!’ the pious will exclaim). It
has excluded me from public teaching in which I took pleasure and for
which I had perhaps some talent; it has torn me from natural relationships
and driven me into unnatural ones; it has made my life a lonely one. And
yet when I consider what it would have meant if I had refused to utter the
word which lay upon my soul, if I had suppressed the doubts which were at
work in my mind—then I bless the book which has doubtless done me grievous
harm outwardly, but which preserved the inward health of my mind and
heart, and, I doubt not, has done the same for many others also.”
Before him, Bahrdt had his career broken in consequence of revealing his
beliefs concerning the Life of Jesus; and after him, Bruno Bauer.
It was easy for them, resolved as they were to open the way even with
seeming blasphemy. But the others, those who tried to bring Jesus to life
at the call of love, found it a cruel task to be honest. The critical
study of the life of Jesus has been for theology a school of honesty. The
world had never seen before, and will never see again, a struggle for
truth so full of pain and renunciation as that of which the Lives of Jesus
of the last hundred years contain the cryptic record. One must read the
successive Lives of Jesus with which Hase followed the course of the study
from the ’twenties to the ’seventies of the nineteenth century to get an
inkling of what it must have cost the men who lived through that decisive
period really to maintain that “courageous freedom of investigation” which
the great Jena professor, in the preface to his first Life of Jesus,
claims for his researches. One sees in him the marks of the struggle with
which he gives up, bit by bit, things which, when he wrote that preface,
he never dreamed he would have to surrender. It was fortunate for these
men that their sympathies sometimes obscured their critical vision, so
that, without becoming insincere, they were able to take white clouds for
distant mountains. That was the kindly fate of Hase and Beyschlag.
The personal character of the study is not only due, however, to the fact
that a personality can only be awakened to life by the touch of a
personality; it lies in the essential nature of the problem itself. For
the problem of the life of Jesus has no analogue in the field of history.
No historical school has ever laid down canons for the investigation of
this problem, no professional historian has ever lent his aid to theology
in dealing with it. Every ordinary method of historical investigation
proves inadequate to the complexity of the conditions. The standards of
ordinary historical science are here inadequate, its methods not
immediately applicable. The historical study of the life of Jesus has had
to create its own methods for itself. In the constant succession of
unsuccessful attempts, five or six problems have emerged side by side
which together constitute the fundamental problem. There is, however, no
direct method of solving the problem in its complexity; all that can be
done is to experiment continuously, starting from definite assumptions;
and in this experimentation the guiding principle must ultimately rest
upon historical intuition.
The cause of this lies in the nature of the sources of the life of Jesus,
and in the character of our knowledge of the contemporary religious world
of thought. It is not that the sources are in themselves bad. When we have
once made up our minds that we have not the materials for a complete Life
of Jesus, but only for a picture of His public ministry, it must be
admitted that there are few characters of antiquity about whom we possess
so much indubitably historical information, of whom we have so many
authentic discourses. The position is much more favourable, for instance,
than in the case of Socrates; for he is pictured to us by literary men who
exercised their creative ability upon the portrait. Jesus stands much more
immediately before us, because He was depicted by simple Christians
without literary gift.
But at this point there arises a twofold difficulty. There is first the
fact that what has just been said applies only to the first three Gospels,
while the fourth, as regards its character, historical data, and discourse
material, forms a world of its own. It is written from the Greek
standpoint, while the first three are written from the Jewish. And even if
one could get over this, and regard, as has often been done, the Synoptics
and the Fourth Gospel as standing in something of the same relation to one
another as Xenophon does to Plato as sources for the life of Socrates, yet
the complete irreconcilability of the historical data would compel the
critical investigator to decide from the first in favour of one source or
the other. Once more it is found true that “No man can serve two masters.”
This stringent dilemma was not recognised from the beginning; its
emergence is one of the results of the whole course of experiment.
The second difficulty regarding the sources is the want of any thread of
connexion in the material which they offer us. While the Synoptics are
only collections of anecdotes (in the best, historical sense of the word),
the Gospel of John—as stands on record in its closing words—only professes
to give a selection of the events and discourses.
From these materials we can only get a Life of Jesus with yawning gaps.
How are these gaps to be filled? At the worst with phrases, at the best
with historical imagination. There is really no other means of arriving at
the order and inner connexion of the facts of the life of Jesus than the
making and testing of hypotheses. If the tradition preserved by the
Synoptists really includes all that happened during the time that Jesus
was with His disciples, the attempt to discover the connexion must succeed
sooner or later. It becomes more and more clear that this presupposition
is indispensable to the investigation. If it is merely a fortuitous series
of episodes that the Evangelists have handed down to us, we may give up
the attempt to arrive at a critical reconstruction of the life of Jesus as
hopeless.
But it is not only the events which lack historical connexion; we are
without any indication of a thread of connexion in the actions and
discourses of Jesus, because the sources give no hint of the character of
His self‐consciousness. They confine themselves to outward facts. We only
begin to understand these historically when we can mentally place them in
an intelligible connexion and conceive them as the acts of a clearly
defined personality. All that we know of the development of Jesus and of
His Messianic self‐consciousness has been arrived at by a series of
working hypotheses. Our conclusions can only be considered valid so long
as they are not found incompatible with the recorded facts as a whole.
It may be maintained by the aid of arguments drawn from the sources that
the self‐consciousness of Jesus underwent a development during the course
of His public ministry; it may, with equally good grounds, be denied. For
in both cases the arguments are based upon little details in the narrative
in regard to which we do not know whether they are purely accidental, or
whether they belong to the essence of the facts. In each case, moreover,
the experimental working out of the hypothesis leads to a conclusion which
compels the rejection of some of the actual data of the sources. Each view
equally involves a violent treatment of the text.
Furthermore, the sources exhibit, each within itself, a striking
contradiction. They assert that Jesus felt Himself to be the Messiah; and
yet from their presentation of His life it does not appear that He ever
publicly claimed to be so. They attribute to Him, that is, an attitude
which has absolutely no connexion with the consciousness which they assume
that He possessed. But once admit that the outward acts are not the
natural expression of the self‐consciousness and all exact historical
knowledge is at an end; we have to do with an isolated fact which is not
referable to any law.
This being so, the only way of arriving at a conclusion of any value is to
experiment, to test, by working them out, the two hypotheses—that Jesus
felt Himself to be the Messiah, as the sources assert, or that He did not
feel Himself to be so, as His conduct implies; or else to try to
conjecture what kind of Messianic consciousness His must have been, if it
left His conduct and His discourses unaffected. For one thing is certain:
the whole account of the last days at Jerusalem would be unintelligible,
if we had to suppose that the mass of the people had a shadow of a
suspicion that Jesus held Himself to be the Messiah.
Again, whereas in general a personality is to some extent defined by the
world of thought which it shares with its contemporaries, in the case of
Jesus this source of information is as unsatisfactory as the documents.
What was the nature of the contemporary Jewish world of thought? To that
question no clear answer can be given. We do not know whether the
expectation of the Messiah was generally current or whether it was the
faith of a mere sect. With the Mosaic religion as such it had nothing to
do. There was no organic connexion between the religion of legal
observance and the future hope. Further, if the eschatological hope was
generally current, was it the prophetic or the apocalyptic form of that
hope? We know the Messianic expectations of the prophets; we know the
apocalyptic picture as drawn by Daniel, and, following him, by Enoch and
the Psalms of Solomon before the coming of Jesus, and by the Apocalypses
of Ezra and Baruch about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. But we
do not know which was the popular form; nor, supposing that both were
combined into one picture, what this picture really looked like. We know
only the form of eschatology which meets us in the Gospels and in the
Pauline epistles; that is to say, the form which it took in the Christian
community in consequence of the coming of Jesus. And to combine these
three—the prophetic, the Late‐Jewish apocalyptic, and the Christian—has
not proved possible.
Even supposing we could obtain more exact information regarding the
popular Messianic expectations at the time of Jesus, we should still not
know what form they assumed in the self‐consciousness of One who knew
Himself to be the Messiah but held that the time was not yet come for Him
to reveal Himself as such. We only know their aspect from without, as a
waiting for the Messiah and the Messianic Age; we have no clue to their
aspect from within as factors in the Messianic self‐consciousness. We
possess no psychology of the Messiah. The Evangelists have nothing to tell
us about it, because Jesus told them nothing about it; the sources for the
contemporary spiritual life inform us only concerning the eschatological
expectation. For the form of the Messianic self‐consciousness of Jesus we
have to fall back upon conjecture.
Such is the character of the problem, and, as a consequence, historical
experiment must here take the place of historical research. That being so,
it is easy to understand that to take a survey of the study of the life of
Jesus is to be confronted, at first sight, with a scene of the most
boundless confusion. A series of experiments are repeated with constantly
varying modifications suggested by the results furnished by the subsidiary
sciences. Most of the writers, however, have no suspicion that they are
merely repeating an experiment which has often been made before. Some of
them discover this in the course of their work to their own great
astonishment—it is so, for instance, with Wrede, who recognises that he is
working out, though doubtless with a clearer consciousness of his aim, an
idea of Bruno Bauer’s.(5) If old Reimarus were to come back again, he
might confidently give himself out to be the latest of the moderns, for
his work rests upon a recognition of the exclusive importance of
eschatology, such as only recurs again in Johannes Weiss.
Progress, too, is curiously fitful, with long intervals of marking time
between the advances. From Strauss down to the ’nineties there was no real
progress, if one takes into consideration only the complete Lives of Jesus
which appeared. But a number of separate problems took a more clearly
defined form, so that in the end the general problem suddenly moved
forward, as it seemed, with a jerk.
There is really no common standard by which to judge the works with which
we have to do. It is not the most orderly narratives, those which weave in
conscientiously every detail of the text, which have advanced the study of
the subject, but precisely the eccentric ones, those that take the
greatest liberties with the text. It is not by the mass of facts that a
writer sets down alongside of one another as possible—because he writes
easily and there is no one there to contradict him, and because facts on
paper do not come into collision so sharply as they do in reality—it is
not in that way that he shows his power of reconstructing history, but by
that which he recognises as impossible. The constructions of Reimarus and
Bruno Bauer have no solidity; they are mere products of the imagination.
But there is much more historical power in their clear grasp of a single
definite problem, which has blinded them to all else, than there is in the
circumstantial works of Beyschlag and Bernard Weiss.
But once one has accustomed oneself to look for certain definite landmarks
amid this apparent welter of confusion one begins at last to discover in
vague outline the course followed, and the progress made, by the critical
study of the life of Jesus.
It falls, immediately, into two periods, that before Strauss and that
after Strauss. The dominant interest in the first is the question of
miracle. What terms are possible between a historical treatment and the
acceptance of supernatural events? With the advent of Strauss this problem
found a solution, viz., that these events have no rightful place in the
history, but are simply mythical elements in the sources. The way was thus
thrown open. Meanwhile, alongside of the problem of the supernatural,
other problems had been dimly apprehended. Reimarus had drawn attention to
the contemporary eschatological views; Hase, in his first Life of Jesus
(1829), had sought to trace a development in the self‐consciousness of
Jesus.
But on this point a clear view was impossible, because all the students of
the subject were still basing their operations upon the harmony of the
Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel; which means that they had not so far felt
the need of a historically intelligible outline of the life of Jesus.
Here, too, Strauss was the light‐bringer. But the transient illumination
was destined to be obscured by the Marcan hypothesis,(6) which now came to
the front. The necessity of choosing between John and the Synoptists was
first fully established by the Tübingen school; and the right relation of
this question to the Marcan hypothesis was subsequently shown by
Holtzmann.
While these discussions of the preliminary literary questions were in
progress the main historical problem of the life of Jesus was slowly
rising into view. The question began to be mooted: what was the
significance of eschatology for the mind of Jesus? With this problem was
associated, in virtue of an inner connexion which was not at first
suspected, the problem of the self‐consciousness of Jesus. At the
beginning of the ’nineties it was generally felt that, in the solution
given to this dual problem, an in some measure assured knowledge of the
outward and inward course of the life of Jesus had been reached. At this
point Johannes Weiss revived the comprehensive claim of Reimarus on behalf
of eschatology; and scarcely had criticism adjusted its attitude to this
question when Wrede renewed the attempt of Bauer and Volkmar to eliminate
altogether the Messianic element from the life of Jesus.
We are now once more in the midst of a period of great activity in the
study of the subject. On the one side we are offered a historical
solution, on the other a literary. The question at issue is: Is it
possible to explain the contradiction between the Messianic consciousness
of Jesus and His non‐Messianic discourses and actions by means of a
conception of His Messianic consciousness which will make it appear that
He could not have acted otherwise than as the Evangelists describe; or
must we endeavour to explain the contradiction by taking the non‐Messianic
discourses and actions as our fixed point, denying the reality of His
Messianic self‐consciousness and regarding it as a later interpolation of
the beliefs of the Christian community into the life of Jesus? In the
latter case the Evangelists are supposed to have attributed these
Messianic claims to Jesus because the early Church held Him to be the
Messiah, but to have contradicted themselves by describing His life as it
actually was, viz., as the life of a prophet, not of one who held Himself
to be the Messiah. To put it briefly: Does the difficulty of explaining
the historical personality of Jesus lie in the history itself, or only in
the way in which it is represented in the sources?
This alternative will be discussed in all the critical studies of the next
few years. Once clearly posed it compels a decision. But no one can really
understand the problem who has not a clear notion of the way in which it
has shaped itself in the course of the investigation; no one can justly
criticise, or appraise the value of, new contributions to the study of
this subject unless he knows in what forms they have been presented
before.
The history of the study of the life of Jesus has hitherto received
surprisingly little attention. Hase, in his Life of Jesus of 1829, briefly
records the previous attempts to deal with the subject. Friedrich von
Ammon, himself one of the most distinguished students in this department,
in his “Progress of Christianity,”(7) gives some information “regarding
the most notable biographies of Jesus of the last fifty years.” In the
year 1865 Uhlhorn treated together the Lives of Jesus of Renan, Schenkel,
and Strauss; in 1876 Hase, in his “History of Jesus,” gave the only
complete literary history of the subject;(8) in 1892 Uhlhorn extended his
former lecture to include the works of Keim, Delff, Beyschlag, and
Weiss;(9) in 1898 Frantzen described, in a short essay, the progress of
the study since Strauss;(10) in 1899 and 1900 Baldensperger gave, in the
_Theologische Rundschau_, a survey of the most recent publications;(11)
Weinel’s book, “Jesus in the Nineteenth Century,” naturally only gives an
analysis of a few classical works; Otto Schmiedel’s lecture on the “Main
Problems of the Critical Study of the Life of Jesus” (1902) merely
sketches the history of the subject in broad outline.(12)
Apart from scattered notices in histories of theology this is practically
all the literature of the subject. There is room for an attempt to bring
order into the chaos of the Lives of Jesus. Hase made ingenious
comparisons between them, but he was unable to group them according to
inner principles, or to judge them justly. Weisse is for him a feebler
descendant of Strauss, Bruno Bauer is the victim of a fantastic
imagination. It would indeed have been difficult for Hase to discover in
the works of his time any principle of division. But now, when the
literary and eschatological methods of solution have led to complementary
results, when the post‐Straussian period of investigation seems to have
reached a provisional close, and the goal to which it has been tending has
become clear, the time seems ripe for the attempt to trace genetically in
the successive works the shaping of the problem as it now confronts us,
and to give a systematic historical account of the critical study of the
life of Jesus. Our endeavour will be to furnish a graphic description of
all the attempts to deal with the subject; and not to dismiss them with
stock phrases or traditional labels, but to show clearly what they really
did to advance the formulation of the problem, whether their
contemporaries recognised it or not. In accordance with this principle
many famous Lives of Jesus which have prolonged an honoured existence
through many successive editions, will make but a poor figure, while
others, which have received scant notice, will appear great. Behind
Success comes Truth, and her reward is with her.
II. HERMANN SAMUEL REIMARUS
“Von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger.” Noch ein Fragment des
Wolfenbüttelschen Ungenannten. Herausgegeben von Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing. Braunschweig, 1778, 276 pp. (The Aims of Jesus and His
Disciples. A further Instalment of the anonymous Wolfenbüttel
Fragments. Published by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Brunswick,
1778.)
_Johann Salomo Semler._ Beantwortung der Fragmente eines
Ungenannten insbesondere vom Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger. (Reply
to the anonymous Fragments, especially to that entitled “The Aims
of Jesus and His Disciples.”) Halle, 1779, 432 pp.
Before Reimarus, no one had attempted to form a historical conception of
the life of Jesus. Luther had not so much as felt that he cared to gain a
clear idea of the order of the recorded events. Speaking of the chronology
of the cleansing of the Temple, which in John falls at the beginning, in
the Synoptists near the close, of Jesus’ public life, he remarks: “The
Gospels follow no order in recording the acts and miracles of Jesus, and
the matter is not, after all, of much importance. If a difficulty arises
in regard to the Holy Scripture and we cannot solve it, we must just let
it alone.” When the Lutheran theologians began to consider the question of
harmonising the events, things were still worse. Osiander (1498‐1552), in
his “Harmony of the Gospels,” maintained the principle that if an event is
recorded more than once in the Gospels, in different connexions, it
happened more than once and in different connexions. The daughter of
Jairus was therefore raised from the dead several times; on one occasion
Jesus allowed the devils whom He cast out of a single demoniac to enter
into a herd of swine, on another occasion, those whom He cast out of two
demoniacs; there were two cleansings of the Temple, and so forth.(13) The
correct view of the Synoptic Gospels as being interdependent was first
formulated by Griesbach.
The only Life of Jesus written prior to the time of Reimarus which has any
interest for us, was composed by a Jesuit in the Persian language. The
author was the Indian missionary Hieronymus Xavier, nephew of Francis
Xavier, and it was designed for the use of Akbar, the Moghul Emperor, who,
in the latter part of the sixteenth century, had become the most powerful
potentate in Hindustan. In the seventeenth century the Persian text was
brought to Europe by a merchant, and was translated into Latin by Louis de
Dieu, a theologian of the Reformed Church, whose intention in publishing
it was to discredit Catholicism.(14) It is a skilful falsification of the
life of Jesus in which the omissions, and the additions taken from the
Apocrypha, are inspired by the sole purpose of presenting to the open‐
minded ruler a glorious Jesus, in whom there should be nothing to offend
him.
Thus there had been nothing to prepare the world for a work of such power
as that of Reimarus. It is true, there had appeared earlier, in 1768, a
Life of Jesus by Johann Jakob Hess(15) (1741‐1828), written from the
standpoint of the older rationalism, but it retains so much
supernaturalism and follows so much the lines of a paraphrase of the
Gospels, that there was nothing to indicate to the world what a master‐
stroke the spirit of the time was preparing.
Not much is known about Reimarus. For his contemporaries he had no
existence, and it was Strauss who first made his name known in
literature.(16) He was born in Hamburg on the 22nd of December, 1694, and
spent his life there as a professor of Oriental Languages. He died in
1768. Several of his writings appeared during his lifetime, all of them
asserting the claims of rational religion as against the faith of the
Church; one of them, for example, being an essay on “The Leading Truths of
Natural Religion.” His _magnum opus_, however, which laid the historic
basis of his attacks, was only circulated, during his lifetime, among his
acquaintances, as an anonymous manuscript. In 1774 Lessing began to
publish the most important portions of it, and up to 1778 had published
seven fragments, thereby involving himself in a quarrel with Goetze, the
Chief Pastor of Hamburg. The manuscript of the whole, which runs to 4000
pages, is preserved in the Hamburg municipal library.
The following are the titles of Fragments which he published:
The Toleration of the Deists.
The Decrying of Reason in the Pulpit.
The impossibility of a Revelation which all men should have good grounds
for believing.
The Passing of the Israelites through the Red Sea.
Showing that the books of the Old Testament were not written to reveal a
Religion.
Concerning the story of the Resurrection.
The Aims of Jesus and His disciples.
The monograph on the passing of the Israelites through the Red Sea is one
of the ablest, wittiest, and most acute which has ever been written. It
exposes all the impossibilities of the narrative in the Priestly Codex,
and all the inconsistencies which arise from the combination of various
sources; although Reimarus has not the slightest inkling that the
separation of these sources would afford the real solution of the problem.
To say that the fragment on “The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples” is a
magnificent piece of work is barely to do it justice. This essay is not
only one of the greatest events in the history of criticism, it is also a
masterpiece of general literature. The language is as a rule crisp and
terse, pointed and epigrammatic—the language of a man who is not “engaged
in literary composition” but is wholly concerned with the facts. At times,
however, it rises to heights of passionate feeling, and then it is as
though the fires of a volcano were painting lurid pictures upon dark
clouds. Seldom has there been a hate so eloquent, so lofty a scorn; but
then it is seldom that a work has been written in the just consciousness
of so absolute a superiority to contemporary opinion. And withal, there is
dignity and serious purpose; Reimarus’s work is no pamphlet.
Lessing could not, of course, accept its standpoint. His idea of
revelation, and his conception of the Person of Jesus, were much deeper
than those of the Fragmentist. He was a thinker; Reimarus only a
historian. But this was the first time that a really historical mind,
thoroughly conversant with the sources, had undertaken the criticism of
the tradition. It was Lessing’s greatness that he grasped the significance
of this criticism, and felt that it must lead either to the destruction or
to the re‐casting of the idea of revelation. He recognised that the
introduction of the historical element would transform and deepen
rationalism. Convinced that the fateful moment had arrived, he disregarded
the scruples of Reimarus’s family and the objections of Nicolai and
Mendelssohn, and, though inwardly trembling for that which he himself held
sacred, he flung the torch with his own hand.
Semler, at the close of his refutation of the fragment, ridicules its
editor in the following apologue. “A prisoner was once brought before the
Lord Mayor of London on a charge of arson. He had been seen coming down
from the upper story of the burning house. ‘Yesterday,’ so ran his
defence, ‘about four o’clock I went into my neighbour’s store‐room and saw
there a burning candle which the servants had carelessly forgotten. In the
course of the night it would have burned down, and set fire to the stairs.
To make sure that the fire should break out in the day‐time, I threw some
straw upon it. The flames burst out at the sky‐light, the fire‐engines
came hurrying up, and the fire, which in the night might have been
dangerous, was promptly extinguished.’ ‘Why did you not yourself pick up
the candle and put it out?’ asked the Lord Mayor. ‘If I had put out the
candle the servants would not have learned to be more careful; now that
there has been such a fuss about it, they will not be so careless in
future.’ ‘Odd, very odd,’ said the Lord Mayor, ‘he is not a criminal, only
a little weak in the head.’ So he had him shut up in the mad‐house, and
there he lies to this day.”
The story is extraordinarily apposite—only that Lessing was not mad; he
knew quite well what he was doing. His object was to show how an unseen
enemy had pushed his parallels up to the very walls, and to summon to the
defence “some one who should be as nearly the ideal defender of religion
as the Fragmentist was the ideal assailant.” Once, with prophetic insight
into the future, he says: “The Christian traditions must be explained by
the inner truth of Christianity, and no written traditions can give it
that inner truth, if it does not itself possess it.”
Reimarus takes as his starting‐point the question regarding the content of
the preaching of Jesus. “We are justified,” he says, “in drawing an
absolute distinction between the teaching of the Apostles in their
writings and what Jesus Himself in His own lifetime proclaimed and
taught.” What belongs to the preaching of Jesus is clearly to be
recognised. It is contained in two phrases of identical meaning, “Repent,
and believe the Gospel,” or, as it is put elsewhere, “Repent, for the
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
The Kingdom of Heaven must however be understood “according to Jewish ways
of thought.” Neither Jesus nor the Baptist ever explain this expression;
therefore they must have been content to have it understood in its known
and customary sense. That means that Jesus took His stand within the
Jewish religion, and accepted its Messianic expectations without in any
way correcting them. If He gives a new development to this religion it is
only in so far that He proclaims as near at hand the realisation of ideals
and hopes which were alive in thousands of hearts.
There was thus no need for detailed instruction regarding the nature of
the Kingdom of Heaven; the catechism and confession of the Church at its
commencement consisted of a single phrase. Belief was not difficult: “they
need only believe the Gospel, namely that Jesus was about to bring in the
Kingdom of God.”(17)
As there were many among the Jews who were already waiting for the Kingdom
of God, it was no wonder that in a few days, nay in a few hours, some
thousands believed, although they had been told only that Jesus was the
promised prophet.
This was the sum total of what the disciples knew about the Kingdom of God
when they were sent out by their Master to proclaim its coming. Their
hearers would naturally think of the customary meaning of the term and the
hopes which attached themselves to it. “The purpose of sending out such
propagandists could only be that the Jews who groaned under the Roman yoke
and had long cherished the hope of deliverance should be stirred up all
over Judaea and assemble themselves in their thousands.”
Jesus must have known, too, that if the people believed His messengers
they would look about for an earthly deliverer and turn to Him for this
purpose. The Gospel, therefore, meant nothing more or less to all who
heard it than that, under the leadership of Jesus, the Kingdom of Messiah
was about to be brought in. For them there was no difficulty in accepting
the belief that He was the Messiah, the Son of God, for this belief did
not involve anything metaphysical. The nation was the Son of God; the
kings of the covenant‐people were Sons of God; the Messiah was in a pre‐
eminent sense the Son of God. Thus even in His Messianic claims Jesus
remained “within the limits of humanity.”
The fact that He did not need to explain to His contemporaries what He
meant by the Kingdom of God constitutes a difficulty for us. The parables
do not enlighten us, for they presuppose a knowledge of the conception.
“If we could not gather from the writings of the Jews some further
information as to what was understood at that time by the Messiah and the
Kingdom of God, these points of primary importance would be very obscure
and incomprehensible.”
“If, therefore, we desire to gain a historical understanding of Jesus’
teaching, we must leave behind what we learned in our catechism regarding
the metaphysical Divine Sonship, the Trinity, and similar dogmatic
conceptions, and go out into a wholly Jewish world of thought. Only those
who carry the teachings of the catechism back into the preaching of the
Jewish Messiah will arrive at the idea that He was the founder of a new
religion. To all unprejudiced persons it is manifest that Jesus had not
the slightest intention of doing away with the Jewish religion and putting
another in its place.”
From Matt. v. 18 it is evident that Jesus did not break with the Law, but
took His stand upon it unreservedly. If there was anything at all new in
His preaching, it was the righteousness which was requisite for the
Kingdom of God. The righteousness of the Law will no longer suffice in the
time of the coming Kingdom; a new and deeper morality must come into
being. This demand is the only point in which the preaching of Jesus went
beyond the ideas of His contemporaries. But this new morality does not do
away with the Law, for He explains it as a fulfilment of the old
commandments. His followers, no doubt, broke with the Law later on. They
did so, however, not in pursuance of a command of Jesus, but under the
pressure of circumstances, at the time when they were forced out of
Judaism and obliged to found a new religion.
Jesus shared the Jewish racial exclusiveness wholly and unreservedly.
According to Matt. x. 5 He forbade His disciples to declare to the
Gentiles the coming of the Kingdom of God. Evidently, therefore, His
purpose did not embrace them. Had it been otherwise, the hesitation of
Peter in Acts x. and xi., and the necessity of justifying the conversion
of Cornelius, would be incomprehensible.
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are no evidence that Jesus intended to found
a new religion. In the first place the genuineness of the command to
baptize in Matt. xxviii. 19 is questionable, not only as a saying ascribed
to the risen Jesus, but also because it is universalistic in outlook, and
because it implies the doctrine of the Trinity and, consequently, the
metaphysical Divine Sonship of Jesus. In this it is inconsistent with the
earliest traditions regarding the practice of baptism in the Christian
community, for in the earliest times, as we learn from the Acts and from
Paul, it was the custom to baptize, not in the name of the Trinity, but in
the name of Jesus, the Messiah.
But, furthermore, it is questionable whether Baptism really goes back to
Jesus at all. He Himself baptized no one in His own lifetime, and never
commanded any of His converts to be baptized. So we cannot be sure about
the origin of Baptism, though we can be sure of its meaning. Baptism in
the name of Jesus signified only that Jesus was the Messiah. “For the only
change which the teaching of Jesus made in their religion was that whereas
they had formerly believed in a Deliverer of Israel who was to come in the
future, they now believed in a Deliverer who was already present.”
The “Lord’s Supper,” again, was no new institution, but merely an episode
at the last Paschal Meal of the Kingdom which was passing away, and was
intended “as an anticipatory celebration of the Passover of the New
Kingdom.” A Lord’s Supper in our sense, “cut loose from the Passover,”
would have been inconceivable to Jesus, and not less so to His disciples.
It is useless to appeal to the miracles, any more than to the
“Sacraments,” as evidence for the founding of a new religion. In the first
place, we have to remember what happens in the case of miracles handed
down by tradition. That Jesus effected cures, which in the eyes of His
contemporaries were miraculous, is not to be denied. Their purpose was to
prove Him to be the Messiah. He forbade these miracles to be made known,
even in cases where they could not possibly be kept hidden, “with the sole
purpose of making people more eager to talk of them.” Other miracles,
however, have no basis in fact, but owe their place in the narrative to
the feeling that the miracle‐stories of the Old Testament must be repeated
in the case of Jesus, but on a grander scale. He did no really miraculous
works; otherwise, the demands for a sign would be incomprehensible. In
Jerusalem when all the people were looking eagerly for an overwhelming
manifestation of His Messiahship, what a tremendous effect a miracle would
have produced! If only a single miracle had been publicly, convincingly,
undeniably, performed by Jesus before all the people on one of the great
days of the Feast, such is human nature that all the people would at once
have flocked to His standard.
For this popular uprising, however, He waited in vain. Twice He believed
that it was near at hand. The first time was when He was sending out the
disciples and said to them: “Ye shall not have gone over the cities of
Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Matt. x. 23). He thought that, at the
preaching of the disciples, the people would flock to Him from every
quarter and immediately proclaim Him Messiah; but His expectation was
disappointed.
The second time, He thought to bring about the decisive issue in
Jerusalem. He made His entry riding on an ass’s colt, that the Messianic
prophecy of Zechariah might be fulfilled. And the people actually did cry
“Hosanna to the Son of David!” Relying on the support of His followers He
might now, He thought, bid defiance to the authorities. In the temple He
arrogates to Himself supreme power, and in glowing words calls for an open
revolt against the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees, on the ground that they
have shut the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven and forbidden others to go
in. There is no doubt, now, that He will carry the people with Him!
Confident in the success of His cause, He closes the great incendiary
harangue in Matt. xxiii. with the words “Truly from henceforth ye shall
not see me again until ye shall say Blessed is he that cometh in the name
of the Lord”; that is, until they should hail Him as Messiah.
But the people in Jerusalem refused to rise, as the Galilaeans had refused
at the time when the disciples were sent out to rouse them. The Council
prepared for vigorous action. The voluntary concealment by which Jesus had
thought to whet the eagerness of the people became involuntary. Before His
arrest He was overwhelmed with dread, and on the cross He closed His life
with the words “My God! my God! why hast Thou forsaken me?” “This avowal
cannot, without violence, be interpreted otherwise than as meaning that
God had not aided Him in His aim and purpose as He had hoped. That shows
that it had not been His purpose to suffer and die, but to establish an
earthly kingdom and deliver the Jews from political oppression—and in that
God’s help had failed Him.”
For the disciples this turn of affairs meant the destruction of all the
dreams for the sake of which they had followed Jesus. For if they had
given up anything on His account, it was only in order to receive it again
an hundredfold when they should openly take their places in the eyes of
all the world as the friends and ministers of the Messiah, as the rulers
of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus never disabused them of this
sensuous hope, but, on the contrary, confirmed them in it. When He put an
end to the quarrel about pre‐eminence, and when He answered the request of
the sons of Zebedee, He did not attack the assumption that there were to
be thrones and power, but only addressed Himself to the question how men
were in the present to establish their claims to that position of
authority.
All this implies that the time of the fulfilment of these hopes was not
thought of by Jesus and His disciples as at all remote. In Matt. xvi. 28,
for example, He says: “Truly I say unto you there are some standing here
who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his
kingdom.” There is no justification for twisting this about or explaining
it away. It simply means that Jesus promises the fulfilment of all
Messianic hopes before the end of the existing generation.
Thus the disciples were prepared for anything rather than that which
actually happened. Jesus had never said a word to them about His dying and
rising again, otherwise they would not have so played the coward at His
death, nor have been so astonished at His “resurrection.” The three or
four sayings referring to these events must therefore have been put into
His mouth later, in order to make it appear that He had foreseen these
events in His original plan.
How, then, did they get over this apparently annihilating blow? By falling
back upon the second form of the Jewish Messianic hope. Hitherto their
thoughts, like those of their Master, had been dominated by the political
ideal of the prophets—the scion of David’s line who should appear as the
political deliverer of the nation. But alongside of that there existed
another Messianic expectation which transferred everything to the
supernatural sphere. Appearing first in Daniel, this expectation can still
be traced in the Apocalypses, in Justin’s “Dialogue with Trypho,” and in
certain Rabbinic sayings. According to these—Reimarus makes use especially
of the statements of Trypho—the Messiah is to appear twice; once in human
lowliness, the second time upon the clouds of heaven. When the first
_systema_, as Reimarus calls it, was annihilated by the death of Jesus,
the disciples brought forward the second, and gathered followers who
shared their expectation of a second coming of Jesus the Messiah. In order
to get rid of the difficulty of the death of Jesus, they gave it the
significance of a spiritual redemption—which had not previously entered
their field of vision or that of Jesus Himself.
But this spiritual interpretation of His death would not have helped them
if they had not also invented the resurrection. Immediately after the
death of Jesus, indeed, such an idea was far from their thoughts. They
were in deadly fear and kept close within doors. “Soon, however, one and
another ventures to slip out. They learn that no judicial search is being
made for them.” Then they consider what is to be done. They did not take
kindly to the idea of returning to their old haunts; on their journeyings
the companions of the Messiah had forgotten how to work. They had seen
that the preaching of the Kingdom of God will keep a man. Even when they
had been sent out without wallet or money they had not lacked. The women
who are mentioned in Luke viii. 2, 3, had made it their business to make
good provision for the Messiah and His future ministers.
Why not, then, continue this mode of life? They would surely find a
sufficient number of faithful souls who would join them in directing their
hopes towards a second coming of the Messiah, and while awaiting the
future glory, would share their possessions with them. So they stole the
body of Jesus and hid it, and proclaimed to all the world that He would
soon return. They prudently waited, however, for fifty days before making
this announcement, in order that the body, if it should be found, might be
unrecognisable.
What was much in their favour was the complete disorganisation of the
Jewish state. Had there been an efficient police administration the
disciples would not have been able to plan this fraud and organise their
communistic fellowship. But, as it was, the new society was not even
subjected to any annoyance in consequence of the remarkable death of a
married couple who were buried from the apostles’ house, and the
brotherhood was even allowed to confiscate their property to its own uses.
It appears, then, that the hope of the Parousia was the fundamental thing
in primitive Christianity, which was a product of that hope much more than
of the teaching of Jesus. Accordingly, the main problem of primitive
dogmatics was the delay of the Parousia. Already in Paul’s time the
problem was pressing, and he had to set to work in 2 Thessalonians to
discover all possible and impossible reasons why the Second Coming should
be delayed. Reimarus mercilessly exposes the position of the apostle, who
was obliged to fob people off somehow or other. The author of 2 Peter has
a much clearer notion of what he would be at, and undertakes to restore
the confidence of Christendom once for all with the sophism of the
thousand years which are in the sight of God as one day, ignoring the fact
that in the promise the reckoning was by man’s years, not by God’s.
“Nevertheless it served the turn of the Apostles so well with those simple
early Christians, that after the first believers had been bemused with it,
and the period originally fixed had elapsed, the Christians of later
generations, including Fathers of the Church, could continue ever after to
feed themselves with empty hopes.” The saying of Christ about the
generation which should not die out before His return clearly fixes this
event at no very distant date. But since Jesus has not yet appeared upon
the clouds of heaven “these words must be strained into meaning, not that
generation, but the Jewish people. Thus by exegetical art they are saved
for ever, for the Jewish race will never die out.”
In general, however, “the theologians of the present day skim lightly over
the eschatological material in the Gospels because it does not chime in
with their views, and assign to the coming of Christ upon the clouds quite
a different purpose from that which it bears in the teaching of Christ and
His apostles.” Inasmuch as the non‐fulfilment of its eschatology is not
admitted, our Christianity rests upon a fraud. In view of this fact, what
is the evidential value of any miracle, even if it could be held to be
authentic? “No miracle would prove that two and two make five, or that a
circle has four angles; and no miracles, however numerous, could remove a
contradiction which lies on the surface of the teachings and records of
Christianity.” Nor is there any weight in the appeal to the fulfilment of
prophecy, for the cases in which Matthew countersigns it with the words
“that the Scripture might be fulfilled” are all artificial and unreal; and
for many incidents the stage was set by Jesus, or His disciples, or the
Evangelists, with the deliberate purpose of presenting to the people a
scene from the fulfilment of prophecy.
The sole argument which could save the credit of Christianity would be a
proof that the Parousia had really taken place at the time for which it
was announced; and obviously no such proof can be produced.
Such is Reimarus’ reconstruction of the history. We can well understand
that his work must have given offence when it appeared, for it is a
polemic, not an objective historical study. But we have no right simply to
dismiss it in a word, as a Deistic production, as Otto Schmiedel, for
example, does;(18) it is time that Reimarus came to his own, and that we
should recognise a historical performance of no mean order in this piece
of Deistic polemics. His work is perhaps the most splendid achievement in
the whole course of the historical investigation of the life of Jesus, for
he was the first to grasp the fact that the world of thought in which
Jesus moved was essentially eschatological. There is some justification
for the animosity which flames up in his writing. This historical truth
had taken possession of his mind with such overwhelming force that he
could no longer understand his contemporaries, and could not away with
their profession that their beliefs were, as they professed to be,
directly derived from the preaching of Jesus.
What added to the offence was that he saw the eschatology in a wrong
perspective. He held that the Messianic ideal which dominated the
preaching of Jesus was that of the political ruler, the son of David. All
his other mistakes are the consequence of this fundamental error. It was,
of course, a mere makeshift hypothesis to derive the beginnings of
Christianity from an imposture. Historical science was not at that time
sufficiently advanced to lead even the man who had divined the
fundamentally eschatological character of the preaching of Jesus onward to
the historical solution of the problem; it needed more than a hundred and
twenty years to fill in the chasm which Reimarus had been forced to bridge
with that makeshift hypothesis of his.
In the light of the clear perception of the elements of the problem which
Reimarus had attained, the whole movement of theology, down to Johannes
Weiss, appears retrograde. In all its work the thesis is ignored or
obscured that Jesus, as a historical personality, is to be regarded, not
as the founder of a new religion, but as the final product of the
eschatological and apocalyptic thought of Late Judaism. Every sentence of
Johannes Weiss’s _Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes_ (1892) is a
vindication, a rehabilitation, of Reimarus as a historical thinker.
Even so the traveller on the plain sees from afar the distant range of
mountains. Then he loses sight of them again. His way winds slowly upwards
through the valleys, drawing ever nearer to the peaks, until at last, at a
turn of the path, they stand before him, not in the shapes which they had
seemed to take from the distant plain, but in their actual forms. Reimarus
was the first, after eighteen centuries of misconception, to have an
inkling of what eschatology really was. Then theology lost sight of it
again, and it was not until after the lapse of more than a hundred years
that it came in view of eschatology once more, now in its true form, so
far as that can be historically determined, and only after it had been led
astray, almost to the last, in all its historical researches by the sole
mistake of Reimarus—the assumption that the eschatology was earthly and
political in character. Thus theology shared at least the error of the man
whom it knew only as a Deist, not as an historian, and whose true
greatness was not recognised even by Strauss, though he raised a literary
monument to him.
The solution offered by Reimarus may be wrong; the data of observation
from which he starts out are, beyond question, right, because the primary
datum of all is genuinely historical. He recognised that two systems of
Messianic expectation were present side by side in Late Judaism. He
endeavoured to bring them into mutual relations in order to represent the
actual movement of the history. In so doing he made the mistake of placing
them in consecutive order, ascribing to Jesus the political Son‐of‐David
conception, and to the Apostles, after His death, the apocalyptic system
based on Daniel, instead of superimposing one upon the other in such a way
that the Messianic King might coincide with the Son of Man, and the
ancient prophetic conception might be inscribed within the circumference
of the Daniel‐descended apocalyptic, and raised along with it to the
supersensuous plane. But what matters the mistake in comparison with the
fact that the problem was really grasped?
Reimarus felt that the absence in the preaching of Jesus of any definition
of the principal term (the Kingdom of God), in conjunction with the great
and rapid success of His preaching constituted a problem, and he
formulated the conception that Jesus was not a religious founder and
teacher, but purely a preacher.
He brought the Synoptic and Johannine narratives into harmony by
practically leaving the latter out of account. The attitude of Jesus
towards the law, and the process by which the disciples came to take up a
freer attitude, was grasped and explained by him so accurately that modern
historical science does not need to add a word, but would be well pleased
if at least half the theologians of the present day had got as far.
Further, he recognised that primitive Christianity was not something which
grew, so to speak, out of the teaching of Jesus, but that it came into
being as a new creation, in consequence of events and circumstances which
added something to that preaching which it did not previously contain; and
that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in the historical sense of these
terms, were not instituted by Jesus, but created by the early Church on
the basis of certain historical assumptions.
Again, Reimarus felt that the fact that the “event of Easter” was first
proclaimed at Pentecost constituted a problem, and he sought a solution
for it. He recognised, further, that the solution of the problem of the
life of Jesus calls for a combination of the methods of historical and
literary criticism. He felt that merely to emphasise the part played by
eschatology would not suffice, but that it was necessary to assume a
creative element in the tradition, to which he ascribed the miracles, the
stories which turn on the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy, the
universalistic traits and the predictions of the passion and the
resurrection. Like Wrede, too, he feels that the prescription of silence
in the case of miracles of healing and of certain communications to the
disciples constitutes a problem which demands solution.
Still more remarkable is his eye for exegetical detail. He has an
unfailing instinct for pregnant passages like Matt. x. 23, xvi. 28, which
are crucial for the interpretation of large masses of the history. The
fact is there are some who are historians by the grace of God, who from
their mother’s womb have an instinctive feeling for the real. They follow
through all the intricacy and confusion of reported fact the pathway of
reality, like a stream which, despite the rocks that encumber its course
and the windings of its valley, finds its way inevitably to the sea. No
erudition can supply the place of this historical instinct, but erudition
sometimes serves a useful purpose, inasmuch as it produces in its
possessors the pleasing belief that they are historians, and thus secures
their services for the cause of history. In truth they are at best merely
doing the preliminary spade‐work of history, collecting for a future
historian the dry bones of fact, from which, with the aid of his natural
gift, he can recall the past to life. More often, however, the way in
which erudition seeks to serve history is by suppressing historical
discoveries as long as possible, and leading out into the field to oppose
the one true view an army of possibilities. By arraying these in support
of one another it finally imagines that it has created out of
possibilities a living reality.
This obstructive erudition is the special prerogative of theology, in
which, even at the present day, a truly marvellous scholarship often
serves only to blind the eyes to elementary truths, and to cause the
artificial to be preferred to the natural. And this happens not only with
those who deliberately shut their minds against new impressions, but also
with those whose purpose is to go forward, and to whom their
contemporaries look up as leaders. It was a typical illustration of this
fact when Semler rose up and slew Reimarus in the name of scientific
theology.(19)
Reimarus had discredited progressive theology. Students—so Semler tells us
in his preface—became unsettled and sought other callings. The great Halle
theologian—born in 1725—the pioneer of the historical view of the Canon,
the precursor of Baur in the reconstruction of primitive Christianity, was
urged to do away with the offence. As Origen of yore with Celsus, so
Semler takes Reimarus sentence by sentence, in such a way that if his work
were lost it could be recovered from the refutation. The fact was that
Semler had nothing in the nature of a complete or well‐articulated
argument to oppose to him; therefore he inaugurated in his reply the “Yes,
but” theology, which thereafter, for more than three generations, while it
took, itself, the most various modifications, imagined that it had finally
got rid of Reimarus and his discovery.
Reimarus—so ran the watchword of the guerrilla warfare which Semler waged
against him—cannot be right, for he is one‐sided. Jesus and His disciples
employed two methods of teaching: one sensuous, pictorial, drawn from the
sphere of Jewish ideas, by which they adapted their meaning to the
understanding of the multitude, and endeavoured to raise them to a higher
way of thinking; and alongside of that a purely spiritual teaching which
was independent of that kind of imagery. Both methods of teaching
continued to be used side by side, because there were always contemporary
representatives of the two degrees of capability and the two kinds of
temperament. “This is historically so certain that the Fragmentist’s
attack must inevitably be defeated at this point, because he takes account
only of the sensuous representation.” But his attack was not defeated.
What happened was that, owing to the respect in which Semler was held, and
the absolute incapacity of contemporary theology to overtake the long
stride forward made by Reimarus, his work was neglected, and the stimulus
which it was capable of imparting failed to take effect. He had no
predecessors; neither had he any disciples. His work is one of those
supremely great works which pass and leave no trace, because they are
before their time; to which later generations pay a just tribute of
admiration, but owe no gratitude. Indeed it would be truer to say that
Reimarus hung a mill‐stone about the neck of the rising theological
science of his time. He avenged himself on Semler by shaking his faith in
historical theology and even in the freedom of science in general. By the
end of the eighth decade of the century the Halle professor was beginning
to retrace his steps, was becoming more and more disloyal to the cause
which he had formerly served; and he finally went so far as to give his
approval to Wöllner’s edict for the regulation of religion (1788). His
friends attributed this change of front to senility—he died 1791.
Thus the magnificent overture in which are announced all the _motifs_ of
the future historical treatment of the life of Jesus breaks off with a
sudden discord, remains isolated and incomplete, and leads to nothing
further.
III. THE LIVES OF JESUS OF THE EARLIER RATIONALISM
_Johann Jakob Hess._ Geschichte der drei letzten Lebensjahre Jesu.
(History of the Last Three Years of the Life of Jesus.) 3 vols.,
1400 pp. Leipzig‐Zurich, 1768‐1772; 3rd ed., 1774 ff.; 7th ed.,
1823 ff.
_Franz Volkmar Reinhard._ Versuch über den Plan, welchen der
Stifter der christlichen Religion zum Besten der Menschheit
entwarf. (Essay upon the Plan which the Founder of the Christian
Religion adopted for the Benefit of Mankind.) 500 pp. 1781; 4th
ed., 1798; 5th ed., 1830. Our account is based on the 4th ed. The
5th contains supplementary matter by Heubner.
_Ernst August Opitz._ Preacher at Zscheppelin. Geschichte und
Characterzüge Jesu. (History of Jesus, with a Delineation of His
Character.) Jena and Leipzig, 1812. 488 pp.
_Johann Adolph Jakobi._ Superintendent at Waltershausen. Die
Geschichte Jesu für denkende und gemütvolle Leser, 1816. (The
History of Jesus for thoughtful and sympathetic readers.) A second
volume, containing the history of the apostolic age, followed in
1818.
_Johann Gottfried Herder._ Vom Erlöser der Menschen. Nach unsern
drei ersten Evangelien. (The Redeemer of men, as portrayed in our
first three Gospels.) 1796. Von Gottes Sohn, der Welt Heiland.
Nach Johannes Evangelium. (The Son of God, the Saviour of the
World, as portrayed by John’s Gospel.) Accompanied by a rule for
the harmonisation of our Gospels on the basis of their origin and
order. Riga, published by Hartknoch, 1797. See Herder’s complete
works, ed. Suphan, vol. xix.
That thorough‐going theological rationalism which accepts only so much of
religion as can justify itself at the bar of reason, and which conceives
and represents the origin of religion in accordance with this principle,
was preceded by a rationalism less complete, as yet not wholly dissociated
from a simple‐minded supernaturalism. Its point of view is one at which it
is almost impossible for the modern man to place himself. Here, in a
single consciousness, orthodoxy and rationalism lie stratified in
successive layers. Here, to change the metaphor, rationalism surrounds
religion without touching it, and, like a lake surrounding some ancient
castle, mirrors its image with curious refractions.
This half‐developed rationalism was conscious of an impulse—it is the
first time in the history of theology that this impulse manifests
itself—to write the Life of Jesus; at first without any suspicion whither
this undertaking would lead it. No rude hands were to be laid upon the
doctrinal conception of Jesus; at least these writers had no intention of
laying hands upon it. Their purpose was simply to gain a clearer view of
the course of our Lord’s earthly and human life. The theologians who
undertook this task thought of themselves as merely writing an historical
supplement to the life of the God‐Man Jesus. These “Lives” are, therefore,
composed according to the prescription of the “good old gentleman” who in
1829 advised the young Hase to treat first of the divine, and then of the
human side of the life of Jesus.
The battle about miracle had not yet begun. But miracle no longer plays a
part of any importance; it is a firmly established principle that the
teaching of Jesus, and religion in general, hold their place solely in
virtue of their inner reasonableness, not by the support of outward
evidence.
The only thing that is really rationalistic in these older works is the
treatment of the teaching of Jesus. Even those that retain the largest
share of supernaturalism are as completely undogmatic as the more advanced
in their reproduction of the discourses of the Great Teacher. All of them
make it a principle to lose no opportunity of reducing the number of
miracles; where they can explain a miracle by natural causes, they do not
hesitate for a moment. But the deliberate rejection of all miracles, the
elimination of everything supernatural which intrudes itself into the life
of Jesus, is still to seek. That principle was first consistently carried
through by Paulus. With these earlier writers it depends on the degree of
enlightenment of the individual whether the irreducible minimum of the
supernatural is larger or smaller.
Moreover, the period of this older rationalism, like every period when
human thought has been strong and vigorous, is wholly unhistorical. What
it is looking for is not the past, but itself in the past. For it, the
problem of the life of Jesus is solved the moment it succeeds in bringing
Jesus near to its own time, in portraying Him as the great teacher of
virtue, and showing that His teaching is identical with the intellectual
truth which rationalism deifies.
The temporal limits of this half‐and‐half rationalism are difficult to
define. For the historical study of the life of Jesus the first landmark
which it offers is the work of Hess, which appeared in 1768. But it held
its ground for a long time side by side with rationalism proper, which
failed to drive it from the field. A seventh edition of Hess’s Life of
Jesus appeared as late as 1823; while a fifth edition of Reinhard’s work
saw the light in 1830. And when Strauss struck the death‐blow of out‐and‐
out rationalism, the half‐and‐half rationalism did not perish with it, but
allied itself with the neo‐supernaturalism which Strauss’s treatment of
the life of Jesus had called into being; and it still prolongs an obscure
existence in a certain section of conservative literature, though it has
lost its best characteristics, its simple‐mindedness and honesty.
These older rationalistic Lives of Jesus are, from the aesthetic point of
view, among the least pleasing of all theological productions. The
sentimentality of the portraiture is boundless. Boundless, also, and still
more objectionable, is the want of respect for the language of Jesus. He
must speak in a rational and modern fashion, and accordingly all His
utterances are reproduced in a style of the most polite modernity. None of
the speeches are allowed to stand as they were spoken; they are taken to
pieces, paraphrased, and expanded, and sometimes, with the view of making
them really lively, they are recast in the mould of a freely invented
dialogue. In all these Lives of Jesus, not a single one of His sayings
retains its authentic form.
And yet we must not be unjust to these writers. What they aimed at was to
bring Jesus near to their own time, and in so doing they became the
pioneers of the historical study of His life. The defects of their work in
regard to aesthetic feeling and historical grasp are outweighed by the
attractiveness of the purposeful, unprejudiced thinking which here
awakens, stretches itself, and begins to move with freedom.
Johann Jakob Hess was born in 1741 and died in 1828. After working as a
curate for seventeen years he became one of the assistant clergy at the
Frauminster at Zurich, and later “Antistes,” president, of the cantonal
synod. In this capacity he guided the destinies of the Church in Zurich
safely through the troublous times of the Revolution. He was not a deep
thinker, but was well read and not without ability. As a man, he did
splendid work.
His Life of Jesus still keeps largely to the lines of a paraphrase of the
Gospels; indeed, he calls it a paraphrasing history. It is based upon a
harmonizing combination of the four Gospels. The matter of the Synoptic
narratives is, as in all the Lives of Jesus prior to Strauss—with the sole
exception of Herder’s—fitted more or less arbitrarily into the intervals
between the Passovers in the fourth Gospel.
In regard to miracles, he admits that these are a stumbling‐block. But
they are essential to the Gospel narrative and to revelation; had Jesus
been only a moral teacher and not the Son of God they would not have been
necessary. We must be careful, however, not to prize miracles for their
own sake, but to look primarily to their ethical teaching. It was, he
remarks, the mistake of the Jews to regard all the acts of Jesus solely
from the point of view of their strange and miraculous character, and to
forget their moral teaching; whereas we, from distaste for miracle as
such, run the risk of excluding from the Gospel history events which are
bound up with the Gospel revelation.
Above all, we must retain the supernatural birth and the bodily
resurrection, because on the former depends the sinlessness of Jesus, on
the latter the certainty of the general resurrection of the dead. The
temptation of Jesus in the wilderness was a stratagem of Satan by which he
hoped to discover “whether Jesus of Nazareth was really so extraordinary a
person that he would have cause to fear Him.” The resurrection of Lazarus
is authentic.
But the Gospel narrative is rationalised whenever it can be done. It was
not the demons, but the Gadarene demoniacs themselves, who rushed among
the swine. Alarmed by their fury the whole herd plunged over the precipice
into the lake and were drowned; while by this accommodation to the fixed
idea of the demoniacs, Jesus effected their cure. Perhaps, too, Hess
conjectures, the Lord desired to test the Gadarenes, and to see whether
they would attach greater importance to the good deed done to two of their
number than to the loss of their swine. This explanation, reinforced by
its moral, held its ground in theology for some sixty years and passed
over into a round dozen Lives of Jesus.
This plan of “presenting each occurrence in such a way that what is
valuable and instructive in it immediately strikes the eye” is followed
out by Hess so faithfully that all clearness of impression is destroyed.
The parables are barely recognisable, swathed, as they are, in the mummy‐
wrappings of his paraphrase; and in most cases their meaning is completely
travestied by the ethical or historical allusions which he finds in them.
The parable of the pounds is explained as referring to a man who went,
like Archelaus, to Rome to obtain the kingship, while his subjects
intrigued behind his back.
Of the peculiar beauty of the speech of Jesus not a trace remains. The
parable of the Sower, for instance, begins: “A countryman went to sow his
field, which lay beside a country‐road, and was here and there rather
rocky, and in some places weedy, but in general was well cultivated, and
had a good sort of soil.” The beatitude upon the mourners appears in the
following guise: “Happy are they who amid the adversities of the present
make the best of things and submit themselves with patience; for such men,
if they do not see better times here, shall certainly elsewhere receive
comfort and consolation.” The question addressed by the Pharisees to John
the Baptist, and his answer, are given dialogue‐wise, in fustian of this
kind:—_The Pharisees_: “We are directed to enquire of you, in the name of
our president, who you profess to be? As people are at present expecting
the Messiah, and seem not indisposed to accept you in that capacity, we
are the more anxious that you should declare yourself with regard to your
vocation and person.” John: “The conclusion might have been drawn from my
discourses that I was not the Messiah. Why should people attribute such
lofty pretensions to me?” etc. In order to give the Gospels the true
literary flavour, a characterisation is tacked on to each of the persons
of the narrative. In the case of the disciples, for instance, this runs:
“They had sound common sense, but very limited insight; the capacity to
receive teaching, but an incapacity for reflective thought; a knowledge of
their own weakness, but a difficulty in getting rid of old prejudices;
sensibility to right feeling, but weakness in following out a pre‐
determined moral plan.”
The simplest occurrences give occasion for sentimental portraiture. The
saying “Except ye become as little children” is introduced in the
following fashion: “Jesus called a boy who was standing near. The boy
came. Jesus took his hand and told him to stand beside Him, nearer than
any of His disciples, so that he had the foremost place among them. Then
Jesus threw His arm round the boy and pressed him tenderly to His breast.
The disciples looked on in astonishment, wondering what this meant. Then
He explained to them,” etc. In these expansions Hess does not always
escape the ludicrous. The saying of Jesus in John x. 9, “I am the door,”
takes on the following form: “No one, whether he be sheep or shepherd, can
come into the fold (if, that is to say, he follows the right way) except
in so far as he knows me and is admitted by me, and included among the
flock.”
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Reinhard’s work is on a distinctly higher level. The author was born in
1753. In 1792, after he had worked for fourteen years as Docent in
Wittenberg, he was appointed Senior Court Chaplain at Dresden. He died in
1812.
“I am, as you know, a very prosaic person,” writes Reinhard to a friend,
and in these words he has given an admirable characterisation of himself.
The writers who chiefly appeal to him are the ancient moralists; he
acknowledges that he has learned more from them than from a “collegium
homileticum.” In his celebrated “System of Christian Ethics” (5 vols.,
1788‐1815) he makes copious use of them. His sermons—they fill thirty‐five
volumes, and in their day were regarded as models—show some power and
depth of thought, but are all cast in the same mould. He seems to have
been haunted by a fear that it might some time befall him to admit into
his mind a thought which was mystical or visionary, not justifiable by the
laws of logic and the canons of the critical reason. With all his
philosophising and rationalising, however, certain pillars of the
supernaturalistic view of history remain for him immovable.
At first sight one might be inclined to suppose that he frankly shared the
belief in miracle. He mentions the raising of the widow’s son, and of
Lazarus, and accepts as an authentic saying the command of the risen Jesus
to baptize all nations. But if we look more closely, we find that he
deliberately brings very few miracles into his narrative, and the
definition by which he disintegrates the conception of miracle from within
leaves no doubt as to his own position. What he says is this: “All that
which we call miraculous and supernatural is to be understood as only
relatively so, and implies nothing further than an obvious exception to
what can be brought about by natural causes, so far as we know them and
have experience of their capacity. A cautious thinker will not venture in
any single instance to pronounce an event to be so extraordinary that God
could not have brought it about by the use of secondary causes, but must
have intervened directly.”
The case stands similarly with regard to the divinity of Christ. Reinhard
assumes it, but his “Life” is not directed to prove it; it leads only to
the conclusion that the Founder of Christianity is to be regarded as a
wonderful “divine” teacher. In order to prove His uniqueness, Reinhard has
to show that His plan for the welfare of mankind was something
incomparably higher than anything which hero or sage has ever striven for.
Reinhard makes the first attempt to give an account of the teaching of
Jesus which should be historical in the sense that all dogmatic
considerations should be excluded. “Above all things, let us collect and
examine the indications which we find in the writings of His companions
regarding the designs which He had in view.”
The plan of Jesus shows its greatness above all in its universality.
Reinhard is well aware of the difficulty raised in this connexion by those
sayings which assert the prerogative of Israel, and he discusses them at
length. He finds the solution in the assumption that Jesus in His own
lifetime naturally confined Himself to working among His own people, and
was content to indicate the future universal development of His plan.
With the intention “of introducing a universal change, tending to the
benefit of the whole human race,” Jesus attaches His teaching to the
Jewish eschatology. It is only the form of His teaching, however, which is
affected by this, since He gives an entirely different significance to the
terms Kingdom of Heaven and Kingdom of God, referring them to a universal
ethical reorganisation of mankind. But His plan was entirely independent
of politics. He never based His claims upon His Davidic descent. This was,
indeed, the reason why He held aloof from His family. Even the entry into
Jerusalem had no Messianic significance. His plan was so entirely non‐
political that He would, on the contrary, have welcomed the severance of
all connexion between the state and religion, in order to avoid the risk
of a conflict between these two powers. Reinhard explains the voluntary
death of Jesus as due to this endeavour. “He quitted the stage of the
world by so early and shameful a death because He wished to destroy at
once and for ever the mistaken impression that He was aiming at the
foundation of an earthly kingdom, and to turn the thoughts, wishes, and
efforts of His disciples and companions into another channel.”
In order to make the Kingdom of God a practical reality, it was necessary
for Him to dissociate it from all the forces of this world, and to bring
morality and religion into the closest connexion. “The law of love was the
indissoluble bond by which Jesus for ever united morality with religion.”
“Moral instruction was the principal content and the very essence of all
His discourses.” His efforts “were directed to the establishment of a
purely ethical organisation.”
It was important, therefore, to overthrow superstition and to bring
religion within the domain of reason. First of all the priesthood must be
deprived for ever of its influence. Then an improvement of the social
condition of mankind must be introduced, since the level of morality
depends upon social conditions. Jesus was a social reformer. Through the
attainment of “the highest perfection of which Society is capable,
universal peace” was “gradually to be brought about.”
But the point of primary importance for Him was the alliance of religion
with reason. Reason was to maintain its freedom by the aid of religion,
and religion was not to be withdrawn from the critical judgment of reason:
all things were to be tested, and only the best retained.
“From these data it is easy to determine the characteristics of a religion
which is to be the religion of all mankind: it must be ethical,
intelligible, and spiritual.”
After the plan of Jesus has been expounded on these lines, Reinhard shows,
in the second part of his work, that, prior to Jesus, no great man of
antiquity had devised a plan of beneficence of a scope commensurate with
the whole human race. In the third part the conclusion is drawn that Jesus
is the uniquely divine Teacher.
But before the author can venture to draw this conclusion, he feels it
necessary first to show that the plan of Jesus was no chimera. If we were
obliged to admit its impracticability Jesus would have to be ranked with
the visionaries and enthusiasts; and these, however noble and virtuous,
can only injure the cause of rational religion. “Visionary enthusiasm and
enlightened reason—who that knows anything of the human mind can conceive
these two as united in a single soul?” But Jesus was no visionary
enthusiast. “With what calmness, self‐mastery, and cool determination does
He think out and pursue His divine purpose?” By the truths which He
revealed and declared to be divine communications He did not desire to put
pressure upon the human mind, but only to guide it. “It would be
impossible to show a more conscientious respect and a more delicate
consideration for the rights of human reason than is shown by Jesus. He
will conquer only by convincing.” “He is willing to bear with
contradiction, and condescends to meet the most irrational objections and
the most ill‐natured misrepresentations with the most incredible
patience.”
It was well for Reinhard that he had no suspicion how full of enthusiasm
Jesus was, and how He trod reason under His feet!
But what kind of relation was there between this rational religion taught
by Jesus and the Christian theology which Reinhard accepted? How does he
harmonise the symbolical view of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper which he
here expounds with ecclesiastical doctrine? How does he pass from the
conception of the divine teacher to that of the Son of God?
This is a question which he does not feel himself obliged to answer. For
him the one circle of thought revolves freely within the other, but they
never come into contact with each other.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
So far as concerns the presentation of the teaching, the Life of Jesus by
Opitz follows the same lines as that of Reinhard. It is disfigured,
however, by a number of lapses of taste, and by a crass supernaturalism in
the description of the miracles and experiences of the Great Teacher.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Jakobi writes “for thoughtful and sympathetic readers.” He recognises that
much of the miraculous is a later addition to the facts, but he has a
rooted distrust of thoroughgoing rationalism, “whose would‐be helpful
explanations are often stranger than the miracles themselves.” A certain
amount of miracle must be maintained, but not for the purpose of founding
belief upon it: “the miracles were not intended to authenticate the
teaching of Jesus, but to surround His life with a guard of honour.”(20)
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Whether Herder, in his two Lives of Jesus, is to be classed with the older
rationalists is a question to which the answer must be “Yes, and No,” as
in the case of every attempt to classify those men of lonely greatness who
stand apart from their contemporaries, but who nevertheless are not in all
points in advance of them.
Properly speaking, he has really nothing to do with the rationalists,
since he is distinguished from them by the depth of his insight and his
power of artistic apprehension, and he is far from sharing their lack of
taste. Further, his horizon embraces problems of which rationalism, even
in its developed form, never came in sight. He recognises that all
attempts to harmonise the Synoptists with John are unavailing; a
conclusion which he had avowed earlier in his “Letters referring to the
Study of Theology.”(21) He grasps this incompatibility, it is true, rather
by the aid of poetic, than of critical insight. “Since they cannot be
united,” he writes in his “Life of Jesus according to John,” “they must be
left standing independently, each evangelist with his own special merit.
Man, Ox, Lion, and Eagle, they advance together, supporting the throne of
glory, but they refuse to coalesce into a single form, to unite into a
Diatessaron.” But to him belongs the honour of being the first and the
only scholar, prior to Strauss, to recognise that the life of Jesus can be
construed either according to the Synoptists, or according to John, but
that a Life of Jesus based on the four Gospels is a monstrosity. In view
of this intuitive historical grasp, it is not surprising that the
commentaries of the theologians were an abomination to him.
The fourth Gospel is, in his view, not a primitive historical source, but
a protest against the narrowness of the “Palestinian Gospels.” It gives
free play, as the circumstances of the time demanded, to Greek ideas.
“There was need, in addition to those earlier, purely historical Gospels,
of a Gospel at once theological and historical, like that of John,” in
which Jesus should be presented, not as the Jewish Messiah, “but as the
Saviour of the World.”
The additions and omissions of this Gospel are alike skilfully planned. It
retains only those miracles which are symbols of a continuous permanent
miracle, through which the Saviour of the World works constantly,
unintermittently, among men. The Johannine miracles are not there for
their own sakes. The cures of demoniacs are not even represented among
them. These had no interest for the Graeco‐Roman world, and the Evangelist
was unwilling “that this Palestinian superstition should become a
permanent feature of Christianity, to be a reproach of scoffers or a
belief of the foolish.” His recording of the raising of Lazarus is, in
spite of the silence of the Synoptists, easily explicable. The latter
could not yet tell the story “without exposing a family which was still
living near Jerusalem to the fury of that hatred which had sworn with an
oath to put Lazarus to death.” John, however, could recount it without
scruple, “for by this time Jerusalem was probably in ruins, and the
hospitable family of Bethany were perhaps already with their Friend in the
other world.” This most naïve of explanations is reproduced in a whole
series of Lives of Jesus.
In dealing with the Synoptists, Herder grasps the problem with the same
intuitive insight. Mark is no epitomist, but the creator of the archetype
of the Synoptic representation. “The Gospel of Mark is not an epitome; it
is an original Gospel. What the others have, and he has not, has been
added by them, not omitted by him. Consequently Mark is a witness to an
original, shorter Gospel‐scheme, to which the additional matter of the
others ought properly to be regarded as a supplement.”
Mark is the “unornamented central column, or plain foundation stone, on
which the others rest.” The birth‐stories of Matthew and Luke are “a new
growth to meet new needs.” The different tendencies, also, point to a
later period. Mark is still comparatively friendly towards the Jews,
because Christianity had not yet separated itself from Judaism. Matthew is
more hostile towards them because his Gospel was written at a time when
Christians had given up the hope of maintaining amicable relations with
the Jews and were groaning under the pressure of persecution. It is for
that reason that the Jesus of the Matthaean discourses lays so much stress
upon His second coming, and presupposes the rejection of the Jewish nation
as something already in being, a sign of the approaching end.
Pure history, however, is as little to be looked for in the first three
Gospels as in the fourth. They are the sacred epic of Jesus the Messiah,
and model the history of their hero upon the prophetic words of the Old
Testament. In this view, also, Herder is a precursor of Strauss.
In essence, however, Herder represents a protest of art against theology.
The Gospels, if we are to find the life of Jesus in them, must be read,
not with pedantic learning, but with taste. From this point of view,
miracles cease to offend. Neither Old Testament prophecies, nor
predictions of Jesus, nor miracles, can be adduced as evidence for the
Gospel; the Gospel is its own evidence. The miracles stand outside the
possibility of proof, and belong to mere “Church belief,” which ought to
lose itself more and more in the pure Gospel. Yet miracles, in a limited
sense, are to be accepted on the ground of the historic evidence. To
refuse to admit this is to be like the Indian king who denied the
existence of ice because he had never seen anything like it. Jesus, in
order to help His miracle‐loving age, reconciled Himself to the necessity
of performing miracles. But, in any case, the reality of a miracle is of
small moment in comparison with its symbolic value.
In this, therefore, Herder, though in his grasp of many problems he was
more than a generation in advance of his time, belongs to the primitive
rationalists. He allows the supernatural to intrude into the events of the
life of Jesus, and does not feel that the adoption of the historical
standpoint involves the necessity of doing away with miracle. He
contributed much to the clearing up of ideas, but by evading the question
of miracle he slurred over a difficulty which needed to be faced and
solved before it should be possible to entertain the hope of forming a
really historical conception of the life of Jesus. In reading Herder one
is apt to fancy that it would be possible to pass straight on to Strauss.
In reality, it was necessary that a very prosaic spirit, Paulus, should
intervene, and should attack the question of miracle from a purely
historical standpoint, before Strauss could give expression to the ideas
of Herder in an effectual way, _i.e._ in such a way as to produce offence.
The fact is that in theology the most revolutionary ideas are swallowed
quite readily so long as they smooth their passage by a few small
concessions. It is only when a spicule of bone stands out obstinately and
causes choking that theology begins to take note of dangerous ideas.
Strauss is Herder with just that little bone sticking out—the absolute
denial of miracle on historical grounds. That is to say, Strauss is a
Herder who has behind him the uncompromising rationalism of Paulus.
IV. THE EARLIEST FICTITIOUS LIVES OF JESUS
_Karl Friedrich Bahrdt._ Briefe über die Bibel im Volkston. Eine
Wochenschrift von einem Prediger auf dem Lande. (Popular Letters
about the Bible. A weekly paper by a country clergyman.) J. Fr.
Dost, Halle, 1782. 816 pp.
Ausführung des Plans und Zwecks Jesu. In Briefen an Wahrheit
suchende Leser. (An Explanation of the Plans and Aims of Jesus. In
letters addressed to readers who seek the truth.) 11 vols.,
embracing 3000 pp. August Mylius, Berlin, 1784‐1792. This work is
a sequel to the Popular Letters about the Bible.
Die sämtlichen Reden Jesu aus den Evangelisten ausgezogen. (The
Whole of the Discourses of Jesus, extracted from the Gospels.)
Berlin, 1786.
_Karl Heinrich Venturini._ Natürliche Geschichte des grossen
Propheten von Nazareth. (A Non‐supernatural History of the Great
Prophet of Nazareth.) Bethlehem (Copenhagen), 1st ed., 1800‐1802;
2nd ed., 1806. 4 vols., embracing 2700 pp. The work appeared
anonymously. The description given below is based on the 2nd ed.,
which shows dependence, in some of the exegetical details, upon
the then recently published commentaries of Paulus.
It is strange to notice how often in the history of our subject a few
imperfectly equipped free‐lances have attacked and attempted to carry the
decisive positions before the ordered ranks of professional theology have
pushed their advance to these decisive points.
Thus, it was the fictitious “Lives” of Bahrdt and Venturini which, at the
end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, first
attempted to apply, with logical consistency, a non‐supernatural
interpretation to the miracle stories of the Gospel. Further, these
writers were the first who, instead of contenting themselves with the
simple reproduction of the successive sections of the Gospel narrative,
endeavoured to grasp the inner connexion of cause and effect in the events
and experiences of the life of Jesus. Since they found no such connexion
indicated in the Gospels, they had to supply it for themselves. The
particular form which their explanation takes—the hypothesis of a secret
society of which Jesus is the tool—is, it is true, rather a sorry
makeshift. Yet, in a sense, these Lives of Jesus, for all their colouring
of fiction, are the first which deserve the name. The rationalists, and
even Paulus, confine themselves to describing the teaching of Jesus;
Bahrdt and Venturini make a bold attempt to paint the portrait of Jesus
Himself. It is not surprising that their portraiture is at once crude and
fantastic, like the earliest attempts of art to represent the human figure
in living movement.
Karl Friedrich Bahrdt was born in 1741 at Bischofswerda. Endowed with
brilliant abilities, he made, owing to a bad upbringing and an
undisciplined sensuous nature, a miserable failure. After being first
Catechist and afterwards Professor Extraordinary of Sacred Philology at
Leipzig, he was, in 1766, requested to resign on account of scandalous
life. After various adventures, and after holding for a time a
professorship at Giessen, he received under Frederick’s minister Zedlitz
authorisation to lecture at Halle. There he lectured to nearly nine
hundred students who were attracted by his inspiring eloquence. The
government upheld him, in spite of his serious failings, with the double
motive of annoying the faculty and maintaining the freedom of learning.
After the death of Frederick the Great, Bahrdt had to resign his post, and
took to keeping an inn at a vineyard near Halle. By ridiculing Wöllner’s
edict (1788), he brought on himself a year of confinement in a fortress.
He died in disrepute, in 1792.
Bahrdt had begun as an orthodox cleric. In Halle he gave up his belief in
revelation, and endeavoured to explain religion on the ground of reason.
To this period belong the “Popular Letters about the Bible,” which were
afterwards continued in the further series, “An Explanation of the Plans
and Aims of Jesus.”
His treatment of the life of Jesus has been too severely censured. The
work is not without passages which show a real depth of feeling,
especially in the continually recurring explanations regarding the
relation of belief in miracle to true faith, in which the actual
description of the life of Jesus lies embedded. And the remarks about the
teaching of Jesus are not always commonplace. But the paraphernalia of
dialogues of portentous length make it, as a whole, formless and
inartistic. The introduction of a galaxy of imaginary characters—Haram,
Schimah, Avel, Limmah, and the like—is nothing less than bewildering.
Bahrdt finds the key to the explanation of the life of Jesus in the
appearance in the Gospel narrative of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.
They are not disciples of Jesus, but belong to the upper classes; what
rôle, then, can they have played in the life of Jesus, and how came they
to intercede on His behalf? They were Essenes. This Order had secret
members in all ranks of society, even in the Sanhedrin. It had set itself
the task of detaching the nation from its sensuous Messianic hopes and
leading it to a higher knowledge of spiritual truths. It had the most
widespread ramifications, extending to Babylon and to Egypt. In order to
deliver the people from the limitations of the national faith, which could
only lead to disturbance and insurrection, they must find a Messiah who
would destroy these false Messianic expectations. They were therefore on
the look‐out for a claimant of the Messiahship whom they could make
subservient to their aims.
Jesus came under the notice of the Order immediately after His birth. As a
child He was watched over at every step by the Brethren. At the feasts at
Jerusalem Alexandrian Jews, secret members of the Essene Order, put
themselves into communication with Him, explained to Him the falsity of
the priests, inspired Him with a horror of the bloody sacrifices of the
Temple, and made him acquainted with Socrates and Plato. This is set forth
in dialogues of a hundred pages long. At the story of the death of
Socrates, the boy bursts into a tempest of sobs which His friends are
unable to calm. He longs to emulate the martyr‐death of the great
Athenian.
On the market‐place at Nazareth a mysterious Persian gives Him two
sovereign remedies—one for affections of the eye, the other for nervous
disorders.
His father does his best for Him, teaching Him, along with His cousin
John, afterwards the Baptist, about virtue and immortality. A priest
belonging to the Essene Order, who makes their acquaintance disguised as a
shepherd, and takes part in their conversations, leads the lads deeper
into the knowledge of wisdom. At twelve years old, Jesus is already so far
advanced that He argues with the Scribes in the Temple concerning
miracles, maintaining the thesis that they are impossible.
When they feel themselves ready to appear in public the two cousins take
counsel together how they can best help the people. They agree to open the
eyes of the people regarding the tyranny and hypocrisy of the priests.
Through Haram, a prominent member of the Essene Order, Luke the physician
is introduced to Jesus and places all his science at His disposal.
In order to produce any effect they were obliged to practise accommodation
to the superstitions of the people, and introduce their wisdom to them
under the garb of folly, in the hope that, beguiled by its attractive
exterior, the people would admit into their minds the revelation of
rational truth, and after a time be able to emancipate themselves from
superstition. Jesus, therefore, sees Himself obliged to appear in the rôle
of the Messiah of popular expectation, and to make up His mind to work by
means of miracles and illusions. About this He felt the gravest scruples.
He was obliged, however, to obey the Order; and His scruples were quieted
by the reminder of the lofty end which was to be reached by these means.
At last, when it is pointed out to Him that even Moses had followed the
same plan, He submits to the necessity. The influential Order undertakes
the duty of stage‐managing the miracles, and that of maintaining His
father. On the reception of Jesus into the number of the Brethren of the
First Degree of the Order it is made known to Him that these Brethren are
bound to face death in the cause of the Order; but that the Order, on its
part, undertakes so to use the machinery and influence at its disposal
that the last extremity shall always be avoided and the Brother
mysteriously preserved from death.
Then begins the cleverly staged drama by means of which the people are to
be converted to rational religion. The members of the Order are divided
into three classes: The Baptized, The Disciples, The Chosen Ones. The
Baptized receive only the usual popular teaching; the Disciples are
admitted to further knowledge, but are not entrusted with the highest
mysteries; the Chosen Ones, who in the Gospels are also spoken of as
“Angels,” are admitted into all wisdom. As the Apostles were only members
of the Second Degree, they had not the smallest suspicion of the secret
machinery which was at work. Their part in the drama of the Life of Jesus
was that of zealous “supers.” The Gospels which they composed therefore
report, in perfect good faith, miracles which were really clever illusions
produced by the Essenes, and they depict the life of Jesus only as seen by
the populace from the outside.
It is therefore not always possible for us to discover how the events
which they record as miracles actually came about. But whether they took
place in one way or another—and as to this we can sometimes get a clue
from a hint in the text—it is certain that in all cases the process was
natural. With reference to the feeding of the five thousand, Bahrdt
remarks: “It is more reasonable here to think of a thousand ways by which
Jesus might have had sufficient supplies of bread at hand, and by the
distribution of it have shamed the disciples’ lack of courage, than to
believe in a miracle.” The explanation which he himself prefers is that
the Order had collected a great quantity of bread in a cave and this was
gradually handed out to Jesus, who stood at the concealed entrance and
took some every time the apostles were occupied in distributing the former
supply to the multitude. The walking on the sea is to be explained by
supposing that Jesus walked towards the disciples over the surface of a
great floating raft; while they, not being able to see the raft, must
needs suppose a miracle. When Peter tried to walk on the water he failed
miserably. The miracles of healing are to be attributed to the art of
Luke. He also called the attention of Jesus to remarkable cases of
apparent death, which He then took in hand, and restored the apparently
dead to their sorrowing friends. In such cases, however, the Lord never
failed expressly to inform the disciples that the persons were not really
dead. They, however, did not permit this assurance to deprive them of
their faith in the miracle which they felt they had themselves witnessed.
In teaching, Jesus had two methods: one, exoteric, simple, for the world;
the other, esoteric, mystic, for the initiate. “No attentive reader of the
Bible,” says Bahrdt, “can fail to notice that Jesus made use of two
different styles of speech. Sometimes He spoke so plainly and in such
universally intelligible language, and declared truths so simple and so
well adapted to the general comprehension of mankind that even the
simplest could follow Him. At other times he spoke so mystically, so
obscurely, and in so veiled a fashion that words and thoughts alike
baffled the understandings of ordinary people, and even by more practised
minds were not to be grasped without close reflection, so that we are told
in John vi. 60 that ‘many of His disciples, when they heard this, said,
This is an hard saying; who can hear it?’ And Jesus Himself did not deny
it, but only told them that the reason of their not understanding His
sayings lay in their prejudices, which made them interpret everything
literally and materially, and overlook the ethical meaning which underlay
His figurative language.” Most of these mystical discourses are to be
found in John, who seems to have preserved for us the greater part of the
secret teaching imparted to the initiate. The key to the understanding of
this esoteric teaching is to be found, therefore, in the prologue to
John’s Gospel, and in the sayings about the new birth. “To be born again”
is identical with the degree of perfection which was attained in the
highest class of the Brotherhood.
The members of the Order met on appointed days in caves among the hills.
When we are told in the Gospels that Jesus went alone into a mountain to
pray, this means that He repaired to one of these secret gatherings, but
the disciples, of course, knew nothing about that. The Order had its
hidden caves everywhere; in Galilee as well as in the neighbourhood of
Jerusalem.
“Only by sensuous means can sensuous ideas be overcome.” The Jewish
Messiah must die and rise again, in order that the false conceptions of
the Messiah which were cherished by the multitude might be destroyed in
the moment of their fulfilment—that is, might be spiritualised. Nicodemus,
Haram, and Luke met in a cave in order to take counsel how they might
bring about the death of Jesus in a way favourable to their plans. Luke
guaranteed that by the aid of powerful drugs which he would give Him the
Lord should be enabled to endure the utmost pain and suffering and yet
resist death for a long time. Nicodemus undertook so to work matters in
the Sanhedrin that the execution should follow immediately upon the
sentence, and the crucified remain only a short time upon the cross. At
this moment Jesus rushed into the cave. He had scarcely had time to
replace the stone which concealed the entrance, so closely had He been
pursued over the rocks by hired assassins. He Himself is firmly resolved
to die, but care must be taken that He shall not be simply assassinated,
or the whole plan fails. If He falls by the assassin’s knife, no
resurrection will be possible.
In the end, the piece is staged to perfection. Jesus provokes the
authorities by His triumphal Messianic entry. The unsuspected Essenes in
the council urge on His arrest and secure His condemnation—though Pilate
almost frustrates all their plans by acquitting Him. Jesus, by uttering a
loud cry and immediately afterwards bowing His head, shows every
appearance of a sudden death. The centurion has been bribed not to allow
any of His bones to be broken. Then comes Joseph of Ramath, as Bahrdt
prefers to call Joseph of Arimathea, and removes the body to the cave of
the Essenes, where he immediately commences measures of resuscitation. As
Luke had prepared the body of the Messiah by means of strengthening
medicines to resist the fearful ill‐usage which He had gone through—the
being dragged about and beaten and finally crucified—these efforts were
crowned with success. In the cave the most strengthening nutriment was
supplied to Him. “Since the humours of the body were in a thoroughly
healthy condition, His wounds healed very readily, and by the third day He
was able to walk, in spite of the fact that the wounds made by the nails
were still open.”
On the morning of the third day they forced away the stone which closed
the mouth of the grave. As Jesus was descending the rocky slopes the watch
awakened and took to flight in alarm. One of the Essenes appeared, in the
garb of an angel, to the women and announced to them the resurrection of
Jesus. Shortly afterwards the Lord appeared to Mary. At the sound of His
voice she recognises Him. “Thereupon Jesus tells her that He is going to
His Father (to heaven—in the mystic sense of the word—that is to say, to
the Chosen Ones in their peaceful dwellings of truth and blessedness—to
the circle of His faithful friends, among whom He continued to live,
unseen by the world, but still working for the advancement of His
purpose). He bade her tell His disciples that He was alive.”
From His place of concealment He appeared several times to His disciples.
Finally He bade them meet Him at the Mount of Olives, near Bethany, and
there took leave of them. After exhorting them, and embracing each of them
in turn, He tore Himself away from them and walked away up the mountain.
“There stood those poor men, amazed—beside themselves with sorrow—and
looked after Him as long as they could. But as He mounted higher, He
entered ever deeper into the cloud which lay upon the hill‐top, until
finally He was no longer to be seen. The cloud received Him out of their
sight.”
From the mountain He returned to the chief lodge of the Brotherhood. Only
at rare intervals did He again intervene in active life—as on the occasion
when He appeared to Paul upon the road to Damascus. But, though unseen, He
continued to direct the destinies of the community until His death.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Venturini’s “Non‐supernatural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth” is
related to Bahrdt’s work as the finished picture to the sketch.
Karl Heinrich Venturini was born at Brunswick in 1768. On the completion
of his theological studies he vainly endeavoured to secure a post as
Docent in the theological faculty at Helmstadt, or as Librarian at
Wolfenbüttel.
His life was blameless and his personal piety beyond reproach, but he was
considered to be too free in his ideas. The Duke of Brunswick was
personally well disposed towards him, but did not venture to give him a
post on the teaching staff in face of the opposition of the consistories.
He was reduced to earning a bare pittance by literary work, and finally in
1806 was thankful to accept a small living in Hordorf near Brunswick. He
then abandoned theological writing and devoted his energies to recording
the events of contemporary history, of which he published a yearly
chronicle—a proceeding which under the Napoleonic _régime_ was not always
unattended with risk, as he more than once had occasion to experience. He
continued this undertaking till 1841. In 1849 death released him from his
tasks.
Venturini’s fundamental assumption is that it was impossible, even for the
noblest spirit of mankind, to make Himself understood by the Judaism of
His time except by clothing His spiritual teaching in a sensuous garb
calculated to please the oriental imagination, “and, in general, by
bringing His higher spiritual world into such relations with the lower
sensuous world of those whom He wished to teach as was necessary to the
accomplishment of His aims.” “God’s Messenger was morally bound to perform
miracles for the Jews. These miracles had an ethical purpose, and were
especially designed to counteract the impression made by the supposed
miracles of the deceivers of the people, and thus to hasten the overthrow
of the kingdom of Satan.”
For modern medical science the miracles are not miraculous. He never
healed without medicaments and always carried His “portable medicine
chest” with Him. In the case of the Syro‐phoenician woman’s daughter, for
example, we can still detect in the narrative a hint of the actual course
of events. The mother explains the case to Jesus. After enquiring where
her dwelling was he made a sign to John, and continued to hold her in
conversation. The disciple went to the daughter and gave her a sedative,
and when the mother returned she found her child cured.
The raisings from the dead were cases of coma. The nature‐miracles were
due to a profound acquaintance with the powers of Nature and the order of
her processes. They involve fore‐knowledge rather than control.
Many miracle stories rest on obvious misunderstandings. Nothing could be
simpler than the explanation of the miracle at Cana. Jesus had brought
with Him as a wedding‐gift some jars of good wine and had put them aside
in another room. When the wine was finished and His mother became anxious,
He still allowed the guests to wait a little, as the stone vessels for
purification had not yet been filled with water. When that had been done
He ordered the servants to pour out some of his wine, but to tell no one
whence it came. When John, as an old man, wrote his Gospel, he got all
this rather mixed up—had not indeed observed it very closely at the time,
“had perhaps been the least thing merry himself,” says Venturini, and had
believed in the miracle with the rest. Perhaps, too, he had not ventured
to ask Jesus for an explanation, for he had only become His disciple a few
days before.
The members of the Essene Order had watched over the child Jesus even in
Egypt. As He grew older they took charge of His education along with that
of His cousin, John, and trained them both for their work as deliverers of
the people. Whereas the nation as a whole looked to an insurrection as the
means of its deliverance, they knew that freedom could only be achieved by
means of a spiritual renewal. Once Jesus and John met a band of
insurgents: Jesus worked on them so powerfully by His fervid speech that
they recognised the impiousness of their purpose. One of them sprang
towards Him and laid down his arms; it was Simon, who afterwards became
His disciple.
When Jesus was about thirty years old, and, owing to the deep experiences
of His inner life, had really far outgrown the aims of the Essene Order,
He entered upon His office by demanding baptism from John. Just as this
was taking place a thunderstorm broke, and a dove, frightened by the
lightning, fluttered round the head of Jesus. Both Jesus and John took
this as a sign that the hour appointed by God had come.
The temptations in the wilderness, and upon the pinnacle of the Temple,
were due to the machinations of the Pharisee Zadok, who pretended to enter
into the plans of Jesus and feigned admiration for Him in order the more
surely to entrap Him. It was Zadok, too, who stirred up opposition to Him
in the Sanhedrin.
But Jesus did not succeed in destroying the old Messianic belief with its
earthly aims. The hatred of the leading circles against Him grew, although
He avoided everything “that could offend their prejudices.” It was for
this reason that He even forbade His disciples to preach the Gospel beyond
the borders of Jewish territory. He paid the temple‐tax, also, although he
had no fixed abode. When the collector went to Peter about it, the
following dialogue took place.
_Tax‐collector_ (_drawing Peter aside_). Tell me, Simon, does the Rabbi
pay the didrachma to the Temple treasury, or should we not trouble Him
about it?
_Peter._ Why shouldn’t He pay it? Why do you ask?
_Tax‐collector._ It’s been owing from both of you since last Nisan, as our
books show. We did not like to remind your Master, out of reverence.
_Peter._ I’ll tell Him at once. He will certainly pay the tax. You need
have no fear about that.
_Tax‐collector._ That’s good. That will put everything straight, and we
shall have no trouble over our accounts. Good‐bye!
When Jesus hears of it He commands Peter to go and catch a fish, and to
take care, in removing the hook, not to tear its mouth, that it may be fit
for salting (!) In that case it will doubtless be worth a _stater_.
The time arrived when an important move must be made. In full conclave of
the Secret Society it was resolved that Jesus should go up to Jerusalem
and there publicly proclaim Himself as the Messiah. Then He was to
endeavour to disabuse the people of their earthly Messianic expectations.
The triumphal entry succeeded. The whole people hailed Him with
acclamations. But when He tried to substitute for their picture of the
Messiah one of a different character, and spoke of times of severe trial
which should come upon all, when He showed Himself but seldom in the
Temple, instead of taking His place at the head of the people, they began
to doubt Him.
Jesus was suddenly arrested and put to death. Here, then, the death is
not, as in Bahrdt, a piece of play‐acting, stage‐managed by the Secret
Society. Jesus really expected to die, and only to meet His disciples
again in the eternal life of the other world. But when He so soon gave up
the ghost, Joseph of Arimathea was moved by some vague premonition to
hasten at once to Pontius Pilate and make request for His body. He offers
the Procurator money. _Pilate_ (_sternly and emphatically_): “Dost thou
also mistake me? Am I, then, such an insatiable miser? Still, thou art a
Jew—how could this people do me justice? Know, then, that a Roman can
honour true nobility wherever he may find it. (_He sits down and writes
some words on a strip of parchment._) Give this to the captain of the
guard. Thou shall be permitted to remove the body. I ask nothing for this.
It is granted to thee freely.”
“A tender embrace from his wife rewarded the noble deed of the Roman,
while Joseph left the Praetorium, and with Nicodemus, who was impatiently
awaiting him, hastened to Golgotha.” There he received the body; he washed
it, anointed it with spices, and laid it on a bed of moss in the rock‐hewn
grave. From the blood which was still flowing from the wound in the side,
he ventured to draw a hopeful augury, and sent word to the Essene
Brethren. They had a hold close by, and promised to watch over the body.
In the first four‐and‐twenty hours no movement of life showed itself. Then
came the earthquake. In the midst of the terrible commotion a Brother, in
the white robes of the Order, was making his way to the grave by a secret
path. When he, illumined by a flash of lightning, suddenly appeared above
the grave, and at the same moment the earth shook violently, panic seized
the watch, and they fled. In the morning the Brother hears a sound from
the grave: Jesus is moving. The whole Order hastens to the spot, and Jesus
is removed to their Lodge. Two brethren remain at the grave—these were the
“angels” whom the women saw later. Jesus, in the dress of a gardener, is
afterwards recognised by Mary Magdalene. Later, He comes out at intervals
from the hiding‐place, where He is kept by the Brethren, and appears to
the disciples. After forty days He took His leave of them: His strength
was exhausted. The farewell scene gave rise to the mistaken impression of
His Ascension.
From the historical point of view these lives are not such contemptible
performances as might be supposed. There is much penetrating observation
in them. Bahrdt and Venturini are right in feeling that the connexion of
events in the life of Jesus has to be discovered; the Gospels give only a
series of occurrences, and offer no explanation why they happened just as
they did. And if, in making Jesus subservient to the plans of a secret
society, they represented Him as not acting with perfect freedom, but as
showing a certain passivity, this assumption of theirs was to be
brilliantly vindicated, a hundred years later, by the eschatological
school, which asserts the same remarkable passivity on the part of Jesus,
in that He allows His actions to be determined, not indeed by a secret
society, but by the eschatological plan of God. Bahrdt and Venturini were
the first to see that, of all Jesus’ acts, His death was most
distinctively His own, because it was by this that He purposed to found
the kingdom.
Venturini’s “Non‐supernatural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth”
may almost be said to be reissued annually down to the present day, for
all the fictitious “Lives” go back directly or indirectly to the type
which he created. It is plagiarised more freely than any other Life of
Jesus, although practically unknown by name.
V. FULLY DEVELOPED RATIONALISM—PAULUS
_Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus._ Das Leben Jesu als Grundlage
einer reinen Geschichte des Urchristentums. Heidelberg, C. F.
Winter. (The Life of Jesus as the Basis of a purely Historical
Account of Early Christianity.) 1828. 2 vols., 1192 pp.
Freut euch mit Gottesandacht, wenn es gewährt euch ist,
Dem, so kurz er war, weltumschaffenden Lebensgang
Nach Jahrhunderten fern zu folgen,
Denket, glaubet, folget des Vorbildes Spur!
(Closing words of vol. ii.)
(Rejoice with grateful devotion, if unto you ’tis permitted,
After the lapse of centuries, still to follow afar off
That Life which, short as it was, changed the course of the ages;
Think ye well, and believe; follow the path of our Pattern.)
Paulus was not the mere dry‐as‐dust rationalist that he is usually
represented to have been, but a man of very versatile abilities. His
limitation was that, like Reinhard, he had an unconquerable distrust of
anything that went outside the boundaries of logical thought. That was due
in part to the experiences of his youth. His father, a deacon in Leonberg,
half‐mystic, half‐rationalist, had secret difficulties about the doctrine
of immortality, and made his wife promise on her death‐bed that, if it
were possible, she would appear to him after her death in bodily form.
After she was dead he thought he saw her raise herself to a sitting
posture, and again sink down. From that time onwards he firmly believed
himself to be in communication with departed spirits, and he became so
dominated by this idea that in 1771 he had to be removed from his office.
His children suffered sorely from a _régime_ of compulsory spiritualism,
which pressed hardest upon Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob, born in 1761, who,
for the sake of peace, was obliged to pretend to his father that he was in
communication with his mother’s spirit.
He himself had inherited only the rationalistic side of his father’s
temperament. As a student at the Tübingen Stift (theological institute) he
formed his views on the writings of Semler and Michaelis. In 1789 he was
called to Jena as Professor of Oriental Languages, and succeeded in 1793
to the third ordinary professorship of theology. The naturalistic
interpretation of miracles which he upheld in his commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels, published in 1800‐1802, aroused the indignation of the
consistories of Meiningen and Eisenach. But their petition for his removal
from the professorship was unsuccessful, since Herder, who was president
of the consistorium, used his influence to protect him. In 1799 Paulus, as
Pro‐rector, used his influence on behalf of his colleague Fichte, who was
attacked on the ground of atheism; but in vain, owing to the passionate
conduct of the accused.
With Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland, Paulus and his wife, a lively lady of
some literary talents, stood in the most friendly relations.
When the Jena circle began to break up, he accepted, in 1803, an
invitation from the Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian Joseph II., to go to
Würzburg as Konsistorialrat and professor. There the liberal minister,
Montgelas, was desirous of establishing a university founded on the
principles of illuminism—Schelling, Hufeland, and Schleiermacher were
among those whom he contemplated appointing as Docents. Here the Catholic
theological students were obliged to attend the lectures of the Protestant
professor of theology, as there were no Protestants to form an audience.
His first course was on “Encyclopädie” (_i.e._ introduction to the
literature of theology).
The plan failed. Paulus resigned his professorship and became in 1807 a
member of the Bavarian educational council (_Schulrat_). In this capacity
he worked at the reorganisation of the Bavarian school system at the time
when Hegel was similarly engaged. He gave four years to this task, which
he felt to be laid upon him as a duty. Then, in 1811, he went to
Heidelberg as professor of theology; and he remained there until his
death, in 1851, at the age of ninety. One of his last sayings, a few hours
before he died, was, “I am justified before God, through my desire to do
right.” His last words were, “There is another world.”
The forty years of his Heidelberg period were remarkably productive; there
was no department of knowledge on which he did not write. He expressed his
views about homoeopathy, about the freedom of the Press, about academic
freedom, and about the duelling nuisance. In 1831, he wrote upon the
Jewish Question; and there the veteran rationalist showed himself a bitter
anti‐Semite, and brought upon himself the scorn of Heine. On politics and
constitutional questions he fought for his opinions so openly and manfully
that he had to be warned to be more discreet. In philosophy he took an
especially keen interest. When in Jena he had, in conjunction with
Schiller, busied himself in the study of Kant. He did a particularly
meritorious service in preparing an edition of Spinoza’s writings, with a
biography of that thinker, in 1803, at the time when neo‐Spinozism was
making its influence felt in German philosophy. He constituted himself the
special guardian of philosophy, and the moment he detected the slightest
hint of mysticism, he sounded the alarm. His pet aversion was Schelling,
who was born fourteen years later than he, in the very same house at
Leonberg, and whom he had met as colleague at Jena and at Würzburg. The
works, avowed and anonymous, which he directed against this “charlatan,
juggler, swindler, and obscurantist,” as he designated him, fill an entire
library.
In 1841, Schelling was called to the chair of philosophy in Berlin, and in
the winter of 1841‐1842 he gave his lectures on “The Philosophy of
Revelation” which caused the Berlin reactionaries to hail him as their
great ally. The veteran rationalist—he was eighty years old—was
transported with rage. He had had the lectures taken down for him, and he
published them with critical remarks under the title “The Philosophy of
Revelation at length Revealed, and set forth for General Examination, by
Dr. H. E. G. Paulus” (Darmstadt, 1842). Schelling was furious, and dragged
“the impudent scoundrel” into a court of law on the charge of illicit
publication. In Prussia the book was suppressed. But the courts decided in
favour of Paulus, who coolly explained that “the philosophy of Schelling
appeared to him an insidious attack upon sound reason, the unmasking of
which by every possible means was a work of public utility, nay, even a
duty.” He also secured the result at which he aimed; Schelling resigned
his lectureship.
In his last days the veteran rationalist was an isolated survival from an
earlier age into a period which no longer understood him. The new men
reproached him for standing in the old ways; he accused them of a want of
honesty. It was just in his immobility and his one‐sidedness that his
significance lay. By his consistent carrying through of the rationalistic
explanation he performed a service to theology more valuable than those
who think themselves so vastly his superiors are willing to acknowledge.
His Life of Jesus is awkwardly arranged. The first part gives a historical
exposition of the Gospels, section by section. The second part is a
synopsis interspersed with supplementary matter. There is no attempt to
grasp the life of Jesus as a connected whole. In that respect he is far
inferior to Venturini. Strictly regarded, his work is only a harmony of
the gospels with explanatory comments, the ground plan of which is taken
from the Fourth Gospel.(22)
The main interest centres in the explanations of the miracles, though the
author, it must be admitted, endeavoured to guard against this. “It is my
chief desire,” he writes in his preface, “that my views regarding the
miracle stories should not be taken as by any means the principal thing.
How empty would devotion or religion be if one’s spiritual well‐being
depended on whether one believed in miracles or no!” “The truly miraculous
thing about Jesus is Himself, the purity and serene holiness of His
character, which is, notwithstanding, genuinely human, and adapted to the
imitation and emulation of mankind.”
The question of miracle is therefore a subsidiary question. Two points of
primary importance are certain from the outset: (1) that unexplained
alterations of the course of nature can neither overthrow nor attest a
spiritual truth, (2) that everything which happens in nature emanates from
the omnipotence of God.
The Evangelists intended to relate miracles; of that there can be no
doubt. Nor can any one deny that in their time miracles entered into the
plan of God, in the sense that the minds of men were to be astounded and
subdued by inexplicable facts. This effect, however, is past. In periods
to which the miraculous makes less appeal, in view of the advance in
intellectual culture of the nations which have been led to accept
Christianity, the understanding must be satisfied if the success of the
cause is to be maintained.
Since that which is produced by the laws of nature is really produced by
God, the Biblical miracles consist merely in the fact that eyewitnesses
report events of which they did not know the secondary causes. Their
knowledge of the laws of nature was insufficient to enable them to
understand what actually happened. For one who has discovered the
secondary causes, the fact remains, as such, but not the miracle.
The question of miracle, therefore, does not really exist, or exists only
for those “who are under the influence of the sceptical delusion that it
is possible really to think any kind of natural powers as existing apart
from God, or to think the Being of God apart from the primal
potentialities which unfold themselves in the never‐ceasing process of
Becoming.” The difficulty arises from the “original sin” of dissolving the
inner unity of God and nature, of denying the equivalence implied by
Spinoza in his “Deus sive Natura.”
For the normal intelligence the only problem is to discover the secondary
causes of the “miracles” of Jesus. It is true there is one miracle which
Paulus retains—the miracle of the birth, or at least the possibility of
it; in the sense that it is through holy inspiration that Mary receives
the hope and the power of conceiving her exalted Son, in whom the spirit
of the Messiah takes up its dwelling. Here he indirectly denies the
natural generation, and regards the conception as an act of the self‐
consciousness of the mother.
With the miracles of healing, however, the case is very simple. Sometimes
Jesus worked through His spiritual power upon the nervous system of the
sufferer; sometimes He used medicines known to Him alone. The latter
applies, for instance, to the cures of the blind. The disciples, too, as
appears from Mark vi. 7 and 13, were not sent out without medicaments, for
the oil with which they were to anoint the sick was, of course, of a
medicinal character; and the casting out of evil spirits was effected
partly by means of sedatives.
Diet and after‐treatment played a great part, though the Evangelists say
little about this because directions on these points would not be given
publicly. Thus, the saying, “This kind goeth not out save by prayer and
fasting,” is interpreted as an instruction to the father as to the way in
which he could make the sudden cure of the epileptic into a permanent one,
viz. by keeping him to a strict diet and strengthening his character by
devotional exercises.
The nature miracles suggest their own explanation. The walking on the
water was an illusion of the disciples. Jesus walked along the shore, and
in the mist was taken for a ghost by the alarmed and excited occupants of
the boat. When Jesus called to them, Peter threw himself into the water,
and was drawn to shore by Jesus just as he was sinking. Immediately after
taking Jesus into the boat they doubled a headland and drew clear of the
storm centre; they therefore supposed that He had calmed the sea by His
command. It was the same in the case where He was asleep during the storm.
When they waked Him He spoke to them about the wind and the weather. At
that moment they gained the shelter of a hill which protected them from
the wind that swept down the valley; and they marvelled among themselves
that even the winds and the sea obeyed their Messiah.
The feeding of the five thousand is explained in the following way. When
Jesus saw the multitude all hungered, He said to His disciples, “We will
set the rich people among them a good example, that they may share their
supplies with the others,” and he began to distribute His own provisions,
and those of the disciples, to the people who were sitting near them. The
example had its effect, and soon there was plenty for every one.
The explanation of the transfiguration is somewhat more complicated. While
Jesus was lingering with a few followers in this mountainous district He
had an interview upon a high mountain at night with two dignified‐looking
men whom His three companions took for Moses and Elias. These unknown
persons, as we learn from Luke ix. 31, informed Him of the fate which
awaited Him at Jerusalem. In the early morning, as the sun was rising, the
three disciples, only half awake, looked upwards from the hollow in which
they had been sleeping and saw Jesus with the two strangers upon the
higher part of the mountain, illuminated by the beams of the rising sun,
and heard them speak, now of the fate which threatened Him in the capital,
now of the duty of steadfastness and the hopes attached thereto, and
finally heard an exhortation addressed to themselves, bidding them ever to
hold Jesus to be the beloved Son of the Deity, whom they must obey....
Their drowsiness, and the clouds which in an autumnal sunrise float to and
fro over those mountains,(23) left them no clear recollection of what had
happened. This only added to the wonder of the vague undefined impression
of having been in contact with apparitions from a higher sphere. The three
who had been with Him on the mount never arrived at any more definite
knowledge of the facts, because Jesus forbade them to speak of what they
had seen until the end should come.
In dealing with the raisings from the dead the author is in his element.
Here he is ready with the unfailing explanation taken over from Bahrdt
that they were only cases of coma. These narratives should not be headed
“raisings from the dead,” but “deliverances from premature burial.” In
Judaea, interment took place three hours after death. How many seemingly
dead people may have returned to consciousness in their graves, and then
have perished miserably! Thus Jesus, owing to a presentiment suggested to
Him by the father’s story, saves the daughter of Jairus from being buried
while in a cataleptic trance. A similar presentiment led Him to remove the
covering of the bier which He met at the gate of Nain, and to discover
traces of life in the widow’s son. A similar instinct moved Him to ask to
be taken to the grave of Lazarus. When the stone is rolled away He sees
His friend standing upright and calls to him joyfully, “Come forth!”
The Jewish love of miracle “caused everything to be ascribed immediately
to the Deity, and secondary causes to be overlooked; consequently no
thought was unfortunately given to the question of how to prevent these
horrible cases of premature burial from taking place!” But why does it not
appear strange to Paulus that Jesus did not enlighten His countrymen as to
the criminal character of over‐hasty burial, instead of allowing even his
closest followers to believe in miracle? Here the hypothesis condemns
itself, although it has a foundation of fact, in so far as cases of
premature burial are abnormally frequent in the East.
The resurrection of Jesus must be brought under the same category if we
are to hold fast to the facts that the disciples saw Him in His natural
body with the print of the nails in His hands, and that He took food in
their presence. Death from crucifixion was in fact due to a condition of
rigor, which extended gradually inwards. It was the slowest of all deaths.
Josephus mentions in his _Contra Apionem_ that it was granted to him as a
favour by Titus, at Tekoa, that he might have three crucified men whom he
knew taken down from the cross. Two of them died, but one recovered.
Jesus, however, “died” surprisingly quickly. The loud cry which he uttered
immediately before His head sank shows that His strength was far from
being exhausted, and that what supervened was only a death‐like trance. In
such trances the process of dying continues until corruption sets in.
“This alone proves that the process is complete and that death has
actually taken place.”
In the case of Jesus, as in that of others, the vital spark would have
been gradually extinguished, had not Providence mysteriously effected on
behalf of its favourite that which in the case of others was sometimes
effected in more obvious ways by human skill and care. The lance‐thrust,
which we are to think of rather as a mere surface wound, served the
purpose of a phlebotomy. The cool grave and the aromatic unguents
continued the process of resuscitation, until finally the storm and the
earthquake aroused Jesus to full consciousness. Fortunately the earthquake
also had the effect of rolling away the stone from the mouth of the grave.
The Lord stripped off the grave‐clothes and put on a gardener’s dress
which He managed to procure. That was what made Mary, as we are told in
John xx. 15, take Him for the gardener. Through the women, He sends a
message to His disciples bidding them meet Him in Galilee, and Himself
sets out to go thither. At Emmaus, as the dusk was falling, He met two of
His followers, who at first failed to recognise Him because His
countenance was so disfigured by His sufferings. But His manner of giving
thanks at the breaking of bread, and the nail‐prints in His uplifted
hands, revealed to them who He was. From them He learns where His
disciples are, returns to Jerusalem, and appears unexpectedly among them.
This is the explanation of the apparent contradiction between the message
pointing to Galilee and the appearances in Jerusalem. Thomas was not
present at this first appearance, and at a later interview was suffered to
put his hand into the marks of the wounds. It is a misunderstanding to see
a reproach in the words which Jesus addresses to him. What, then, is the
meaning of “Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed”? It is
a benediction upon Thomas for what he has done in the interests of later
generations. “Now,” Jesus says, “thou, Thomas, art convinced because thou
hast so unmistakably seen Me. It is well for those who now or in the
future shall not see Me; for after this they can feel a firm conviction,
because thou hast convinced thyself so completely that to thee, whose
hands have touched Me, no possible doubt can remain of My corporeal
reanimation.” Had it not been for Thomas’s peculiar mental constitution we
should not have known whether what was seen was a phantom or a real
appearance of the reanimated Jesus.
In this way Jesus lived with them for forty days, spending part of that
time with them in Galilee. In consequence of the ill‐treatment which He
had undergone, He was not capable of continuous exertion. He lived quietly
and gathered strength for the brief moments in which He appeared among His
own followers and taught them. When He felt his end drawing near He
returned to Jerusalem. On the Mount of Olives, in the early sunlight, He
assembled His followers for the last time. He lifted up His hands to bless
them, and with hands still raised in benediction He moved away from them.
A cloud interposes itself between them and Him, so that their eyes cannot
follow Him. As he disappeared there stood before them, clothed in white,
the two dignified figures whom the three disciples who were present at the
transfiguration had taken for Moses and Elias, but who were really among
the secret adherents of Jesus in Jerusalem. These men exhorted them not to
stand waiting there but to be up and doing.
Where Jesus really died they never knew, and so they came to describe His
departure as an ascension.
This Life of Jesus is not written without feeling. At times, in moments of
exaltation, the writer even dashes into verse. If only the lack of all
natural aesthetic feeling did not ruin everything! Paulus constantly falls
into a style that sets the teeth on edge. The episode of the death of the
Baptist is headed “Court‐and‐Priest intrigues enhance themselves to a
judicial murder.” Much is spoiled by a kind of banality. Instead of
“disciples,” he always says “pupils,” instead of “faith,” “sincerity of
conviction.” The appeal which the father of the lunatic boy addresses to
Jesus, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief,” runs “I am sincerely
convinced; help me, even if there is anything lacking in the sincerity of
my conviction.”
The beautiful saying in the story of Martha and Mary, “One thing is
needful,” is interpreted as meaning that a single course will be
sufficient for the meal.(24) The scene in the home at Bethany rejoices in
the heading, “Geniality of Jesus among sympathetic friends in a hospitable
family circle at Bethany. A Messiah with no stiff solemnity about Him.”
The following is the explanation which Paulus discovers for the saying
about the tribute‐money: “So long as you need the Romans to maintain some
sort of order among you,” says Jesus, “you must provide the means thereto.
If you were fit to be independent you would not need to serve any one but
God.”
Among the historical problems, Paulus is especially interested in the idea
of the Messiahship, and in the motives of the betrayal. His sixty‐five
pages on the history of the conception of the Messiah are a real
contribution to the subject. The Messianic idea, he explains, goes back to
the Davidic kingdom; the prophets raised it to a higher religious plane;
in the times of the Maccabees the ideal of the kingly Messiah perished and
its place was taken by that of the super‐earthly deliverer. The only
mistake which Paulus makes is in supposing that the post‐Maccabean period
went back to the political ideal of the Davidic king. On the other hand,
he rightly interprets the death of Jesus as the deed by which He thought
to win the Messiahship proper to the Son of Man.
With reference to the question of the High Priest at the trial, he remarks
that it does not refer to the metaphysical Divine Sonship, but to the
Messiahship in the ancient Jewish sense, and accordingly Jesus answers by
pointing to the coming of the Son of Man.
The importance of eschatology in the preaching of Jesus is clearly
recognised, but Paulus proceeds to nullify this recognition by making the
risen Lord cut short all the questions of the disciples in regard to this
subject with the admonition “that in whatever way all this should come
about, and whether soon or late, their business was to see that they had
done their own part.”
How did Judas come to play the traitor? He believed in the Messiahship of
Jesus and wanted to force Him to declare Himself. To bring about His
arrest seemed to Judas the best means of rousing the people to take His
side openly. But the course of events was too rapid for him. Owing to the
Feast the news of the arrest spread but slowly. In the night “when people
were sleeping off the effects of the Passover supper,” Jesus was
condemned; in the morning, before they were well awake, He was hurried
away to be crucified. Then Judas was overcome with despair, and went and
hanged himself. “Judas stands before us in the history of the Passion as a
warning example of those who allow their cleverness to degenerate into
cunning, and persuade themselves that it is permissible to do evil that
good may come—to seek good objects, which they really value, by intrigue
and chicanery. And the underlying cause of their errors is that they have
failed to overcome their passionate desire for self‐advancement.”
Such was the consistently rationalistic Life of Jesus, which evoked so
much opposition at the time of its appearance, and seven years later
received its death‐blow at the hands of Strauss. The method is doomed to
failure because the author only saves his own sincerity at the expense of
that of his characters. He makes the disciples of Jesus see miracles where
they could not possibly have seen them; and makes Jesus Himself allow
miracles to be imagined where He must necessarily have protested against
such a delusion. His exegesis, too, is sometimes violent. But in this, who
has the right to judge him? If the theologians dragged him before the
Lord, He would command, as of old, “Let him that is without sin among you
cast the first stone at him,” and Paulus would go forth unharmed.
Moreover, a number of his explanations are right in principle. The feeding
of the multitudes and the walking on the sea must be explained somehow or
other as misunderstandings of something that actually happened. And how
many of Paulus’ ideas are still going about in all sorts of disguises, and
crop up again and again in commentaries and Lives of Jesus, especially in
those of the “anti‐rationalists”! Nowadays it belongs to the complete duty
of the well‐trained theologian to renounce the rationalists and all their
works; and yet how poor our time is in comparison with theirs—how poor in
strong men capable of loyalty to an ideal, how poor, so far as theology is
concerned, in simple commonplace sincerity!
VI. THE LAST PHASE OF RATIONALISM—HASE AND SCHLEIERMACHER
_Karl August Hase._ Das Leben Jesu zunächst für akademische
Studien. (The Life of Jesus, primarily for the use of students.)
1829. 205 pp. This work contains a bibliography of the earliest
literature of the subject. 5th ed., 1865.
_Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher._ Das Leben Jesu. 1864.
Edited by Rütenik. The edition is based upon a student’s note‐book
of a course of lectures delivered in 1832.
_David Friedrich Strauss._ Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus
der Geschichte. Eine Kritik des Schleiermacher’schen Lebens Jesu.
(The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History. A criticism of
Schleiermacher’s Life of Jesus.) 1865.
In their treatment of the life of Jesus, Hase and Schleiermacher are in
one respect still wholly dominated by rationalism. They still cling to the
rationalistic explanation of miracle; although they have no longer the
same ingenuous confidence in it as their predecessors, and although at the
decisive cases they are content to leave a question‐mark instead of
offering a solution. They might, in fact, be described as the sceptics of
rationalism. In another respect, however, they aim at something beyond the
range of rationalism, inasmuch as they endeavour to grasp the inner
connexion of the events of Jesus’ ministry, which in Paulus had entirely
fallen out of sight. Their Lives of Jesus are transitional, in the good
sense of the word as well as in the bad. In respect of progress, Hase
shows himself the greater of the two.
Scarcely thirteen years have elapsed since the death of the great Jena
professor, his Excellency von Hase, and already we think of him as a man
of the past. Theology has voted to inscribe his name upon its records in
letters of gold—and has passed on to the order of the day. He was no
pioneer like Baur, and he does not meet the present age on the footing of
a contemporary, offering it problems raised by him and still unsolved.
Even his “Church History,” with its twelve editions, has already had its
day, although it is still the most brilliantly written work in this
department, and conceals beneath its elegance of form a massive erudition.
He was more than a theologian; he was one of the finest monuments of
German culture, the living embodiment of a period which for us lies under
the sunset glow of the past, in the land of “once upon a time.”
His path in life was unembarrassed; he knew toil, but not disappointment.
Born in 1800, he finished his studies at Tübingen, where he qualified as a
Privat‐Docent in 1823. In 1824‐1825 he spent eleven months in the fortress
of Hohenasperg, where he was confined for taking the part of the
Burschenschaften,(25) and had leisure for meditation and literary plans.
In 1830 he went to Jena, where, with a yearly visit to Italy to lay in a
store of sunshine and renewed strength, he worked until 1890.
Not without a certain reverence does one take this little text‐book of 205
pages into one’s hands. This is the first attempt by a fully equipped
scholar to reconstruct the life of Jesus on a purely historical basis.
There is more creative power in it than in almost any of his later works.
It manifests already the brilliant qualities of style for which he was
distinguished—clearness, terseness, elegance. What a contrast with that of
Bahrdt, Venturini, or Paulus!
And yet the keynote of the work is rationalistic, since Hase has recourse
to the rationalistic explanation of miracles wherever that appears
possible. He seeks to make the circumstances of the baptism intelligible
by supposing the appearance of a meteor. In the story of the
transfiguration, the fact which is to be retained is that Jesus, in the
company of two unknown persons, appeared to the disciples in unaccustomed
splendour. Their identification of His companions as Moses and Elias is a
conclusion which is not confirmed by Jesus, and owing to the position of
the eyewitnesses, is not sufficiently guaranteed by their testimony. The
abrupt breaking off of the interview by the Master, and the injunction of
silence, point to some secret circumstance in His history. By this hint
Hase seems to leave room for the “secret society” of Bahrdt and Venturini.
He makes no difficulty about the explanation of the story of the _stater_.
It is only intended to show “how the Messiah avoided offence in submitting
Himself to the financial burdens of the community.” In regard to the
stilling of the storm, it seems uncertain whether Jesus through His
knowledge of nature was enabled to predict the end of the storm or whether
He brought it about by the possession of power over nature. The “sceptic
of rationalism” thus leaves open the possibility of miracle. He proceeds
somewhat similarly in explaining the raisings from the dead. They can be
made intelligible by supposing that they were cases of coma, but it is
also possible to look upon them as supernatural. For the two great
Johannine miracles, the change of the water into wine and the increase of
the loaves, no naturalistic explanation can be admitted. But how
unsuccessful is his attempt to make the increase of the bread
intelligible! “Why should not the bread have been increased?” he asks. “If
nature every year in the period between seed‐time and harvest performs a
similar miracle, nature might also, by unknown laws, bring it about in a
moment.” Here crops up the dangerous anti‐rationalistic intellectual
supernaturalism which sometimes brings Hase and Schleiermacher very close
to the frontiers of the territory occupied by the disingenuous
reactionaries.
The crucial point is the explanation of the resurrection of Jesus. A
stringent proof that death had actually taken place cannot, according to
Hase, be given, since there is no evidence that corruption had set in, and
that is the only infallible sign of death. It is possible, therefore, that
the resurrection was only a return to consciousness after a trance. But
the direct impression made by the sources points rather to a supernatural
event. Either view is compatible with the Christian faith. “Both the
historically possible views—either that the Creator gave new life to a
body which was really dead, or that the latent life reawakened in a body
which was only seemingly dead—recognise in the resurrection a manifest
proof of the care of Providence for the cause of Jesus, and are therefore
both to be recognised as Christian, whereas a third view—that Jesus gave
Himself up to his enemies in order to defeat them by the bold stroke of a
seeming death and a skilfully prepared resurrection—is as contrary to
historical criticism as to Christian faith.”
Hase, however, quietly lightens the difficulty of the miracle question in
a way which must not be overlooked. For the rationalists all miracles
stood on the same footing, and all must equally be abolished by a
naturalistic explanation. If we study Hase carefully, we find that he
accepts only the Johannine miracles as authentic, whereas those of the
Synoptists may be regarded as resting upon a misunderstanding on the part
of the authors, because they are not reported at first hand, but from
tradition. Thus the discrimination of the two lines of Gospel tradition
comes to the aid of the anti‐rationalists, and enables them to get rid of
some of the greatest difficulties. Half playfully, it might almost be
said, they sketch out the ideas of Strauss, without ever suspecting what
desperate earnest the game will become, if the authenticity of the Fourth
Gospel has to be given up.
Hase surrenders the birth‐story and the “legends of the Childhood”—the
expression is his own—almost without striking a blow. The same fate
befalls all the incidents in which angels figure, and the miracles at the
time of the death of Jesus. He describes these as “mythical touches.” The
ascension is merely “a mythical version of His departure to the Father.”
Hase’s conception even of the non‐miraculous portion of the history of
Jesus is not free from rationalistic traits. He indulges in the following
speculations with regard to the celibacy of the Lord. “If the true grounds
of the celibacy of Jesus do not lie hidden in the special circumstances of
His youth, the conjecture may be permitted that He from whose religion was
to go forth the ideal view of marriage, so foreign to the ideas of
antiquity, found in His own time no heart worthy to enter into this
covenant with Him.” It is on rationalistic lines also that Hase explains
the betrayal by Judas. “A purely intellectual, worldly, and unscrupulous
character, he desired to compel the hesitating Messiah to found His
Kingdom upon popular violence.... It is possible that Judas in his
terrible blindness took that last word addressed to him by Jesus, ‘What
thou doest, do quickly,’ as giving consent to his plan.”
But Hase again rises superior to this rationalistic conception of the
history when he refuses to explain away the Jewish elements in the plan
and preaching of Jesus as due to mere accommodation, and maintains the
view that the Lord really, to a certain extent, shared this Jewish system
of ideas. According to Hase there are two periods in the Messianic
activity of Jesus. In the first He accepted almost without reservation the
popular ideas regarding the Messianic age. In consequence, however, of His
experience of the practical results of these ideas, He was led to abandon
this error, and in the second period He developed His own distinctive
views. Here we meet for the first time the idea of two different periods
in the life of Jesus, which, especially through the influence of Holtzmann
and Keim, became the prevailing view, and down to Johannes Weiss,
determined the plan of all Lives of Jesus. Hase created the modern
historico‐psychological picture of Jesus. The introduction of this more
penetrating psychology would alone suffice to place him in advance of the
rationalists.
Another interesting point is the thorough way in which he traces out the
historical and literary consequences of this idea of development. The
apostles, he thinks, did not understand this progress of thought on the
part of Jesus, and did not distinguish between the sayings of the first
and second periods. They remained wedded to the eschatological view. After
the death of Jesus this view prevailed so strongly in the primitive
community of disciples that they interpolated their expectations into the
last discourses of Jesus. According to Hase, the apocalyptic discourse in
Matt. xxiv. was originally only a prediction of the judgment upon and
destruction of Jerusalem, but this was obscured later by the influx of the
eschatological views of the apostolic community. Only John remained free
from this error. Therefore the non‐eschatological Fourth Gospel preserves
in their pure form the ideas of Jesus in His second period.
Hase rightly observes that the Messiahship of Jesus plays next to no part
in His preaching, at any rate at first, and that, before the incident at
Caesarea Philippi, it was only in moments of enthusiastic admiration,
rather than with settled conviction, that even the disciples looked on Him
as the Messiah. This indication of the central importance of the
declaration of the Messiahship at Caesarea Philippi is another sign‐post
pointing out the direction which the future study of the life of Jesus was
to follow.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Schleiermacher’s Life of Jesus introduces us to quite a different order of
transitional ideas. Its value lies in the sphere of dogmatics, not of
history. Nowhere, indeed, is it so clear that the great dialectician had
not really a historical mind than precisely in his treatment of the
history of Jesus.
From the first it was no favourable star which presided over this
undertaking. It is true that in 1819 Schleiermacher was the first
theologian who had ever lectured upon this subject. But his Life of Jesus
did not appear until 1864. Its publication had been so long delayed,
partly because it had to be reconstructed from students’ note‐books,
partly because immediately after Schleiermacher, in 1832, had delivered
the course for the last time, it was rendered obsolete by the work of
Strauss. For the questions raised by the latter’s Life of Jesus, published
in 1835, Schleiermacher had no answer, and for the wounds which it made,
no healing. When, in 1864, Schleiermacher’s work was brought forth to view
like an embalmed corse, Strauss accorded to the dead work of the great
theologian a dignified and striking funeral oration.
Schleiermacher is not in search of the historical Jesus, but of the Jesus
Christ of his own system of theology; that is to say, of the historic
figure which seems to him appropriate to the self‐consciousness of the
Redeemer as he represents it. For him the empirical has simply no
existence. A natural psychology is scarcely attempted. He comes to the
facts with a ready‐made dialectic apparatus and sets his puppets in lively
action. Schleiermacher’s dialectic is not a dialectic which generates
reality, like that of Hegel, of which Strauss availed himself, but merely
a dialectic of exposition. In this literary dialectic he is the greatest
master that ever lived.
The limitations of the historical Jesus both in an upward and downward
direction are those only which apply equally to the Jesus of dogma. The
uniqueness of His Divine self‐consciousness is not to be tampered with. It
is equally necessary to avoid Ebionism which does away with the Divine in
Him, and Docetism which destroys His humanity. Schleiermacher loves to
make his hearers shudder by pointing out to them that the least false step
entails precipitation into one or other of these abysses; or at least
would entail it for any one who was not under the guidance of his
infallible dialectic.
In the course of this dialectic treatment, all the historical questions
involved in the life of Jesus come into view one after another, but none
of them is posed or solved from the point of view of the historian; they
are “moments” in his argument.
He is like a spider at work. The spider lets itself down from aloft, and
after making fast some supporting threads to points below, it runs back to
the centre and there keeps spinning away. You look on fascinated, and
before you know it, you are entangled in the web. It is difficult even for
a reader who is strong in the consciousness of possessing a sounder grasp
of the history than Schleiermacher to avoid being caught in the toils of
that magical dialectic.
And how loftily superior the dialectician is! Paulus had shown that, in
view of the use of the title Son of Man, the Messianic self‐consciousness
of Jesus must be interpreted in accordance with the passage in Daniel. On
this Schleiermacher remarks: “I have already said that it is inherently
improbable that such a predilection (_sc._ for the Book of Daniel) would
have been manifested by Christ, because the Book of Daniel does not belong
to the prophetic writings properly so‐called, but to the third division of
the Old Testament literature.”
In his estimate of the importance to be attached to the story of the
baptism, too, he falls behind the historical knowledge of his day. “To lay
such great stress upon the baptism,” he says, “leads either to the Gnostic
view that it was only there that the λόγος united itself with Jesus, or to
the rationalistic view that it was only at the baptism that He became
conscious of His vocation.” But what does history care whether a view is
gnostic or rationalistic if only it is historical!
This dialectic, so fatal often to sound historical views, might have been
expressly created to deal with the question of miracle. Compared with
Schleiermacher’s discussions all that has been written since upon this
subject is mere honest—or dishonest—bungling. Nothing new has been added
to what he says, and no one else has succeeded in saying it with the same
amazing subtlety. It is true, also, that no one else has shown the same
skill in concealing how much in the way of miracle he ultimately retains
and how much he rejects. His solution of the problem is, in fact, not
historical, but dialectical, an attempt to transcend the necessity for a
rationalistic explanation of miracle which does not really succeed in
getting rid of it.
Schleiermacher arranges the miracles in an ascending scale of probability
according to the degree in which they can be seen to depend on the known
influence of spirit upon organic matter. The most easily explained are the
miracles of healing “because we are not without analogies to show that
pathological conditions of a purely functional nature can be removed by
mental influence.” But where, on the other hand, the effect produced by
Christ lies outside the sphere of human life, the difficulties involved
become insoluble. To get rid, in some measure, of these difficulties he
makes use of two expedients. In the first place, he admits that in
particular cases the rationalistic method may have a certain limited
application; in the second place he, like Hase, recognises a difference
between the miracle stories themselves, retaining the Johannine miracles,
but surrendering, more or less completely, the Synoptic miracles as not
resting on evidence of the same certainty and exactness.
That he is still largely under the sway of rationalism can be seen in the
fact that he admits on an equal footing, as conceptions of the
resurrection of Jesus, a return to consciousness from a trance‐state, or a
supernatural restoration to life, thought of as a resurrection. He goes so
far as to say that the decision of this question has very little interest
for him. He fully accepts the principle of Paulus that apart from
corruption there is no certain indication of death.
“All that we can say on this point,” he concludes, “is that even to those
whose business it was to ensure the immediate death of the crucified, in
order that the bodies might at once be taken down, Christ appeared to be
really dead, and this, moreover, although it was contrary to their
expectations, for it was a subject of astonishment. It is no use going any
further into the matter, since nothing can be ascertained in regard to
it.”
What is certain is that Jesus in His real body lived on for a time among
His followers; that the Fourth Gospel requires us to believe. The reports
of the resurrection are not based upon “apparitions.” Schleiermacher’s own
opinion is what really happened was reanimation after apparent death. “If
Christ had only eaten to show that He could eat, while He really had no
need of nourishment, it would have been a pretence—something docetic. This
gives us a clue to all the rest, teaching us to hold firmly to the way in
which Christ intends Himself to be represented, and to put down all that
is miraculous in the accounts of the appearances to the prepossessions of
the disciples.”
When He revealed himself to Mary Magdalene He had no certainty that He
would frequently see her again. “He was conscious that His present
condition was that of genuine human life, but He had no confidence in its
continuance.” He bade His disciples meet Him in Galilee because He could
there enjoy greater privacy and freedom from observation in His
intercourse with them. The difference between the present and the past was
only that He no longer showed Himself to the world. “It was possible that
a movement in favour of an earthly Messianic Kingdom might break out, and
we need only take this possibility into account in order to explain
completely why Jesus remained in such close retirement.” “It was the
premonition of the approaching end of this second life which led Him to
return from Galilee to Jerusalem.”
Of the ascension he says: “Here, therefore, something happened, but what
was seen was incomplete, and has been conjecturally supplemented.” The
underlying rationalistic explanation shows through!
But if the condition in which Jesus lived on after His crucifixion was “a
condition of reanimation,” by what right does Schleiermacher constantly
speak of it as a “resurrection,” as if resurrection and reanimation were
synonymous terms? Further, is it really true that faith has no interest
whatever in the question whether it was as risen from the dead, or merely
as recovered from a state of suspended animation, that Jesus showed
Himself to His disciples? In regard to this, it might seem, the
rationalists were more straightforward.
The moment one tries to take hold of this dialectic it breaks in one’s
fingers. Schleiermacher would not indeed have ventured to play so risky a
game if he had not had a second position to retire to, based on the
distinction between the Synoptic and the Johannine miracle stories. In
this respect he simplified matters for himself, as compared with the
rationalists, even more than Hase. The miracle at the baptism is only
intelligible in the narrative of the Fourth Gospel, where it is not a
question of an external occurrence, but of a purely subjective experience
of John, with which we have nothing to do. The Synoptic story of the
temptation has no intelligible meaning. “To change stones into bread, if
there were need for it, would not have been a sin.” “A leap from the
Temple could have had no attraction for any one.”
The miracles of the birth and childhood are given up without hesitation;
they do not belong to the story of the life of Jesus; and it is the same
with the miracles at His death. One might fancy it was Strauss speaking
when Schleiermacher says: “If we give due consideration to the fact that
we have certainly found in these for the most part simple narratives of
the last moments of Christ two incidents, such as the rending of the veil
of the Temple and the opening of the graves, in reference to which we
cannot possibly suppose that they are literal descriptions of actual
facts, then we are bound to ask the question whether the same does not
apply to many other points. Certainly the mention of the sun’s light
failing and the consequent great darkness looks very much as if it had
been imported by poetic imagination into the simple narrative.”
A rebuke could have no possible effect upon the wind and sea. Here we must
suppose either an alteration of the facts or a different causal connexion.
In this way Schleiermacher—and it was for this reason that these lectures
on the life of Jesus became so celebrated—enabled dogmatics, though not
indeed history, to take a flying leap over the miracle question.
What is chiefly fatal to a sound historical view is his one‐sided
preference for the Fourth Gospel. It is, according to him, only in this
Gospel that the consciousness of Jesus is truly reflected. In this
connexion he expressly remarks that of a progress in the teaching of
Jesus, and of any “development” in Him, there can be no question. His
development is the unimpeded organic unfolding of the idea of the Divine
Sonship.
For the outline of the life of Jesus, also, the Fourth Gospel is alone
authoritative. “The Johannine representation of the way in which the
crisis of His fate was brought about is the only clear one.” The same
applies to the narrative of the resurrection in this Gospel. “Accordingly,
on this point also,” so he concludes his discussion, “I take it as
established that the Gospel of John is the narrative of an eyewitness and
forms an organic whole. The first three Gospels are compilations formed
out of various narratives which had arisen independently; their discourses
are composite structures, and their presentation of the history is such
that one can form no idea of the grouping of events.” The “crowded days,”
such as that of the sermon on the mount and the day of the parables, exist
only in the imagination of the Evangelists. In reality there were no such
days. Luke is the only one of them who has some semblance of historical
order. His Gospel is compiled with much insight and critical tact out of a
number of independent documents, as Schleiermacher believed himself to
have shown convincingly in his critical study of Luke’s Gospel, published
in 1817.
It is only on the ground of such a valuation of the sources that we can
arrive at a just estimate of the different representations of the locality
of the life of Jesus. “The contradictions,” Schleiermacher proceeds,
“could not be explained if all our Gospels stood equally close to Jesus.
But if John stands closer than the others, we may perhaps find the key in
the fact that John, too, mentions it as a prevailing opinion in Jerusalem
that Jesus was a Galilaean, and that Luke, when he has got to the end of
the sections which show skilful arrangement and are united by similarity
of subject, gathers all the rest into the framework of a journey to
Jerusalem. Following this analogy, and not remembering that Jesus had
occasion to go several times a year to Jerusalem, the other two gathered
into one mass all that happened there on various occasions. This could
only have been done by Hellenists.”(26)
Schleiermacher is quite insensible to the graphic realism of the
description of the last days at Jerusalem in Mark and Matthew, and has no
suspicion that if only a single one of the Jerusalem sayings in the
Synoptists is true Jesus had never before spoken in Jerusalem.
The ground of Schleiermacher’s antipathy to the Synoptists lies deeper
than a mere critical view as to their composition. The fact is that their
“picture of Christ” does not agree with that which he wishes to insert
into the history. When it serves his purpose, he does not shrink from the
most arbitrary violence. He abolishes the scene in Gethsemane because he
infers from the silence of John that it cannot have taken place. “The
other Evangelists,” he explains, “give us an account of a sudden
depression and deep distress of spirit which fell upon Jesus, and which He
admitted to His disciples, and they tell us how He sought relief from it
in prayer, and afterwards recovered His serenity and resolution. John
passes over this in silence, and his narrative of what immediately
precedes is not consistent with it.” It is evidently a symbolical story,
as the thrice‐repeated petition shows. “If they speak of such a depression
of spirit, they have given the story that form in order that the example
of Christ might be the more applicable to others in similar
circumstances.”
On these premises it is possible to write a Life of Christ; it is not
possible to write a Life of Jesus. It is, therefore, not by accident that
Schleiermacher regularly speaks, not of Jesus, but of Christ.
VII. DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS—THE MAN AND HIS FATE
In order to understand Strauss one must love him. He was not the greatest,
and not the deepest, of theologians, but he was the most absolutely
sincere. His insight and his errors were alike the insight and the errors
of a prophet. And he had a prophet’s fate. Disappointment and suffering
gave his life its consecration. It unrolls itself before us like a
tragedy, in which, in the end, the gloom is lightened by the mild radiance
which shines forth from the nobility of the sufferer.
Strauss was born in 1808 at Ludwigsburg. His father was a merchant, whose
business, however, was unsuccessful, so that his means steadily declined.
The boy took his ability from his mother, a good, self‐controlled,
sensible, pious woman, to whom he raised a monument in his “Memorial of a
Good Mother” written in 1858, to be given to his daughter on her
confirmation‐day.
From 1821 to 1825 he was a pupil at the “lower seminary” at Blaubeuren,
along with Friedrich Vischer, Pfizer, Zimmermann, Märklin, and Binder.
Among their teachers was Ferdinand Christian Baur, whom they were to meet
with again at the university.
His first year at the university was uninteresting, as it was only in the
following year that the reorganisation of the theological faculty took
place, in consequence of the appointment of Baur. The instruction in the
philosophical faculty was almost equally unsatisfactory, so that the
friends would have gained little from the two years of philosophical
propaedeutic which formed part of the course prescribed for theological
students, if they had not combined to prosecute their philosophical
studies for themselves. The writings of Hegel began to exercise a powerful
influence upon them. For the philosophical faculty, Hegel’s philosophy was
as yet non‐existent.
These student friends were much addicted to poetry. Two journeys which
Strauss made along with his fellow‐student Binder to Weinsberg to see
Justinus Kerner made a deep impression upon him. He had to make a
deliberate effort to escape from the dream‐world of the “Prophetess of
Prevorst.” Some years later, in a Latin note to Binder, he speaks of
Weinsberg as “Mecca nostra.”(27)
According to Vischer’s picture of him, the tall stripling made an
impression of great charm, though he was rather shy except with intimates.
He attended lectures with pedantic regularity.
Baur was at that time still immersed in the prolegomena to his system; but
Strauss already suspected the direction which the thoughts of his young
teacher were to take.
When Strauss and his student friends entered on their duties as clergymen,
the others found great difficulty in bringing their theological views into
line with the popular beliefs which they were expected to preach. Strauss
alone remained free from inner struggles. In a letter to Binder(28) of the
year 1831, he explains that in his sermons—he was then assistant at Klein‐
Ingersheim near Ludwigsburg—he did not use “representative notions”
(_Vorstellungen_, used as a philosophical technicality) such as that of
the Devil, which the people were already prepared to dispense with; but
others which still appeared to be indispensable, such as those of an
eschatological character, he merely endeavoured to present in such a way
that the “intellectual concept” (_Begriff_) which lay behind, might so far
as possible shine through. “When I consider,” he continues, “how far even
in intellectual preaching the expression is inadequate to the true essence
of the concept, it does not seem to me to matter much if one goes even a
step further. I at least go about the matter without the least scruple,
and cannot ascribe this to a mere want of sincerity in myself.”
That is Hegelian logic.
After being for a short time Deputy‐professor at Maulbronn, he took his
doctor’s degree with a dissertation on the ἀποκατάστασις πάντων
(restoration of all things, Acts iii. 21). This work is lost. From his
letters it appears that he treated the subject chiefly from the religious‐
historical point of view.(29)
When Binder took his doctorate with a philosophical thesis on the
immortality of the soul, Strauss, in 1832, wrote to him expressing the
opinion that the belief in personal immortality could not properly be
regarded as a consequence of the Hegelian system, since according to
Hegel, it was not the subjective spirit of the individual person, but only
the objective Spirit, the self‐realising Idea which constantly embodies
itself in new creations, to which immortality belongs.(30)
In October 1831 he went to Berlin to hear Hegel and Schleiermacher. On the
14th of November Hegel, whom he had visited shortly before, was carried
off by cholera. Strauss heard the news in Schleiermacher’s house, from
Schleiermacher himself, and is said to have exclaimed, with a certain want
of tact, considering who his informant was: “And it was to hear him that I
came to Berlin!”
There was no satisfactory basis for a relationship between Schleiermacher
and Strauss. They had nothing in common. That did not prevent Strauss’s
Life of Jesus being sometimes described by opponents of Schleiermacher as
a product of the latter’s philosophy of religion. Indeed, as late as the
’sixties, Tholuck thought it necessary to defend the memory of the great
theologian against this reproach.
As a matter of fact, the plan of the Life of Jesus arose during Strauss’s
intercourse with Vatke, to whom he felt himself strongly drawn. Moreover,
what was first sketched out was not primarily the plan of a Life of Jesus,
but that of a history of the ideas of primitive Christianity, intended to
serve as a standard by which to judge ecclesiastical dogma. The Life of
Jesus was originally designed, it might almost be said, as a mere prologue
to this work, the plan of which was subsequently carried out under the
title, “Christian Theology in its Historical Development and in its
Antagonism with Modern Scientific Knowledge” (published in 1840‐1841).
When in the spring of 1832 he returned to Tübingen to take up the position
of “Repetent”(31) in the theological college (_Stift_), these plans were
laid on the shelf in consequence of his pre‐occupation with philosophy,
and if things had gone according to Strauss’s wishes, they would perhaps
never have come to fulfilment. The “Repetents” had the right to lecture
upon philosophy. Strauss felt himself called upon to come forward as an
apostle of Hegel, and lectured upon Hegel’s logic with tremendous success.
Zeller, who attended these lectures, records the unforgettable impression
which they made on him. Besides championing Hegel, Strauss also lectured
upon Plato, and upon the history of modern philosophy. These were three
happy semesters.
“In my theology,” he writes in a letter of 1833,(32) “philosophy occupies
such a predominant position that my theological views can only be worked
out to completeness by means of a more thorough study of philosophy, and
this course of study I am now going to prosecute uninterruptedly and
without concerning myself whether it leads me back to theology or not.”
Further on he says: “If I know myself rightly, my position in regard to
theology is that what interests me in theology causes offence, and what
does not cause offence is indifferent to me. For this reason I have
refrained from delivering lectures on theology.”
The philosophical faculty was not altogether pleased at the success of the
apostle of Hegel, and wished to have the right of the “Repetents” to
lecture on philosophy curtailed. The latter, however, took their stand
upon the tradition. Strauss was desired to intermit his lectures until the
matter should be settled. He would have liked best to end the situation by
entering the philosophical faculty. The other “Repetents,” however, begged
him not to do so, but to continue to champion their rights. It is possible
also that obstacles were placed in the way of his plan by the
philosophical faculty. However that may be, it was in any case not carried
through. Strauss was forced back upon theology.
According to Hase,(33) Strauss began his studies for the Life of Jesus by
writing a detailed critical review of his (Hase’s) text‐book. He sent this
to Berlin to the _Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik_, which,
however, refused it. His resolve to publish first, instead of the general
work on the genesis of Christian doctrine, a critical study on the life of
Jesus was doubtless determined by Schleiermacher’s lectures on this
subject. When in Berlin he had procured a copy of a lecture note‐book, and
the reading of it incited him to opposition.
Considering its character, the work was rapidly produced. He wrote it
sitting at the window of the Repetents’ room, which looks out upon the
gateway‐arch. When its two volumes appeared in 1835 the name of the author
was wholly unknown, except for some critical studies upon the Gospels.
This book, into which he had poured his youthful enthusiasm, rendered him
famous in a moment—and utterly destroyed his prospects. Among his
opponents the most prominent was Steudel, a member of the theological
faculty, who, as president of the _Stift_, made representations against
him to the Ministry, and succeeded in securing his removal from the post
of “Repetent.” The hopes which Strauss had placed upon his friends were
disappointed. Only two or three at most dared to publish anything in his
defence.
He first accepted a transfer to the post of Deputy‐professor at
Ludwigsburg, but in less than a year he was glad to give it up, and he
then returned to Stuttgart. There he lived for several years, busying
himself in the preparation of new editions of the Life of Jesus, and in
writing answers to the attacks which were made upon him.
Towards the end of the ’thirties he became conscious of a growing impulse
towards more positive views. The criticisms of his opponents had made some
impression upon him. The second volume of polemics was laid aside. In its
place appeared the third edition of the Life of Jesus, 1838‐1839,
containing a series of amazing concessions. Strauss explains that in
consequence of reading de Wette’s commentary and Neander’s Life of Jesus
he had begun to feel some hesitation about his former doubts regarding the
genuineness and credibility of the Fourth Gospel. The historic personality
of Jesus again began to take on intelligible outlines for him. These
inconsistencies he removed in the next edition, acknowledging that he did
not know how he could so have temporarily vacillated in his point of view.
The matter admits, however, of a psychological explanation. He longed for
peace, for he had suffered more than his enemies suspected or his friends
knew. The ban of the outlaw lay heavy upon his soul. In this spirit he
composed in 1839 the monologues entitled _Vergängliches und Bleibendes im
Christentum_ (“Transient and Permanent Elements in Christianity”), which
appeared again in the following year under the title _Friedliche Blätter_
(“Leaves of Peace”).
For a moment it seemed as though his rehabilitation would be accomplished.
In January 1839 the noble‐minded Hitzig succeeded in getting him appointed
to the vacant chair of dogmatics in Zurich. But the orthodox and pietist
parties protested so vehemently that the Government was obliged to revoke
the appointment. Strauss was pensioned off, without ever entering on his
office.
About that time his mother died. In 1841 he lost his father. When the
estate came to be settled up, it was found that his affairs were in a less
unsatisfactory condition than had been feared. Strauss was secure against
want. The success of his second great work, his “Christian Theology”
(published in 1840‐41), compensated him for his disappointment at Zurich.
In conception it is perhaps even greater than the Life of Jesus; and in
depth of thought it is to be classed with the most important contributions
to theology. In spite of that it never attracted so much attention as the
earlier work. Strauss continued to be known as the author of the Life of
Jesus. Any further ground of offence which he might give was regarded as
quite subsidiary.
And the book contains matter for offence in no common degree. The point to
which Strauss applies his criticism is the way in which the Christian
theology which grew out of the ideas of the ancient world has been brought
into harmony with the Christianity of rationalism and of speculative
philosophy. Either, to use his own expression, both are so finely
pulverised in the process—as in the case of Schleiermacher’s combination
of Spinozism with Christianity—that it needs a sharp eye to rediscover the
elements of the mixture; or the two are shaken together like water and
oil, in which case the semblance of combination is only maintained so long
as the shaking continues. For this crude procedure he desires to
substitute a better method, based upon a preliminary historical criticism
of dogma, in order that thought may no longer have to deal with the
present form of Church theology, but with the ideas which worked as living
forces in its formation.
This is brilliantly worked out in detail. The result is not a positive,
but a negative Hegelian theology. Religion is not concerned with supra‐
mundane beings and a divinely glorious future, but with present spiritual
realities which appear as “moments” in the eternal being and becoming of
Absolute Spirit. At the end of the second volume, where battle is joined
on the issue of personal immortality, all these ideas play their part in
the struggle. Personal immortality is finally rejected in every form, for
the critical reasons which Strauss had already set forth in the letters of
1832. Immortality is not something which stretches out into the future,
but simply and solely the present quality of the spirit, its inner
universality, its power of rising above everything finite to the Idea.
Here the thought of Hegel coincides with that of Schleiermacher. “The
saying of Schleiermacher, ‘In the midst of finitude to be one with the
Infinite, and to be eternal in a moment,’ is all that modern thought can
say about immortality.” But neither Schleiermacher nor Hegel was willing
to draw the natural inferences from their ultimate position, or at least
they did not give them any prominence.
It is not the application of the mythological explanation to the Gospel
history which irrevocably divides Strauss from the theologians, but the
question of personal immortality. It would be well for them if they had
only to deal with the Strauss of the Life of Jesus, and not with the
thinker who posed this question with inexorable trenchancy. They might
then face the future more calmly, relieved of the anxiety lest once more
Hegel and Schleiermacher might rise up in some pious but critical spirit,
not to speak smooth things, but to ask the ultimate questions, and might
force theology to fight its battle with Strauss all over again.
At the very time when Strauss was beginning to breathe freely once more,
had turned his back upon all attempts at compromise, and reconciled
himself to giving up teaching; and when, after settling his father’s
affairs, he had the certainty of being secure against penury; at that very
time he sowed for himself the seeds of a new, immitigable suffering by his
marriage with Agnese Schebest, the famous singer.
They were not made for one another. He could not look to her for any
sympathy with his plans, and she on her part was repelled by the pedantry
of his disposition. Housekeeping difficulties and the trials of a limited
income added another element of discord. They removed to Sontheim near
Heilbronn with the idea of learning to adapt themselves to one another far
from the distractions of the town; but that did not better matters. They
lived apart for a time, and after some years they procured a divorce,
custody of the children being assigned to the father. The lady took up her
residence in Stuttgart, and Strauss paid her an allowance up to her death
in 1870.
What he suffered may be read between the lines in the passage in “The Old
Faith and the New” where he speaks of the sacredness of marriage and the
admissibility of divorce. The wound bled inwardly. His mental powers were
disabled. At this time he wrote little. Only in the apologue “Julian the
Apostate, or the Romanticist on the throne of the Caesars”—that brilliant
satire upon Frederic William IV., written in 1847—is there a flash of the
old spirit.
But in spite of his antipathy to the romantic disposition of the King of
Prussia he entered the lists in 1848 on behalf of the efforts of the
smaller German states to form a united Germany, apart from Austria, under
the hegemony of Prussia. He did not suffer his political acumen to be
blunted either by personal antipathies or by particularism. The citizens
of Ludwigsburg wished to have him as their representative in the Frankfort
parliament, but the rural population, who were pietistic in sympathies,
defeated his candidature. Instead, his native town sent him to the
Würtemberg Chamber of Deputies. But here his philistinism came to the fore
again. The phrase‐mongering revolutionary party in the chamber disgusted
him. He saw himself more and more forced to the “right,” and was obliged
to act politically with men whose reactionary sympathies he was far from
sharing. His constituents, meanwhile, were thoroughly discontented with
his attitude. In the end the position became intolerable. It was also
painful to him to have to reside in Stuttgart, where he could not avoid
meeting the woman who had brought so much misery into his life. Further—he
himself mentions this point in his memoirs—he had no practice in speaking
without manuscript, and cut a poor figure as a debater. Then came the
“Blum Case.” Robert Blum, a revolutionary, had been shot by court martial
in Vienna. The Würtemberg Chamber desired to vote a public celebration of
his funeral. Strauss did not think there was any ground for making a hero
of this agitator, merely because he had been shot, and was not inclined to
blame the Austrian Government very severely for meting out summary justice
to a disturber of the peace. His attitude brought on him a vote of censure
from his constituents. When, subsequently, the President of the Chamber
called him to order for asserting that a previous speaker had “concealed
by sleight of hand” (_wegeskamotiert_, “juggled away”) an important point
in the debate, he refused to accept the vote of censure, resigned his
membership, and ceased to attend the diets. As he himself put it, he
“jumped out of the boat.” Then began a period of restless wandering,
during which he beguiled his time with literary work. He wrote, _inter
alia_, upon Lessing, Hutten, and Reimarus, rediscovering the last‐named
for his fellow‐countrymen.
At the end of the ’sixties he returned once more to theology. His “Life of
Jesus adapted for the German People” appeared in 1864. In the preface he
refers to Renan, and freely acknowledges the great merits of his work.
The Prusso‐Austrian war placed him in a difficult position. His historical
insight made it impossible for him to share the particularism of his
friends; on the contrary, he recognised that the way was now being
prepared for the realisation of his dream of 1848—an alliance of the
smaller German States under the hegemony of Prussia. As he made no secret
of his opinions, he had the bitter experience of receiving the cold
shoulder from men who had hitherto loyally stood by him.
In the year 1870 it was granted to him to become the spokesman of the
German people; through a publication on Voltaire which had appeared not
long before he had become acquainted with Renan. In a letter to Strauss,
written after the first battles, Renan made a passing allusion to these
great events. Strauss seized the opportunity to explain to him, in a
vigorous “open letter” of the 12th of August, Germany’s reason and
justification for going to war. Receiving an answer from Renan, he then,
in a second letter, of the 29th of September, took occasion to defend
Germany’s right to demand the cession of Alsace, not on the ground of its
having formerly been German territory, but for the defence of her natural
frontiers. The resounding echo evoked by these words, inspired, as they
were, by the enthusiasm of the moment, compensated him for much of the
obloquy which he had had to bear.
His last work, “The Old Faith and the New,” appeared in 1872. Once more,
as in the work on theology published in 1840‐1841, he puts to himself the
question, What is there of permanence in this artificial compound of
theology and philosophy, faith and thought? But he puts the question with
a certain bitterness, and shows himself too much under the influence of
Darwinism, by which his mind was at that time dominated. The Hegelian
system of thought, which served as a firm basis for the work of 1840, has
fallen in ruins. Strauss is alone with his own thoughts, endeavouring to
raise himself above the new scientific world‐view. His powers of thought,
never, for all his critical acumen, strong on the creative side, and now
impaired by age, were unequal to the task. There is no force and no
greatness in the book.
To the question, “Are we still Christians?” he answers, “No.” But to his
second question, “Have we still a religion?” he is prepared to give an
affirmative answer, if the assumption is granted that the feeling of
dependence, of self‐surrender, of inner freedom, which has sprung from the
pantheistic world‐view, can be called religion. But instead of developing
the idea of this deep inner freedom, and presenting religion in the form
in which he had experienced it, he believes himself obliged to offer some
new construction based upon Darwinism, and sets himself to answer the two
questions, “How are we to understand the world?” and “How are we to
regulate our lives?”—the form of the latter is somewhat lacking in
distinction—in a quite impersonal way. It is only the schoolmaster and
pedant in him—who was always at the elbow of the thinker even in his
greatest works—that finds expression here.
It was a dead book, in spite of the many editions which it went through,
and the battle which raged over it was, like the fiercest of the Homeric
battles, a combat over the dead.
The theologians declared Strauss bankrupt, and felt themselves rich
because they had made sure of not being ruined by a similar unimaginative
honesty. Friedrich Nietzsche, from the height of his would‐be
Schopenhauerian pessimism, mocked at the fallen hero.
Before the year was out Strauss began to suffer from an internal ulcer.
For many months he bore his sufferings with quiet resignation and inner
serenity, until on the 8th of February 1874, in his native town of
Ludwigsburg, death set him free.
A few weeks earlier, on the 29th of December 1873, his sufferings and his
thoughts received illuminating expression in the following poignant
verses:—
Wem ich dieses klage,
Weiss, ich klage nicht;
Der ich dieses sage,
Fühlt, ich zage nicht.
Heute heisst’s verglimmen,
Wie ein Licht verglimmt,
In die Luft verschwimmen,
Wie ein Ton verschwimmt.
Möge schwach wie immer,
Aber hell und rein,
Dieser letzte Schimmer
Dieser Ton nur sein.(34)
He was buried on a stormy February day.
VIII. STRAUSS’S FIRST “LIFE OF JESUS”
First edition, 1835 and 1836. 2 vols. 1480 pp.
The second edition was unaltered.
Third edition, with alterations, 1838‐1839.
Fourth edition, agreeing with the first, 1840.
Considered as a literary work, Strauss’s first Life of Jesus is one of the
most perfect things in the whole range of learned literature. In over
fourteen hundred pages he has not a superfluous phrase; his analysis
descends to the minutest details, but he does not lose his way among them;
the style is simple and picturesque, sometimes ironical, but always
dignified and distinguished.
In regard to the application of the mythological explanation to Holy
Scripture, Strauss points out that De Wette, Eichhorn, Gabler, and others
of his predecessors had long ago freely applied it to the Old Testament,
and that various attempts had been made to portray the life of Jesus in
accordance with the critical assumptions upon which his undertaking was
based. He mentions especially Usteri as one who had helped to prepare the
way for him. The distinction between Strauss and those who had preceded
him upon this path consists only in this, that prior to him the conception
of myth was neither truly grasped nor consistently applied. Its
application was confined to the account of Jesus’ coming into the world
and of His departure from it, while the real kernel of the evangelical
tradition—the sections from the Baptism to the Resurrection—was left
outside the field of its application. Myth formed, to use Strauss’s
illustration, the lofty gateways at the entrance to, and at the exit from,
the Gospel history; between these two lofty gateways lay the narrow and
crooked streets of the naturalistic explanation.
The principal obstacle, Strauss continues, which barred the way to a
comprehensive application of myth, consisted in the supposition that two
of our Gospels, Matthew and John, were reports of eyewitnesses; and a
further difficulty was the offence caused by the word myth, owing to its
associations with the heathen mythology. But that any of our Evangelists
was an eyewitness, or stood in such relations with eyewitnesses as to make
the intrusion of myth unthinkable, is a thesis which there is no extant
evidence sufficient to prove. Even though the earthly life of the Lord
falls within historic times, and even if only a generation be assumed to
have elapsed between His death and the composition of the Gospels; such a
period would be sufficient to allow the historical material to become
intermixed with myth. No sooner is a great man dead than legend is busy
with his life.
Then, too, the offence of the word myth disappears for any one who has
gained an insight into the essential character of religious myth. It is
nothing else than the clothing in historic form of religious ideas, shaped
by the unconsciously inventive power of legend, and embodied in a historic
personality. Even on a priori grounds we are almost compelled to assume
that the historic Jesus will meet us in the garb of old Testament
Messianic ideas and primitive Christian expectations.
The main distinction between Strauss and his predecessors consisted in the
fact that they asked themselves anxiously how much of the historical life
of Jesus would remain as a foundation for religion if they dared to apply
the conception of myth consistently, while for him this question had no
terrors. He claims in his preface that he possessed one advantage over all
the critical and learned theologians of his time without which nothing can
be accomplished in the domain of history—the inner emancipation of thought
and feeling in regard to certain religious and dogmatic prepossessions
which he had early attained as a result of his philosophic studies.
Hegel’s philosophy had set him free, giving him a clear conception of the
relationship of idea and reality, leading him to a higher plane of
Christological speculation, and opening his eyes to the mystic
interpenetration of finitude and infinity, God and man.
God‐manhood, the highest idea conceived by human thought, is actually
realised in the historic personality of Jesus. But while conventional
thinking supposes that this phenomenal realisation must be perfect, true
thought, which has attained by genuine critical reasoning to a higher
freedom, knows that no idea can realise itself perfectly on the historic
plane, and that its truth does not depend on the proof of its having
received perfect external representation, but that its perfection comes
about through that which the idea carries into history, or through the way
in which history is sublimated into idea. For this reason it is in the
last analysis indifferent to what extent God‐manhood has been realised in
the person of Jesus; the important thing is that the idea is now alive in
the common consciousness of those who have been prepared to receive it by
its manifestation in sensible form, and of whose thought and imagination
that historical personality took such complete possession, that for them
the unity of Godhood and manhood assumed in Him enters into the common
consciousness, and the “moments” which constitute the outward course of
His life reproduce themselves in them in a spiritual fashion.
A purely historical presentation of the life of Jesus was in that first
period wholly impossible; what was operative was a creative reminiscence
acting under the impulse of the idea which the personality of Jesus had
called to life among mankind. And this idea of God‐manhood, the
realisation of which in every personality is the ultimate goal of
humanity, is the eternal reality in the Person of Jesus, which no
criticism can destroy.
However far criticism may go in proving the reaction of the idea upon the
presentment of the historical course of the life of Jesus, the fact that
Jesus represented that idea and called it to life among mankind is
something real, something that no criticism can annul. It is alive
thenceforward—to this day, and for ever more.
It is in this emancipation of spirit, and in the consciousness that Jesus
as the creator of the religion of humanity is beyond the reach of
criticism, that Strauss goes to work, and batters down the rubble, assured
that his pick can make no impression on the stone. He sees evidence that
the time has come for this undertaking in the condition of exhaustion
which characterised contemporary theology. The supernaturalistic
explanation of the events of the life of Jesus had been followed by the
rationalistic, the one making everything supernatural, the other setting
itself to make all the events intelligible as natural occurrences. Each
had said all that it had to say. From their opposition now arises a new
solution—the mythological interpretation. This is a characteristic example
of the Hegelian method—the _synthesis_ of a _thesis_ represented by the
supernaturalistic explanation with an _antithesis_ represented by the
rationalistic interpretation.
Strauss’s Life of Jesus is, therefore, like Schleiermacher’s, the product
of antithetic conceptions. But whereas in the latter the antitheses
Docetism and Ebionism are simply limiting conceptions, between which his
view is statically suspended, the synthesis with which Strauss operates
represents a composition of forces, of which his view is the dynamic
resultant. The dialectic is in the one case descriptive, in the other
creative. This Hegelian dialectic determines the method of the work. Each
incident of the life of Jesus is considered separately; first as
supernaturally explained, and then as rationalistically explained, and the
one explanation is refuted by the other. “By this means,” says Strauss in
his preface, “the incidental advantage is secured that the work is fitted
to serve as a repertory of the leading views and discussions of all parts
of the Gospel history.”
In every case the whole range of representative opinions is reviewed.
Finally the forced interpretations necessitated by the naturalistic
explanation of the narrative under discussion drives the reader back upon
the supernaturalistic. That had been recognised by Hase and
Schleiermacher, and they had felt themselves obliged to make a place for
inexplicable supernatural elements alongside of the historic elements of
the life of Jesus. Contemporaneously there had sprung up in all directions
new attempts to return by the aid of a mystical philosophy to the
supernaturalistic point of view of our forefathers. But in these Strauss
recognises only the last desperate efforts to make the past present and to
conceive the inconceivable; and in direct opposition to the reactionary
ineptitudes by means of which critical theology was endeavouring to work
its way out of rationalism, he sets up the hypothesis that these
inexplicable elements are mythical.
In the stories prior to the baptism, everything is myth. The narratives
are woven on the pattern of Old Testament prototypes, with modifications
due to Messianic or messianically interpreted passages. Since Jesus and
the Baptist came into contact with one another later, it is felt necessary
to represent their parents as having been connected. The attempts to
construct Davidic genealogies for Jesus, show us that there was a period
in the formation of the Gospel History during which the Lord was simply
regarded as the son of Joseph and Mary, otherwise genealogical studies of
this kind would not have been undertaken. Even in the story of the twelve‐
year‐old Jesus in the temple, there is scarcely more than a trace of
historical material.
In the narrative of the baptism we may take it as certainly unhistorical
that the Baptist received a revelation of the Messianic dignity of Jesus,
otherwise he could not later have come to doubt this. Whether his message
to Jesus is historical must be left an open question; its possibility
depends on whether the nature of his confinement admitted of such
communication with the outer world. Might not a natural reluctance to
allow the Baptist to depart this life without at least a dawning
recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus have here led to the insertion of
a legendary trait into the tradition? If so, the historical residuum would
be that Jesus was for a time one of the adherents of the Baptist, and was
baptized by him, and that He soon afterwards appeared in Galilee with the
same message which John had proclaimed, and even when He had outgrown his
influence, never ceased to hold John in high esteem, as is shown by the
eulogy which He pronounced upon him. But if the baptism of John was a
baptism of repentance with a view to “him who was to come,” Jesus cannot
have held Himself to be sinless when He submitted to it. Otherwise we
should have to suppose that He did it merely for appearance’ sake. Whether
it was in the moment of the baptism that the consciousness of His
Messiahship dawned upon Him, we cannot tell. This only is certain, that
the conception of Jesus as having been endowed with the Spirit at His
baptism, was independent of, and earlier than, that other conception which
held Him to have been supernaturally born of the Spirit. We have,
therefore, in the Synoptists several different strata of legend and
narrative, which in some cases intersect and in some are superimposed one
upon the other.
The story of the temptation is equally unsatisfactory, whether it be
interpreted as supernatural, or as symbolical either of an inward struggle
or of external events (as for example in Venturini’s interpretation of it,
where the part of the Tempter is played by a Pharisee); it is simply
primitive Christian legend, woven together out of Old Testament
suggestions.
The call of the first disciples cannot have happened as it is narrated,
without their having known anything of Jesus beforehand; the manner of the
call is modelled upon the call of Elisha by Elijah. The further legend
attached to it—Peter’s miraculous draught of fishes—has arisen out of the
saying about “fishers of men,” and the same idea is reflected, at a
different angle of refraction, in John xxi. The mission of the seventy is
unhistorical.
Whether the cleansing of the temple is historical, or whether it arose out
of a Messianic application of the text, “My house shall be called a house
of prayer,” cannot be determined. The difficulty of forming a clear idea
of the circumstances is not easily to be removed. How freely the
historical material has been worked up, is seen in the groups of stories
which have grown out of a single incident; as, for example, the anointing
of Jesus at Bethany by an unknown woman, out of which Luke has made an
anointing by a penitent sinner, and John an anointing by Mary of Bethany.
As regards the healings, some of them are certainly historical, but not in
the form in which tradition has preserved them. The recognition of Jesus
as Messiah by the demons immediately arouses suspicion. It is doubtless
rather to be ascribed to the tendency which grew up later to represent Him
as receiving, in His Messianic character, homage even from the world of
evil spirits, than to any advantage in respect of clearness of insight
which distinguished the mentally deranged, in comparison with their
contemporaries. The cure of the demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum may
well be historical, but, in other cases, the procedure is so often raised
into the region of the miraculous that a psychical influence of Jesus upon
the sufferer no longer suffices to explain it; the creative activity of
legend must have come in to confuse the account of what really happened.
One cure has sometimes given rise to three or four narratives. Sometimes
we can still recognise the influences which have contributed to mould a
story. When, for example, the disciples are unable to heal the lunatic boy
during Jesus’ absence on the Mount of Transfiguration, we are reminded of
2 Kings iv., where Elisha’s servant Gehazi tries in vain to bring the dead
boy to life by using the staff of the prophet. The immediate healing of
leprosy has its prototype in the story of Naaman the Syrian. The story of
the ten lepers shows so clearly a didactic tendency that its historic
value is thereby rendered doubtful.
The cures of blindness all go back to the case of the blind man at
Jericho. But who can say how far this is itself historical? The cures of
paralytics, too, belong rather to the equipment of the Messiah than to
history. The cures through touching clothes, and the healings at a
distance, have myth written on their foreheads. The fact is, the Messiah
must equal, nay, surpass, the deeds of the prophets. That is why raisings
from the dead figure among His miracles.
The nature miracles, over a collection of which Strauss puts the heading
“Sea‐Stories and Fish‐Stories,” have a much larger admixture of the
mythical. His opponents took him severely to task for this irreverent
superscription.
The repetition of the story of the feeding of the multitude arouses
suspicion regarding the credibility of what is narrated, and at once
invalidates the hypothesis of the apostolic authorship of the Gospel of
Matthew. Moreover, the incident was so naturally suggested by Old
Testament examples that it would have been a miracle if such a story had
not found its way into the Life of Jesus. An explanation on the analogy of
an expedited process of nature, is here, as in the case of the miracle at
Cana also, to be absolutely rejected. Strauss allows it to be laughed out
of court. The cursing of the fig‐tree and its fulfilment go back in some
way or other to a parable of Jesus, which was afterwards made into
history.
More important than the miracles heretofore mentioned are those which have
to do with Jesus Himself and mark the crises of His history. The
transfiguration had to find a place in the life of Jesus, because of the
shining of Moses’ countenance. In dealing with the narratives of the
resurrection it is evident that we must distinguish two different strata
of legend, an older one, represented by Matthew, which knew only of
appearances in Galilee, and a later, in which the Galilaean appearances
are excluded in favour of appearances in Jerusalem. In both cases,
however, the narratives are mythical. In any attempt to explain them we
are forced on one horn of the dilemma or the other—if the resurrection was
real, the death was not real, and vice versa. That the ascension is a myth
is self‐evident.
Such, and so radical, are the results at which Strauss’s criticism of the
supernaturalistic and the rationalistic explanations of the life of Jesus
ultimately arrives.
In reading Strauss’s discussions one is not so much struck with their
radical character, because of the admirable dialectic skill with which he
shows the total impossibility of any explanation which does not take
account of myth. On the whole, the supernaturalistic explanation, which at
least represents the plain sense of the narratives, comes off much better
than the rationalistic, the artificiality of which is everywhere
remorselessly exposed.
The sections which we have summarised are far from having lost their
significance at the present day. They marked out the ground which is now
occupied by modern critical study. And they filled in the death‐
certificates of a whole series of explanations which, at first sight, have
all the air of being alive, but are not really so. If these continue to
haunt present‐day theology, it is only as ghosts, which can be put to
flight by simply pronouncing the name of David Friedrich Strauss, and
which would long ago have ceased to “walk,” if the theologians who regard
Strauss’s book as obsolete would only take the trouble to read it.
The results so far considered do not represent the elements of the life of
Jesus which Strauss was prepared to accept as historical. He sought to
make the boundaries of the mythical embrace the widest possible area; and
it is clear that he extended them too far.
For one thing, he overestimates the importance of the Old Testament
motives in reference to the creative activity of the legend. He does not
see that while in many cases he has shown clearly enough the source of the
_form_ of the narrative in question, this does not suffice to explain its
_origin_. Doubtless, there is mythical material in the story of the
feeding of the multitude. But the existence of the story is not explained
by referring to the manna in the desert, or the miraculous feeding of a
multitude by Elisha.(35) The story in the Gospel has far too much
individuality for that, and stands, moreover, in much too closely
articulated an historical connexion. It must have as its basis some
historical fact. It is not a myth, though there is myth in it. Similarly
with the account of the transfiguration. The substratum of historical fact
in the life of Jesus is much more extensive than Strauss is prepared to
admit. Sometimes he fails to see the foundations, because he proceeds like
an explorer who, in working on the ruins of an Assyrian city, should cover
up the most valuable evidence with the rubbish thrown out from another
portion of the excavations.
Again, he sometimes rules out statements by assuming their impossibility
on purely dialectical grounds, or by playing off the narratives one
against another. The Baptist’s message to Jesus is a case in point. This
is connected with the fact that he often fails to realise the strong
confirmation which the narratives derive from their connexion with the
preceding and following context.
That, however, was only to be expected. Who ever discovered a true
principle without pressing its application too far?
What really alarmed his contemporaries was not so much the comprehensive
application of the mythical theory, as the general mining and sapping
operations which they were obliged to see brought to bear upon the
Gospels.
In section after section Strauss cross‐examines the reports on every
point, down to the minutest detail, and then pronounces in what proportion
an alloy of myth enters into each of them. In every case the decision is
unfavourable to the Gospel of John. Strauss was the first to take this
view. It is true that, at the end of the eighteenth century, many doubts
as to the authenticity of this Gospel had been expressed, and
Bretschneider, the famous General Superintendent at Gotha (1776‐1848), had
made a tentative collection of them in his _Probabilia_.(36) The essay
made some stir at the time. But Schleiermacher threw the aegis of his
authority over the authenticity of the Gospel, and it was the favourite
Gospel of the rationalists because it contained fewer miracles than the
others. Bretschneider himself declared that he had been brought to a
better opinion through the controversy.
After this episode the Johannine question had been shelved for fifteen
years. The excitement was, therefore, all the greater when Strauss
reopened the discussion. He was opposing a dogma of critical theology,
which, even at the present day, is wont to defend its dogmas with a
tenacity beyond that of the Church itself.
The luminous haze of apparent circumstantiality which had hitherto
prevented men from recognising the true character of this Gospel is
completely dissipated. Strauss shows that the Johannine representation of
the life of Jesus is dominated by a theory, and that its portraiture shows
the further development of the tendencies which are perceptible even in
the Synoptists. He shows this, for example, in the case of the Johannine
narrative of the baptism of Jesus, in which critics had hitherto seen the
most credible account of what occurred, pointing out that it is just in
this pseudo‐simplicity that the process of bringing Jesus and the Baptist
into the closest possible relations reaches its limit. Similarly, in
regard to the call of the first disciples, it is, according to Strauss, a
later postulate that they came from the Baptist’s following and were
brought by him to the Lord. Strauss does not scruple even to assert that
John introduces imaginary characters. If this Gospel relates fewer
miracles, the miracles which it retains are proportionately greater; so
great, indeed, that their absolutely miraculous character is beyond the
shadow of doubt; and, moreover, a moral or symbolical significance is
added.
Here, therefore, it is no longer the unconscious action of legend which
selects, creates, or groups the incidents, but a clearly‐determined
apologetic and dogmatic purpose.
The question regarding the different representations of the locality and
chronology of the life of Jesus, had always been decided, prior to
Strauss, in favour of the Fourth Gospel. De Wette makes it an argument
against the genuineness of Matthew’s Gospel that it mistakenly confines
the ministry of Jesus to Galilee. Strauss refuses to decide the question
by simply weighing the chronological and geographical statements one
against the other, lest he should be as one‐sided in his own way as the
defenders of the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel were in theirs. On this
point, he contents himself with remarking that if Jesus had really taught
in Jerusalem on several occasions, it is absolutely unintelligible how all
knowledge of this could have so completely disappeared from the Synoptic
tradition; for His going up to the Passover at which He met His death is
there represented as His sole journey to Jerusalem. On the other hand, it
is quite conceivable that if Jesus had only once been in Jerusalem there
would be a tendency for legend gradually to make several journeys out of
this one, on the natural assumption that He regularly went up to the
Feasts, and that He would proclaim His Gospel not merely in the remote
province, but also in the capital.
From the triumphal entry to the resurrection, the difference between the
Synoptic and Johannine narratives is so great that all attempts to
harmonise them are to be rejected. How are we to reconcile the statement
of the Synoptists that the ovation at the triumphal entry was offered by
Galilaeans who accompanied him, with that of John, according to which it
was offered by a multitude from Jerusalem which came out to welcome
Jesus—who, moreover, according to John, was not coming from Galilee and
Jericho—and escorted Him into the city. To suppose that there were two
different triumphal entries is absurd.
But the decision between John and the Synoptists is not based solely upon
their representation of the facts; the decisive consideration is found in
the ideas by which they are respectively dominated. John represents a more
advanced stage of the mythopoeic process, inasmuch as he has substituted
for the Jewish Messianic conception, the Greek metaphysical conception of
the Divine Sonship, and, on the basis of his acquaintance with the
Alexandrian Logos doctrine, even makes Jesus apply to Himself the Greek
speculative conception of pre‐existence. The writer is aware of an already
existing danger from the side of a Gnostic docetism, and has himself an
apologetic Christology to propound, thus fighting the Gnostics as a
Gnostic of another kind. That he is free from eschatological conceptions
is not, from the historical point of view, an advantage, but very much the
reverse. He is not unacquainted with eschatology, but deliberately
transforms it, endeavouring to substitute for the expectation of the
Second Coming of Christ, as an external event of the future, the thought
of His inward presence.
The most decisive evidence of all is found in the farewell discourses and
in the absence of all mention of the spiritual struggle in Gethsemane. The
intention here is to show that Jesus not only had a foreknowledge of His
death, but had long overcome it in anticipation, and went to meet His
tragic fate with perfect inward serenity. That, however, is no historical
narrative, but the final stage of reverent idealisation.
The question is decided. The Gospel of John is inferior to the Synoptics
as a historical source just in proportion as it is more strongly dominated
than they by theological and apologetic interests. It is true that the
assignment of the dominant motives is for Strauss’s criticism mainly a
matter of conjecture. He cannot define in detail the attitude and tendency
of this Gospel, because the development of dogma in the second century was
still to a great extent obscure. He himself admits that it was only
subsequently, through the labours of Baur, that the positions which he had
taken up in 1835 were rendered impregnable. And yet it is true to say that
Johannine study has added in principle nothing new to what was said by
Strauss. He recognised the decisive point. With critical acumen he
resigned the attempt to base a decision on a comparison of the historical
data, and allowed the theological character of the two lines of tradition
to determine the question. Unless this is done the debate is endless, for
an able man who has sworn allegiance to John will always find a thousand
ways in which the Johannine data can be reconciled with those of the
Synoptists, and is finally prepared to stake his life upon the exact point
at which the missing account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper must
be inserted into the narrative.
This changed estimate of John carries with it a reversal of the order in
which the Gospels are supposed to have originated. Instead of John, Luke,
Matthew, we have Matthew, Luke, and John—the first is last, and the last
first. Strauss’s unsophisticated instinct freed Matthew from the
humiliating vassalage to which Schleiermacher’s aesthetic had consigned
him. The practice of differentiating between John and the Synoptists,
which in the hands of Schleiermacher and Hase had been an elegant
amusement, now received unexpected support, and it at last became possible
for the study of the life of Jesus to go forward.
But no sooner had Strauss opened up the way than he closed it again, by
refusing to admit the priority of Mark. His attitude towards this Gospel
at once provokes opposition. For him Mark is an epitomising narrator, a
mere satellite of Matthew with no independent light. His terse and graphic
style makes on Strauss an impression of artificiality. He refuses to
believe this Evangelist when he says that on the first day at Capernaum
“the whole town” (Mark i. 33) came together before Peter’s door, and that,
on other occasions (Mark iii. 20, vi. 31), the press was so great that
Jesus and His disciples had no leisure so much as to eat. “All very
improbable traits,” he remarks, “the absence of which in Matthew is
entirely to his advantage, for what else are they than legendary
exaggerations?” In this criticism he is at one with Schleiermacher, who in
his essay on Luke(37) speaks of the unreal vividness of Mark “which often
gives his Gospel an almost apocryphal aspect.”
This prejudice against Mark has a twofold cause. In the first place, this
Gospel with its graphic details had rendered great service to the
rationalistic explanation of miracle. Its description of the cure of the
blind man at Bethsaida (Mark viii. 22‐26)—whose eyes Jesus first anointed
with spittle, whereupon he at first saw things dimly, and then, after he
had felt the touch of the Lord’s hand upon his eyes a second time, saw
more clearly—was a veritable treasure‐trove for rationalism. As Strauss is
disposed to deal much more peremptorily with the rationalists than with
the supernaturalists, he puts Mark upon his trial, as their accessory
before the fact, and pronounces upon him a judgment which is not entirely
unprejudiced. Moreover, it is not until the Gospels are looked at from the
point of view of the plan of the history and the inner connexion of events
that the superiority of Mark is clearly realised. But this way of looking
at the matter does not enter into Strauss’s purview. On the contrary, he
denies that there is any traceable connexion of events at all, and
confines his attention to determining the proportion of myth in the
content of each separate narrative.
Of the Synoptic question he does not, strictly speaking, take any account.
That was partly due to the fact that when he wrote it was in a thoroughly
unsatisfactory position. There was a confused welter of the most various
hypotheses. The priority of Mark, which had had earlier champions in
Koppe,(38) Storr,(39) Gratz,(40) and Herder,(41) was now maintained by
Credner and Lachmann, who saw in Matthew a combination of the logia‐
document with Mark. The “primitive Gospel” hypothesis of Eichhorn,
according to which the first three Gospels went back to a common source,
not identical with any of them, had become somewhat discredited. There had
been much discussion and various modifications of Griesbach’s “dependence
theory,” according to which Mark was pieced together out of Matthew and
Luke, and Schleiermacher’s _Diegesentheorie_,(42) which saw the primary
material not in a gospel, but in unconnected notes; from these,
collections of narrative passages were afterwards formed, which in the
post‐apostolic period coalesced into continuous descriptions of the life
of Jesus such as the three which have been preserved in our Synoptic
Gospels.
In this matter Strauss is a sceptical eclectic. In the main he may be said
to combine Griesbach’s theory of the secondary origin of Mark with
Schleiermacher’s _Diegesentheorie_, the latter answering to his method of
treating the sections separately. But whereas Schleiermacher had used the
plan of John’s Gospel as a framework into which to fit the independent
narratives, Strauss’s rejection of the Fourth Gospel left him without any
means of connecting the sections. He makes a point, indeed, of sharply
emphasising this want of connexion; and it was just this that made his
work appear so extreme.
The Synoptic discourses, like the Johannine, are composite structures,
created by later tradition out of sayings which originally belonged to
different times and circumstances, arranged under certain leading ideas so
as to form connected discourses. The sermon on the mount, the discourse at
the sending forth of the twelve, the great parable‐discourse, the polemic
against the Pharisees, have all been gradually formed like geological
deposits. So far as the original juxtaposition may be supposed to have
been here and there preserved, Matthew is doubtless the most trustworthy
authority for it. “From the comparison which we have been making,” says
Strauss in one passage, “we can already see that the hard grit of these
sayings of Jesus (_die körnigen Reden Jesu_) has not indeed been dissolved
by the flood of oral tradition, but they have often been washed away from
their original position and like rolling pebbles (_Gerölle_) have been
deposited in places to which they do not properly belong.”(43) And,
moreover, we find this distinction between the first three Evangelists,
viz. that Matthew is a skilful collector who, while he is far from having
been able always to give the original connexion, has at least known how to
bring related passages aptly together, whereas in the other two many
fragmentary sayings have been left exactly where chance had deposited
them, which was generally in the interstices between the larger masses of
discourse. Luke, indeed, has in some cases made an effort to give them an
artistic setting, which is, however, by no means a satisfactory substitute
for the natural connexion.
It is in his criticism of the parables that Strauss is most extreme. He
starts out from the assumption that they have mutually influenced one
another, and that those which may possibly be genuine have only been
preserved in a secondary form. In the parable of the marriage supper of
the king’s son, for example, he confidently assumes that the conduct of
the invited guests, who finally ill‐treated and slew the messengers, and
the question why the guest is not wearing a wedding‐garment are secondary
features.
How external he supposes the connexion of the narratives to be is clear
from the way in which he explains the juxtaposition of the story of the
transfiguration with the “discourse while descending the mountain.” They
have, he says, really nothing to do with one another. The disciples on one
occasion asked Jesus about the coming of Elijah as forerunner; Elijah also
appears in the story of the transfiguration: accordingly tradition simply
grouped the transfiguration and the discourse together under the heading
“Elijah,” and, later on, manufactured a connexion between them.
The tendency of the work to purely critical analysis, the ostentatious
avoidance of any positive expression of opinion, and not least, the manner
of regarding the Synoptists as mere bundles of narratives and discourses,
make it difficult—indeed, strictly speaking, impossible—to determine
Strauss’s own distinctive conception of the life of Jesus, to discover
what he really thinks is moving behind the curtain of myth. According to
the view taken in regard to this point his work becomes either a negative
or a positive life of Jesus. There are, for instance, a number of
incidental remarks which contain the suggestion of a positive construction
of the life of Jesus. If they were taken out of their context and brought
together they would yield a picture which would have points of contact
with the latest eschatological view. Strauss, however, deliberately
restricts his positive suggestions to these few detached remarks. He
follows out no line to its conclusion. Each separate problem is indeed
considered, and light is thrown upon it from various quarters with much
critical skill. But he will not venture on a solution of any of them.
Sometimes, when he thinks he has gone too far in the way of positive
suggestion, he deliberately wipes it all out again with some expression of
scepticism.
As to the duration of the ministry he will not even offer a vague
conjecture. As to the connexion of certain events, nothing can, according
to him, be known, since the Johannine outline cannot be accepted and the
Synoptists arrange everything with an eye to analogies and association of
ideas, though they flattered themselves that they were giving a
chronologically arranged narrative. From the contents of the narratives,
however, and from the monotonous recurrence of certain formulae of
connexion, it is evident that no clear view of an organically connected
whole can be assumed to be present in their work. We have no fixed points
to enable us to reconstruct even in a measure the chronological order.
Especially interesting is his discussion of the title “Son of Man.” In the
saying “the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath day” (Matt. xii. 8),
the expression might, according to Strauss, simply denote “man.” In other
passages one gets the impression that Jesus spoke of the Son of Man as a
supernatural person, quite distinct from Himself, but identified with the
Messiah. This is the most natural explanation of the passage in Matt. x.
23, where he promises the disciples, in sending them forth, that they
shall not have gone over the cities of Israel before the Son of Man shall
come. Here Jesus speaks of the Messiah as if He Himself were his
forerunner. These sayings would, therefore, fall in the first period,
before He knew Himself to be the Messiah. Strauss does not suspect the
significance of this incidental remark; it contains the germ of the
solution of the problem of the Son of Man on the lines of Johannes Weiss.
But immediately scepticism triumphs again. How can we tell, asks Strauss,
where the title Son of Man is genuine in the sayings of Jesus, and where
it has been inserted without special significance, merely from habit?
Not less insoluble, in his opinion, is the question regarding the point of
time at which Jesus claimed the Messianic dignity for Himself. “Whereas in
John,” Strauss remarks, “Jesus remains constant in His avowal, his
disciples and followers constant in their conviction, that He is the
Messiah; in the Synoptics, on the other hand, there are, so to speak,
relapses to be observed; so that, in the case of the disciples and the
people generally, the conviction of Jesus’ Messiahship expressed on
earlier occasions, sometimes, in the course of the narrative, disappears
again and gives place to a much lower view of Him; and even Jesus Himself,
in comparison with His earlier unambiguous declaration, is more reserved
on later occasions.” The account of the confession of the Messiahship at
Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus pronounces Peter blessed because of his
confession, and at the same time forbids the Twelve to speak of it, is
unintelligible, since according to this same Gospel His Messiahship had
been mooted by the disciples on several previous occasions, and had been
acknowledged by the demoniacs. The Synoptists, therefore, contradict
themselves. Then there are the further cases in which Jesus forbids the
making known of His Messiahship, without any reason whatever. It would, no
doubt, be historically possible to assume that it only gradually dawned
upon Him that He was the Messiah—in any case not until after His baptism
by John, as otherwise He would have to be supposed to have made a pretence
upon that occasion—and that as often as the thought that He might be the
Messiah was aroused in others by something that occurred, and was
suggested to Him from without, He was immediately alarmed at hearing
spoken, aloud and definitely, that which He Himself had scarcely dared to
cherish as a possibility, or in regard to which He had only lately
attained to a clear conviction.
From these suggestions one thing is evident, namely, that for Strauss the
Messianic consciousness of Jesus was an historical fact, and is not to be
referred, as has sometimes been supposed, to myth. To assert that Strauss
dissolved the life of Jesus into myth is, in fact, an absurdity which,
however often it may be repeated by people who have not read his book, or
have read it only superficially, does not become any the less absurd by
repetition.
To come to detail, Jesus thought of His Messiahship, according to Strauss,
in the form that He, although of human parentage, should after His earthly
life be taken up into heaven, and thence should come again to bring in His
Kingdom. “As, moreover, in the higher Jewish theology, immediately after
the time of Jesus, the idea of the pre‐existence of the Messiah was
present, the conjecture naturally suggests itself that it was also present
at the time when Jesus’ thoughts were being formed, and that consequently,
if He once began to think of Himself as the Messiah, He might also have
referred to Himself this feature of the Messianic conception. Whether
Jesus had been initiated, as Paul was, into the wisdom of the schools in
such a way that He could draw this conception from it, is no doubt open to
question.”
In his treatment of the eschatology Strauss makes a valiant effort to
escape from the dilemma “_either_ spiritual _or_ political” in regard to
the Messianic plans of Jesus, and to make the eschatological expectation
intelligible as one which did not set its hopes upon human aid, but on
Divine intervention. This is one of the most important contributions to a
real understanding of the eschatological problem. Sometimes one almost
seems to be reading Johannes Weiss; as, for example, when Strauss explains
that Jesus could promise His followers that they should sit on thrones
without thinking of a political revolution, because He expected a reversal
of present conditions to be brought about by God, and referred this
judicial authority and kingly rule to the time of the παλιγγενεσία.
“Jesus, therefore, certainly expected to restore the throne of David, and,
with His disciples, to rule over a people freed from political bondage,
but in this expectation He did not set His hopes on the sword of human
followers (Luke xxii. 38, Matt. xxvi. 52), but upon the legions of angels
which His heavenly Father could give Him (Matt. xxvi. 53). When He speaks
of the coming of His Messianic glory, it is with angels and heavenly
powers that He surrounds Himself (Matt. xvi. 27, xxiv. 30 ff., xxv. 31).
Before the majesty of the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven the
nations will submit without striking a blow, and at the sound of the
angel’s trumpet‐blast will, with the dead who shall then arise, range
themselves before Him and His disciples for judgment. All this Jesus did
not purpose to bring about by any arbitrary action of His own, but left it
to His heavenly Father, who alone knew the right moment for this
catastrophic change (Mark xiii. 32), to give Him the signal of its coming;
and He did not waver in His faith even when death came upon Him before its
realisation. Any one who shrinks from adopting this view of the Messianic
background of Jesus’ plans, because he fears by so doing to make Jesus a
visionary enthusiast, must remember how exactly these hopes corresponded
to the long‐cherished Messianic expectation of the Jews; and how easily,
on the supernaturalistic assumptions of the period and among a people
which preserved so strict an isolation as the Jews, an ideal which was in
itself fantastic, if it were the national ideal and had some true and good
features, could take possession of the mind even of one who was not
inclined to fanaticism.”
One of the principal proofs that the preaching of Jesus was
eschatologically conditioned is the Last Supper. “When,” says Strauss, “He
concluded the celebration with the saying, ‘I will not drink henceforth of
the fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you in my Father’s
kingdom,’ He would seem to have expected that in the Messianic kingdom the
Passover would be celebrated with peculiar solemnity. Therefore, in
assuring them that they shall next partake of the Feast, not in the
present age, but in the new era, He evidently expects that within a year’s
time the pre‐Messianic dispensation will have come to an end and the
Messianic age will have begun.” But it must be admitted, Strauss
immediately adds, that the definite assurance which the Evangelists put
into His mouth may after all only have been in reality an expression of
pious hope. In a similar way he qualifies his other statements regarding
the eschatological ideas of Jesus by recalling that we cannot determine
the part which the expectations of primitive Christianity may have had in
moulding these sayings.
Thus, for example, the opinions which he expresses on the great Parousia
discourse in Matt. xxiv. are extremely cautious. The detailed prophecies
regarding the Second Coming which the Synoptists put into the mouth of
Jesus cannot be derived from Jesus Himself. The question suggests itself,
however, whether He did not cherish the hope, and make the promise, that
He would one day appear in glory as the Messiah? “If in any period of His
life He held Himself to be the Messiah—and that there was a period when He
did so there can be no doubt—and if He described Himself as the Son of
Man, He must have expected the coming in the clouds which Daniel had
ascribed to the Son of Man; but it may be questioned whether He thought of
this as an exaltation which should take place even in His lifetime, or as
something which was only to take place after His death. Utterances like
Matt. x. 23, xvi. 28 rather suggest the former, but the possibility
remains that later, when he had begun to feel that His death was certain,
his conception took the latter form, and that Matt. xxvi. 64 was spoken
with this in view.” Thus, even for Strauss, the problem of the Son of Man
is already the central problem in which are focused all the questions
regarding the Messiahship and eschatology.
From all this it may be seen how strongly he had been influenced by
Reimarus, whom, indeed, he frequently mentions. It would be still more
evident if he had not obscured his historical views by constantly bringing
the mythological explanation into play.
The thought of the supernatural realisation of the Kingdom of God must
also, according to Strauss, be the starting‐point of any attempt to
understand Jesus’ attitude towards the Law and the Gentiles, so far as
that is possible in view of the conflicting data. The conservative
passages must carry most weight. They need not necessarily fall at the
beginning of His ministry, because it is questionable whether the
hypothesis of a later period of increasing liberality in regard to the law
and the Gentiles can be made probable. There would be more chance of
proving that the conservative sayings are the only authentic ones, for
unless all the indications are misleading the _terminus a quo_ for this
change of attitude is the death of Jesus. He no doubt looked forward to
the abolition of the Law and the removal of the barriers between Jew and
Gentile, but only in the future Kingdom. “If that be so,” remarks Strauss,
“the difference between the views of Jesus and of Paul consisted only in
this, that while Jesus expected these limitations to fall away when, at
His second coming, the earth should be renewed, Paul believed himself
justified in doing away with them in consequence of the first coming of
the Messiah, upon the still unregenerated earth.”
The eschatological passages are therefore the most authentic of all. If
there is anything historic about Jesus, it is His assertion of the claim
that in the coming kingdom He would be manifested as the Son of Man.
On the other hand, in the predictions of the passion and resurrection we
are on quite uncertain ground. The detailed statements regarding the
manner of the catastrophe place it beyond doubt that we have here
_vaticinia ex eventu_. Otherwise the despair of the disciples when the
events occurred could not be explained. Yet it is possible that Jesus had
a prevision of His death. Perhaps the resolve to die was essential to His
conception of the Messiahship and He was not forced thereto by
circumstances. This we might be able to determine with certainty if we had
more exact information regarding the conception of the suffering Messiah
in contemporary Jewish theology; which is, however, not available. We do
not even know whether the conception had ever existed in Judaism. “In the
New Testament it almost looks as if no one among the Jews had ever thought
of a suffering or dying Messiah.” The conception can, however, certainly
be found in later passages of Rabbinic literature.
The question is therefore insoluble. We must be content to work with
possibilities. The result of a full discussion of the resolve to suffer
and the significance attached to the suffering is summed up by Strauss in
the following sentences. “In view of these considerations it is possible
that Jesus might, by a natural process of thought, have come to see how
greatly such a catastrophe would contribute to the spiritual development
of His disciples, and in accordance with national conceptions, interpreted
in the light of some Old Testament passages, might have arrived at the
idea of an atoning power in His Messianic death. At the same time the
explicit utterance which the Synoptists attribute to Jesus describing His
death as an atoning sacrifice, might well belong rather to the system of
thought which grew up after the death of Jesus, and the saying which the
Fourth Gospel puts into His mouth regarding the relation of His death to
the coming of the Paraclete might seem to be prophecy after the event. So
that even in these sayings of Jesus regarding the purpose of His death, it
is necessary to distinguish between the particular and the general.”
Strauss’s “Life of Jesus” has a different significance for modern theology
from that which it had for his contemporaries. For them it was the work
which made an end of miracle as a matter of historical belief, and gave
the mythological explanation its due.
We, however, find in it also an historical aspect of a positive character,
inasmuch as the historic Personality which emerges from the mist of myth
is a Jewish claimant of the Messiahship, whose world of thought is purely
eschatological. Strauss is, therefore, no mere destroyer of untenable
solutions, but also the prophet of a coming advance in knowledge.
It was, however, his own fault that his merit in this respect was not
recognised in the nineteenth century, because in his “Life of Jesus for
the German People” (1864), where he undertook to draw a positive historic
picture of Jesus, he renounced his better opinions of 1835, eliminated
eschatology, and, instead of the historic Jesus, portrayed the Jesus of
liberal theology.
IX. STRAUSS’S OPPONENTS AND SUPPORTERS
_David Friedrich Strauss._ Streitschriften zur Verteidigung meiner
Schrift über das Leben‐Jesu und zur Charakteristik der
gegenwärtigen Theologie. (Replies to criticisms of my work on the
Life of Jesus; with an estimate of present‐day theology.)
Tübingen, 1837.
Das Leben‐Jesu, 3te verbesserte Auflage (3rd revised edition).
1838‐1839, Tübingen.
_August Tholuck._ Die Glaubwürdigkeit der evangelischen
Geschichte, zugleich eine Kritik des Lebens Jesu von Strauss. (The
Credibility of the Gospel History, with an incidental criticism of
Strauss’s “Leben‐Jesu.”) Hamburg, 1837.
_Aug. Wilh. Neander._ Das Leben Jesu‐Christi. Hamburg, 1837.
Dr. Neanders auf höhere Veranlassung abgefasstes Gutachten über
das Buch des Dr. Strauss’ “Leben‐Jesu” und das in Beziehung auf
die Verbreitung desselben zu beachtende Verfahren. (Dr. Neander’s
report, drawn up at the request of the authorities, upon Dr.
Strauss’s “Leben‐Jesu” and the measures to be adopted in regard to
its circulation.) 1836.
_Leonhard Hug._ Gutachten über das Leben‐Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet
von D. Fr. Strauss. (Report on D. Fr. Strauss’s critical work upon
the Life of Jesus.) Freiburg, 1840.
_Christian Gottlob Wilke._ Tradition und Mythe. Ein Beitrag zur
historischen Kritik der kanonischen Evangelien überhaupt, wie
insbesondere zur Würdigung des mythischen Idealismus im Leben‐Jesu
von Strauss. (Tradition and Myth. A Contribution to the General
Historical Criticism of the Gospels; with special reference to the
mythical idealism of Strauss’s “Leben‐Jesu.”) Leipzig, 1837.
_August Ebrard._ Wissenschaftliche Kritik der evangelischen
Geschichte. (Scientific Criticism of the Gospel History.)
Frankfort, 1842.
_Georg Heinr. Aug. Ewald._ Geschichte Christus’ und seiner Zeit.
(History of Christ and His Times.) 1855. Fifth volume of the
“Geschichte des Volkes Israel.”
_Christoph Friedrich von Ammon._ Die Geschichte des Lebens Jesu
mit steter Rücksicht auf die vorhandenen Quellen. (History of the
Life of Jesus with constant reference to the extant sources.) 3
vols. 1842‐1847.
Scarcely ever has a book let loose such a storm of controversy; and
scarcely ever has a controversy been so barren of immediate result. The
fertilising rain brought up a crop of toad‐stools. Of the forty or fifty
essays on the subject which appeared in the next five years, there are
only four or five which are of any value, and even of these the value is
very small.
Strauss’s first idea was to deal with each of his opponents separately,
and he published in 1837 three successive _Streitschriften_.(44) In the
preface to the first of these he states that he has kept silence for two
years from a rooted objection to anything in the nature of reply or
counter‐criticism, and because he had little expectation of any good
results from such controversy. These essays are able, and are often
written with biting scorn, especially that directed against his inveterate
enemy, Steudel of Tübingen, the representative of intellectual
supernaturalism, and that against Eschenmayer, a pastor, also of Tübingen.
To a work of the latter, “The Iscariotism of our Days” (1835), he had
referred in the preface to the second volume of his Life of Jesus in the
following remark: “This offspring of the legitimate marriage between
theological ignorance and religious intolerance, blessed by a sleep‐
walking philosophy, succeeds in making itself so completely ridiculous
that it renders any serious reply unnecessary.”
But for all his sarcasm Strauss does not show himself an adroit debater in
this controversy, any more than in later times in the Diet.
It is indeed remarkable how unskilled in polemics is this man who had
produced a critical work of the first importance with almost playful ease.
If his opponents made no effort to understand him rightly—and many of them
certainly wrote without having carefully studied the fourteen hundred
pages of his two volumes—Strauss on his part seemed to be stricken with a
kind of uncertainty, lost himself in a maze of detail, and failed to keep
continually re‐formulating the main problems which he had set up for
discussion, and so compelling his adversaries to face them fairly.
Of these problems there were three. The first was composed of the related
questions regarding miracle and myth; the second concerned the connexion
of the Christ of faith with the Jesus of history; the third referred to
the relation of the Gospel of John to the Synoptists.
It was the first that attracted most attention; more than half the critics
devoted themselves to it alone. Even so they failed to get a thorough
grasp of it. The only thing that they clearly see is that Strauss
altogether denies the miracles; the full scope of the mythological
explanation as applied to the traditional records of the life of Jesus,
and the extent of the historical material which Strauss is prepared to
accept, is still a riddle to them. That is in some measure due, it must in
fairness be said, to the arrangement of Strauss’s own work, in which the
unconnected series of separate investigations makes the subject
unnecessarily difficult even for one who wishes to do the author justice.
The attitude towards miracle assumed in the anti‐Strauss literature shows
how far the anti‐rationalistic reaction had carried professedly scientific
theology in the direction of supernaturalism. Some significant symptoms
had begun to show themselves even in Hase and Schleiermacher of a tendency
towards the overcoming of rationalism by a kind of intellectual gymnastic
which ran some risk of falling into insincerity. The essential character
of this new kind of historical theology first came to light when Strauss
put it to the question, and forced it to substitute a plain yes or no for
the ambiguous phrases with which this school had only too quickly
accustomed itself to evade the difficulties of the problem of miracle. The
mottoes with which this new school of theology adorned the works which it
sent forth against the untimely troubler of their peace manifest its
complete perplexity, and display the coquettish resignation with which the
sacred learning of the time essayed to cover its nakedness, after it had
succumbed to the temptation of the serpent insincerity. Adolf Harless of
Erlangen chose the melancholy saying of Pascal: “Tout tourne bien pour les
élus, jusqu’aux obscurités de l’écriture, car ils les honorent à cause des
clartés divines qu’ils y voient; et tout tourne en mal aux reprouvés,
jusqu’aux clartés, car ils les blasphèment à cause des obscurités qu’ils
n’entendent pas.”(45)
Herr Wilhelm Hoffmann,(46) deacon at Winnenden, selected Bacon’s aphorism:
“Animus ad amplitudinem mysteriorum pro modulo suo dilatetur, non mysteria
ad angustias animi constringantur.” (Let the mind, so far as possible, be
expanded to the greatness of the mysteries, not the mysteries contracted
to the compass of the mind.)
Professor Ernst Osiander,(47) of the seminary at Maulbronn, appeals to
Cicero: “O magna vis veritatis, quae contra hominum ingenia, calliditatem,
sollertiam facillime se per ipsam defendit.” (O mighty power of truth,
which against all the ingenious devices, the craft and subtlety, of men,
easily defends itself by its own strength!)
Franz Baader, of Munich,(48) ornaments his work with the reflection: “Il
faut que les hommes soient bien loin de toi, ô Vérité! puisque tu supporte
(_sic!_) leur ignorance, leurs erreurs, et leurs crimes.” (Men must indeed
be far from thee, O Truth, since thou art able to bear with their
ignorance, their errors, and their crimes!)
Tholuck(49) girds himself with the Catholic maxim of Vincent of Lerins:
“Teneamus quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est.” (Let us
hold that which has been believed always, everywhere, by all.)
The fear of Strauss had, indeed, a tendency to inspire Protestant
theologians with catholicising ideas. One of the most competent reviewers
of his book, Dr. Ullmann in the _Studien und Kritiken_, had expressed the
wish that it had been written in Latin to prevent its doing harm among the
people.(50) An anonymous dialogue of the period shows us the schoolmaster
coming in distress to the clergyman. He has allowed himself to be
persuaded into reading the book by his acquaintance the Major, and he is
now anxious to get rid of the doubts which it has aroused in him. When his
cure has been safely accomplished, the reverend gentleman dismisses him
with the following exhortation: “Now I hope that after the experience
which you have had you will for the future refrain from reading books of
this kind, which are not written for you, and of which there is no
necessity for you to take any notice; and for the refutation of which,
should that be needful, you have no equipment. You may be quite sure that
anything useful or profitable for you which such books may contain will
reach you in due course through the proper channel and in the right way,
and, that being so, you are under no necessity to jeopardise any part of
your peace of mind.”
Tholuck’s work professedly aims only at presenting a “historical argument
for the credibility of the miracle stories of the Gospels.” “Even if we
admit,” he says in one place, “the scientific position that no act can
have proceeded from Christ which transcends the laws of nature, there is
still room for the mediating view of Christ’s miracle‐working activity.
This leads us to think of mysterious powers of nature as operating in the
history of Christ—powers such as we have some partial knowledge of, as,
for example, those magnetic powers which have survived down to our own
time, like ghosts lingering on after the coming of day.” From the
standpoint of this spurious rationalism he proceeds to take Strauss to
task for rejecting the miracles. “Had this latest critic been able to
approach the Gospel miracles without prejudice, in the Spirit of
Augustine’s declaration, ‘dandum est deo, eum aliquid facere posse quod
nos investigare non possumus,’ he would certainly—since he is a man who in
addition to the acumen of the scholar possesses sound common sense—have
come to a different conclusion in regard to these difficulties. As it is,
however, he has approached the Gospels with the conviction that miracles
are impossible; and on that assumption, it was certain before the argument
began that the Evangelists were either deceivers or deceived.”
Neander, in his Life of Jesus,(51) handles the question with more delicacy
of touch, rather in the style of Schleiermacher. “Christ’s miracles,” he
explains, “are to be understood as an influencing of nature, human or
material.” He does not, however, give so much prominence as Schleiermacher
had done to the difficulty involved in the supposition of an influence
exercised upon material nature. He repeats Schleiermacher’s assertions,
but without the imposing dialectic which in Schleiermacher’s hands almost
commands assent. In regard to the miracle at Cana he remarks: “We cannot
indeed form any clear conception of an effect brought about by the
introduction of a higher creative principle into the natural order, since
we have no experience on which to base such a conception, but we are by no
means compelled to take this extreme view as to what happened; we may
quite well suppose that Christ by an immediate influence upon the water
communicated to it a higher potency which enabled it to produce the
effects of strong wine.” In the case of all the miracles he makes a point
of seeking not only the explanation, but the higher symbolical
significance. The miracle of the fig‐tree—which is _sui generis_—has only
this symbolical significance, seeing that it is not beneficent and
creative but destructive. “It can only be thought of as a vivid
illustration of a prediction of the Divine judgment, after the manner of
the symbolic actions of the Old Testament prophets.”
With reference to the ascension and the resurrection he writes: “Even
though we can form no clear idea of the exact way in which the exaltation
of Christ from the earth took place—and indeed there is much that is
obscure in regard to the earthly life of Christ after His
resurrection—yet, in its place in the organic unity of the Christian
faith, it is as certain as the resurrection, which apart from it cannot be
recognised in its true significance.”
That extract is typical of Neander’s Life of Jesus, which in its time was
hailed as a great achievement, calculated to provide a learned refutation
of Strauss’s criticism, and of which a seventh edition appeared as late as
1872. The real piety of heart with which it is imbued cannot conceal the
fact that it is a patchwork of unsatisfactory compromises. It is the child
of despair, and has perplexity for godfather. One cannot read it without
pain.
Neander, however, may fairly claim to be judged, not by this work, but by
his personal attitude in the Strauss controversy. And here he appears as a
magnanimous and dignified representative of theological science.
Immediately after the appearance of Strauss’s book, which, it was at once
seen, would cause much offence, the Prussian Government asked Neander to
report upon it, with a view to prohibiting the circulation, should there
appear to be grounds for doing so. He presented his report on the 15th of
November 1835, and, an inaccurate account of it having appeared in the
_Allgemeine Zeitung_, subsequently published it.(52) In it he censures the
work as being written from a too purely rationalistic point of view, but
strongly urges the Government not to suppress it by an edict. He describes
it as “a book which, it must be admitted, constitutes a danger to the
sacred interests of the Church, but which follows the method of
endeavouring to produce a reasoned conviction by means of argument. Hence
any other method of dealing with it than by meeting argument with argument
will appear in the unfavourable light of an arbitrary interference with
the freedom of science.”
In holding that scientific theology will be able by its own strength to
overthrow whatever in Strauss’s Life of Jesus deserves to be overthrown,
Neander is at one with the anonymous writer of “Aphorisms in Defence of
Dr. Strauss and his Work,”(53) who consoles himself with Goethe’s saying—
Das Tüchtige, auch wenn es falsch ist,
Wirkt Tag für Tag, von Haus zu Haus;
Das Tüchtige, wenn’s wahrhaftig ist,
Wirkt über alle Zeiten hinaus.(54)
(Strive hard, and though your aim be wrong,
Your work shall live its little day;
Strive hard, and for the truth be strong,
Your work shall live and grow for aye.)
“Dr. Strauss,” says this anonymous writer, “does not represent the
author’s views, and he on his part cannot undertake to defend Dr.
Strauss’s conclusions. But it is clear to him that Dr. Strauss’s work
considered as a scientific production is more scientific than the works
opposed to it from the side of religion are religious. Otherwise why are
they so passionate, so apprehensive, so unjust?”
This confidence in pure critical science was not shared by Herr Privat‐
Docent Daniel Schenkel of Basle, afterwards Professor at Heidelberg. In a
dreary work dedicated to his Göttingen teacher Lücke, on “Historical
Science and the Church,”(55) he looks for future salvation towards that
middle region where faith and science interpenetrate, and hails the new
supernaturalism which approximates to a scientific treatment of these
subjects “as a hopeful phenomenon.” He rejoices in the violent opposition
at Zurich which led to the cancelling of Strauss’s appointment, regarding
it as likely to exercise an elevating influence. A similarly lofty
position is taken up by the anonymous author of “Dr. Strauss and the
Zurich Church,”(56) to which De Wette contributed a preface. Though
professing great esteem for Strauss, and admitting that from the purely
historical point of view he is in the right, the author feels bound to
congratulate the Zurichers on having refused to admit him to the office of
teacher.
The pure rationalists found it much more difficult than did the mediating
theologians, whether of the older or younger school, to adjust their
attitude to the new solution of the miracle question. Strauss himself had
made it difficult for them by remorselessly exposing the absurd and
ridiculous aspects of their method, and by refusing to recognise them as
allies in the battle for truth, as they really were. Paulus would have
been justified in bearing him a grudge. But the inner greatness of that
man of hard exterior comes out in the fact that he put his personal
feelings in the background, and when Strauss became the central figure in
the battle for the purity and freedom of historical science he ignored his
attacks on rationalism and came to his defence. In a very remarkable
letter to the Free Canton of Zurich, on “Freedom in Theological Teaching
and in the Choice of Teachers for Colleges,”(57) he urges the council and
the people to appoint Strauss because of the principle at stake, and in
order to avoid giving any encouragement to the retrograde movement in
historical science. It is as though he felt that the end of rationalism
had come, but that, in the person of the enemy who had defeated it, the
pure love of truth, which was the only thing that really mattered, would
triumph over all the forces of reaction.
It would not, however, be true to say that Strauss had beaten rationalism
from the field. In Ammon’s famous Life of Jesus,(58) in which the author
takes up a very respectful attitude towards Strauss, there is a vigorous
survival of a peculiar kind of rationalism inspired by Kant. For Ammon, a
miraculous event can only exist when its natural causes have been
discovered. “The sacred history is subject to the same laws as all other
narratives of antiquity.” Lücke, in dealing with the raising of Lazarus,
had thrown out the question whether Biblical miracles could be thought of
historically at all, and in so doing supposed that he was putting their
absolute character on a firmer basis. “We,” says Ammon, “give the opposite
answer from that which is expected; only historically conceivable miracles
can be admitted.” He cannot away with the constant confusion of faith and
knowledge found in so many writers “who swim in an ocean of ideas in which
the real and the illusory are as inseparable as salt and sea‐water in the
actual ocean.” In every natural process, he explains, we have to suppose,
according to Kant, an interpenetration of natural and supernatural. For
that very reason the purely supernatural does not exist for our
experience. “It is no doubt certain,” so he lays it down on the lines of
Kant’s _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, “that every act of causation which
goes forth from God must be immediate, universal, and eternal, because it
is thought as an effect of His will, which is exalted above space and time
and interpenetrates both of them, but without abolishing them, leaving
them undisturbed in their continuity and succession. For us men,
therefore, all action of God is mediate, because we are completely
surrounded by time and space, as the fish is by the sea or the bird by the
air, and apart from these relations we should be incapable of
apperception, and therefore of any real experience. As free beings we can,
indeed, think of miracle as immediately Divine, but we cannot perceive it
as such, because that would be impossible without seeing God, which for
wise reasons is forbidden to us.” “In accordance with these principles, we
shall hold it to be our duty in what follows to call attention to the
natural side even of the miracles of Jesus, since apart from this no fact
can become an object of belief.”
It is only in this intelligible sense that the cures of Jesus are to be
thought of as “miracles.” The magnetic force, with which the mediating
theology makes play, is to be rejected. “The cure of psychical diseases by
the power of the word and of faith is the only kind of cure in which the
student of natural science can find any basis for a conjecture regarding
the way in which the cures of Jesus were effected.”
In the case of the other miracles Ammon assumes a kind of Occasionalism,
in the sense that it may have pleased the Divine Providence “to fulfil in
fact the confidently spoken promises of Jesus, and in that way to confirm
His personal authority, which was necessary to the establishment of His
doctrine of the Divine salvation.”
In most cases, however, he is content to repeat the rationalistic
explanation, and portrays a Jesus who makes use of medicines, allows the
demoniac himself to rush upon the herd of swine, helps a leper, whom he
sees to be suffering only from one of the milder forms of the disease, to
secure the public recognition of his being legally clean, and who exerts
himself to prevent by word and act the premature burial of persons in a
state of trance. The story of the feeding of the multitude is based on
some occasion when there was “a bountiful display of hospitality, a
generous sharing of provisions, inspired by Jesus’ prayer of thanksgiving
and the example which He set when the disciples were inclined selfishly to
hold back their own supply.” The story of the miracle at Cana rests on a
mere misunderstanding, those who report it not having known that the wine
which Jesus caused to be secretly brought forth was the wedding‐gift which
he was presenting in the name of the family. As a disciple of Kant,
however, Ammon feels obliged to refute the imputation that Jesus could
have done anything to promote excess, and calculates that the present of
wine which Jesus had intended to give the bridal pair may be estimated as
equivalent to not more than eighteen bottles.(59) He explains the walking
on the sea by claiming for Jesus an acquaintance with “the art of treading
water.”
Only in regard to the explanation of the resurrection does Ammon break
away from rationalism. He decides that the reality of the death of Jesus
is historically proved. But he does not venture to suppose a real
reawakening to life, and remains at the standpoint of Herder.
But the way in which, in spite of the deeper view of the conception of
miracle which he owes to Kant, he constantly falls back upon the most
pedestrian naturalistic explanations, and his failure to rid himself of
the prejudice that an actual, even if not a miraculous fact must underlie
all the recorded miracles, is in itself sufficient to prove that we have
here to do with a mere revival of rationalism: that is, with an untenable
theory which Strauss’s refutation of Paulus had already relegated to the
past.
It was an easier task for pure supernaturalism than for pure rationalism
to come to terms with Strauss. For the former Strauss was only the enemy
of the mediating theology—there was nothing to fear from him and much to
gain. Accordingly Hengstenberg’s _Evangelische Kirchenzeitung_ hailed
Strauss’s book as “one of the most gratifying phenomena in the domain of
recent theological literature,” and praises the author for having carried
out with logical consistency the application of the mythical theory which
had formerly been restricted to the Old Testament and certain parts only
of the Gospel tradition. “All that Strauss has done is to bring the spirit
of the age to a clear consciousness of itself and of the necessary
consequences which flow from its essential character. He has taught it how
to get rid of foreign elements which were still present in it, and which
marked an imperfect stage of its development.”
He has been the most influential factor in the necessary process of
separation. There is no one with whom Hengstenberg feels himself more in
agreement than with the Tübingen scholar. Had he not shown with the
greatest precision how the results of the Hegelian philosophy, one may
say, of philosophy in general, reacted upon Christian faith? “The relation
of speculation to faith has now come clearly to light.”
“Two nations,” writes Hengstenberg in 1836, “are struggling in the womb of
our time, and two only. They will be ever more definitely opposed to one
another. Unbelief will more and more cast off the elements of faith to
which it still clings, and faith will cast off its elements of unbelief.
That will be an inestimable advantage. Had the Time‐spirit continued to
make concessions, concessions would constantly have been made to it in
return.” Therefore the man who “calmly and deliberately laid hands upon
the Lord’s anointed, undeterred by the vision of the millions who have
bowed the knee, and still bow the knee, before His appearing,” has in his
own way done a service.
Strauss on his part escaped with relief from the musty atmosphere of the
study—beloved by theology in carpet‐slippers—to the bracing air of
Hengstenberg’s _Kirchenzeitung_. In his “Replies” he devotes to it some
fifty‐four pages. “I must admit,” he says, “that it is a satisfaction to
me to have to do with the _Evangelische Kirchenzeitung_. In dealing with
it one knows where one is and what one has to expect. If Herr Hengstenberg
condemns, he knows why he condemns, and even one against whom he launches
his anathema must admit that the attitude becomes him. Any one who, like
the editor of the _Evangelische Kirchenzeitung_, has taken upon him the
yoke of confessional doctrine with all its implications, has paid a price
which entitles him to the privilege of condemning those who differ from
his opinions.”(60)
Hengstenberg’s only complaint against Strauss is that he does not go far
enough. He would have liked to force upon him the rôle of the Wolfenbüttel
Fragmentist, and considers that if Strauss did not, like the latter, go so
far as to suppose the apostles guilty of deliberate deceit, that is not so
much from any regard for the historical kernel of Christianity as in order
to mask his attack.
Even in Catholic theology Strauss’s work caused a great sensation.
Catholic theology in general did not at that time take up an attitude of
absolute isolation from Protestant scholarship; it had adopted from the
latter numerous rationalistic ideas, and had been especially influenced by
Schleiermacher. Thus, Catholic scholars were almost prepared to regard
Strauss as a common enemy, against whom it was possible to make common
cause with Protestants. In 1837 Joseph Mack, one of the Professors of the
Catholic faculty at Tübingen, published his “Report on Herr Dr. Strauss’s
Historical Study of the Life of Jesus.”(61) In 1839 appeared “Dr.
Strauss’s Life of Jesus, considered from the Catholic point of view,”(62)
by Dr. Maurus Hagel, Professor of Theology at the Lyceum at Dillingen; in
1840 that lover of hypotheses and doughty fighter, Johann Leonhard
Hug,(63) presented his report upon the work.(64)
Even French Catholicism gave some attention to Strauss’s work. This marks
an epoch—the introduction of the knowledge of German critical theology
into the intellectual world of the Latin nations. In the _Revue des deux
mondes_ for December 1838, Edgar Quinet gave a clear and accurate account
of the influence of the Hegelian philosophy upon the religious ideas of
cultured Germany.(65) In an eloquent peroration he lays bare the danger
which was menacing the Church from the nation of Strauss and Hegel. His
countrymen need not think that it could be charmed away by some ingenious
formula; a mighty effort of the Catholic spirit was necessary, if it was
to be successfully opposed. “A new barbarian invasion was rolling up
against sacred Rome. The barbarians were streaming from every quarter of
the horizon, bringing their strange gods with them and preparing to
beleaguer the holy city. As, of yore, Leo went forth to meet Attila, so
now let the Papacy put on its purple and come forth, while yet there is
time, to wave back with an authoritative gesture the devastating hordes
into that moral wilderness which is their native home.”
Quinet might have done better still if he had advised the Pope to issue,
as a counterblast to the unbelieving critical work of Strauss, the Life of
Jesus which had been _revealed_ to the faith of the blessed Anna Katharina
Emmerich.(66) How thoroughly this refuted Strauss can be seen from the
fragment issued in 1834, “The Bitter Sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ,”
where even the age of Jesus on the day of His death is exactly given. On
that Maundy Thursday the 13th Nisan, it was exactly thirty‐three years and
eighteen weeks less one day. The “pilgrim” Clement Brentano would
certainly have consented, had he been asked, to allow his note‐books to be
used in the sacred cause, and to have given to the world the Life of Jesus
as it was revealed to him by this visionary from the end of July 1820 day
by day for three years, instead of allowing this treasure to remain hidden
for more than twenty years longer. He himself ascribed to these visions
the most strictly historical character, and insisted on considering them
not merely as reflections on what had happened, but as the immediate
reflex of the facts themselves, so that the picture of the life of Jesus
is given in them as in a mirror. Hug, it may be mentioned, in his
lectures, called attention to the exact agreement of the topography of the
passion story in Katharina’s vision with the description of the locality
in Josephus. If he had known her complete Life of Jesus he would doubtless
have expressed his admiration for the way in which she harmonises John and
the Synoptists; and with justice, for the harmony is really ingenious and
skilfully planned.
Apart from these merits, too, this Life of Jesus, written, it should be
observed, earlier than Strauss’s, contains a wealth of interesting
information. John at first baptized at Aenon, but later was directed to
remove to Jericho. The baptisms took place in “baptismal springs.”
Peter owned three boats, of which one was fitted up especially for the use
of Jesus, and carried a complement of ten persons. Forward and aft there
were covered‐in spaces where all kinds of gear could be kept, and where
also they could wash their feet; along the sides of the boat were hung
receptacles for the fish.
When Judas Iscariot became a disciple of Jesus he was twenty‐five years
old. He had black hair and a red beard, but could not be called really
ugly. He had had a stormy past. His mother had been a dancing‐woman, and
Judas had been born out of wedlock, his father being a military tribune in
Damascus. As an infant he had been exposed, but had been saved, and later
had been taken charge of by his uncle, a tanner at Iscariot. At the time
when he joined the company of Jesus’ disciples he had squandered all his
possessions. The disciples at first liked him well enough because of his
readiness to make himself useful; he even cleaned the shoes.
The fish with the _stater_ in its mouth was so large that it made a full
meal for the whole company.
A work to which Jesus devoted special attention—though this is not
mentioned in the Gospels—was the reconciliation of unhappy married
couples. Another matter which is not mentioned in the Gospels is the
voyage of Jesus to Cyprus, upon which He entered after a farewell meal
with His disciples at the house of the Canaanitish woman. This voyage took
place during the war between Herod and Aretas while the disciples were
making their missionary journey in Palestine. As they could not give an
eyewitness report of it they were silent; nor did they make any mention of
the feast to which the Proconsul at Salamis invited the Saviour. In regard
to another journey, also, which Jesus made to the land of the wise men of
the East, the “pilgrim’s” oracle has the advantage of knowing more than
the Evangelists.
In spite of these additional traits a certain monotony is caused by the
fact that the visionary, in order to fill in the tale of days in the three
years, makes the persons known to us from the Gospel history meet with the
Saviour on several occasions previous to the meeting narrated in the
Gospels. Here the artificial character of the composition comes out too
clearly, though in general a lively imagination tends to conceal this. And
yet these naïve embellishments and inventions have something rather
attractive about them; one cannot handle the book without a certain
reverence when one thinks amid what pains these revelations were received.
If Brentano had published his notes at the time of the excitement produced
by Strauss’s Life of Jesus, the work would have had a tremendous success.
As it was, when the first two volumes appeared at the end of the ’fifties,
there were sold in one year three thousand and several hundred copies,
without reckoning the French edition which appeared contemporaneously.
In the end, however, all the efforts of the mediating theology, of
rationalism and supernaturalism, could do nothing to shake Strauss’s
conclusion that it was all over with supernaturalism as a factor to be
reckoned with in the historical study of the Life of Jesus, and that
scientific theology, instead of turning back from rationalism to
supernaturalism, must move straight onward between the two and seek out a
new path for itself. The Hegelian method had proved itself to be the logic
of reality. With Strauss begins the period of the non‐miraculous view of
the Life of Jesus; all other views exhausted themselves in the struggle
against him, and subsequently abandoned position after position without
waiting to be attacked. The separation which Hengstenberg had hailed with
such rejoicing was really accomplished; but in the form that
supernaturalism practically separated itself from the serious study of
history. It is not possible to date the stages of this process. After the
first outburst of excitement everything seems to go on as quietly as
before; the only difference is that the question of miracle constantly
falls more and more into the background. In the modern period of the study
of the Life of Jesus, which begins about the middle of the ’sixties, it
has lost all importance.
That does not mean that the problem of miracle is solved. From the
historical point of view it is really impossible to solve it, since we are
not able to reconstruct the process by which a series of miracle stories
arose, or a series of historical occurrences were transformed into miracle
stories, and these narratives must simply be left with a question mark
standing against them. What has been gained is only that the exclusion of
miracle from our view of history has been universally recognised as a
principle of criticism, so that miracle no longer concerns the historian
either positively or negatively. Scientific theologians of the present day
who desire to show their “sensibility,” ask no more than that two or three
little miracles may be left to them—in the stories of the childhood,
perhaps, or in the narratives of the resurrection. And these miracles are,
moreover, so far scientific that they have at least no relation to those
in the text, but are merely spiritless, miserable little toy‐dogs of
criticism, flea‐bitten by rationalism, too insignificant to do historical
science any harm, especially as their owners honestly pay the tax upon
them by the way in which they speak, write, and are silent about Strauss.
But even that is better than the delusive fashion in which some writers of
the present day succeed in discussing the narratives of the resurrection
“as pure historians” without betraying by a single word whether they
themselves believe it to be possible or not. But the reason modern
theology can allow itself these liberties is that the foundation laid by
Strauss is unshakable.
Compared with the problem of miracle, the question regarding the mythical
explanation of the history takes a very subordinate place in the
controversy. Few understood what Strauss’s real meaning was; the general
impression was that he entirely dissolved the life of Jesus into myth.
There appeared, indeed, three satires ridiculing his method. One showed
how, for the historical science of the future, the life of Luther would
also become a mere myth,(67) the second treated the life of Napoleon in
the same way;(68) in the third, Strauss himself becomes a myth.(69)
M. Eugène Mussard, “candidat au saint ministère,” made it his business to
set at rest the minds of the premier faculty at Geneva by his thesis, _Du
système mythique appliqué à l’histoire de la vie de Jésus_, 1838, which
bears the ingenious motto οὐ σεσοφισμένοις μύθοις (not ... in cunningly
devised myths, 2 Peter i. 16). He certainly did not exaggerate the
difficulties of his task, but complacently followed up an “Exposition of
the Mythical Theory,” with a “Refutation of the Mythical Theory as applied
to the Life of Jesus.”
The only writer who really faced the problem in the form in which it had
been raised by Strauss was Wilke in his work “Tradition and Myth.”(70) He
recognises that Strauss had given an exceedingly valuable impulse towards
the overcoming of rationalism and supernaturalism and to the rejection of
the abortive mediating theology. “A keener criticism will only establish
the truth of the Gospel, putting what is tenable on a firmer basis,
sifting out what is untenable, and showing up in all its nakedness the
counterfeit theology of the new evangelicalism with its utter lack of
understanding and sincerity.” Again, “the approval which Strauss has met
with, and the excitement which he has aroused, sufficiently show what an
advantage rationalistic speculation possesses over the theological second‐
childishness of the new evangelicals.” The time has come for a rational
mysticism, which shall preserve undiminished the honesty of the old
rationalism, making no concessions to supernaturalism, but, on the other
hand, overcoming the “truculent rationalism of the Kantian criticism” by
means of a religious conception in which there is more warmth and more
pious feeling.
This rational mysticism makes it a reproach against the “mythical
idealism” of Strauss that in it philosophy does violence to history, and
the historic Christ only retains His significance as a mere ideal. A new
examination of the sources is necessary to decide upon the extent of the
mythical element.
The Gospel of Matthew cannot, Wilke agrees, have been the work of an
eyewitness. “The principal argument against its authenticity is the
absence of the characteristic marks of an eyewitness, which must
necessarily have been present in a gospel actually composed by a disciple
of the Lord, and which are not present here. The narrative is lacking in
precision, fragmentary and legendary, tradition everywhere manifest in its
very form.” There are discrepancies in the legends of the first and second
chapters, as well as elsewhere, _e.g._ the stories of the baptism, the
temptation, and the transfiguration. In other cases, where there is a
basis of historic fact, there is an admixture of legendary material, as in
the narratives of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
In the Gospel of Mark, Wilke recognises the pictorial vividness of many of
the descriptions, and conjectures that in some way or other it goes back
to the Petrine tradition. The author of the Fourth Gospel is not an
eyewitness; the κατά (according to) only indicates the origin of the
tradition; the author received it, either directly or indirectly, from the
Apostle, but he gave to it the gnosticising dialectical form of the
Alexandrian theology.
As against the _Diegesentheorie_(71) Wilke defends the independence and
originality of the individual Gospels. “No one of the Evangelists knew the
writing of any of the others, each produced an independent work drawn from
a separate source.”
In the remarks on points of detail in this work of Wilke’s there is
evidence of a remarkable grasp of the critical data; we already get a hint
of the “mathematician” of the Synoptic problem, who, two years later, was
to work out convincingly the literary argument for the priority of Mark.
But the historian is quite subordinated to the literary critic, and, when
all is said, Wilke takes up no clearly defined position in regard to
Strauss’s main problem, as is evident from his seeking to retain, on more
or less plausible grounds, a whole series of miracles, among them the
miracle of Cana and the resurrection.
For most thinkers of that period, however, the question “myth or history”
yielded in interest to the philosophical question of the relation of the
historical Jesus to the ideal Christ. That was the second problem raised
by Strauss. Some thought to refute him by showing that his exposition of
the relation of the Jesus of history to the ideal Christ was not justified
even from the point of view of the Hegelian philosophy, arguing that the
edifice which he had raised was not in harmony with the ground‐plan of the
Hegelian speculative system. He therefore felt it necessary, in his reply
to the review in the _Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik_, to expound
“the general relationship of the Hegelian philosophy to theological
criticism,”(72) and to express in more precise form the thoughts upon
speculative and historical Christology which he had suggested at the close
of the second volume of his “Life of Jesus.”
He admits that Hegel’s philosophy is ambiguous in this matter, since it is
not clear “whether the evangelical fact as such, not indeed in its
isolation, but together with the whole series of manifestations of the
idea (of God‐manhood) in the history of the world, is the truth; or
whether the embodiment of the idea in that single fact is only a formula
of which consciousness makes use in forming its concept.” The Hegelian
“right,” he says, represented by Marheineke and Göschel, emphasises the
positive side of the master’s religious philosophy, implying that in Jesus
the idea of God‐manhood was perfectly fulfilled and in a certain sense
intelligibly realised. “If these men,” Strauss explains, “appeal to Hegel
and declare that he would not have recognised my book as an expression of
his meaning, they say nothing which is not in accordance with my own
convictions. Hegel was personally no friend to historical criticism. It
annoyed him, as it annoyed Goethe, to see the historic figures of
antiquity, on which their thoughts were accustomed lovingly to dwell,
assailed by critical doubts. Even if it was in some cases wreaths of mist
which they took for pinnacles of rock, they did not want to have this
forced upon their attention, nor to be disturbed in the illusion from
which they were conscious of receiving an elevating influence.”
But though prepared to admit that he had added to the edifice of Hegel’s
religious philosophy an annexe of historical criticism, of which the
master would hardly have approved, Strauss is convinced that he is the
only logical representative of Hegel’s essential view. “The question which
can be decided from the standpoint of the philosophy of religion is not
whether what is narrated in the Gospels actually happened or not, but
whether in view of the truth of certain conceptions it must necessarily
have happened. And in regard to this, what I assert is that from the
general system of the Hegelian philosophy it by no means necessarily
follows that such an event must have happened, but that from the
standpoint of the system the truth of that history from which actually the
conception arose is reduced to a matter of indifference; it may have
happened, but it may just as well not have happened, and the task of
deciding on this point may be calmly handed over to historical criticism.”
Strauss reminds us that, even according to Hegel, the belief in Jesus as
God‐made‐man is not immediately given with His appearing in the world of
sense, but only arose after His death and the removal of His sensible
presence. The master himself had acknowledged the existence of mythical
elements in the Life of Jesus; in regard to miracle he had expressed the
opinion that the true miracle was “Spirit.” The conception of the
resurrection and ascension as outward facts of sense was not recognised by
him as true.
Hegel’s authority may, no doubt, fairly be appealed to by those who
believe, not only in an incarnation of God in a general sense, “but also
that this manifestation of God in flesh has taken place in this man
(Jesus) at this definite time and place.”... “In making the assertion,”
concludes Strauss, “that the truth of the Gospel narrative cannot be
proved, whether in whole or in part, from philosophical considerations,
but that the task of inquiring into its truth must be left to historical
criticism, I should like to associate myself with the ‘left wing’ of the
Hegelian school, were it not that the Hegelians prefer to exclude me
altogether from their borders, and to throw me into the arms of other
systems of thought—only, it must be admitted, to have me tossed back to
them like a ball.”
In regard to the third problem which Strauss had offered for discussion,
the relation of the Synoptists to John, there was practically no response.
The only one of his critics who understood what was at stake was
Hengstenberg. He alone perceived the significance of the fact that
critical theology, having admitted mythical elements first in the Old
Testament, and then in the beginning and end of the Gospel history, and
having, in consequence of the latter admission, felt obliged to give up
the first three Gospels, retaining only the fourth, was now being besieged
by Strauss in its last stronghold. “They withdrew,” says the _Evangelische
Kirchenzeitung_, “into the Gospel of John as into a fortress, and boasted
that they were safe there, though they could not suppress a secret
consciousness that they only held it at the enemy’s pleasure; now the
enemy has appeared before it; he is using the same weapons with which he
was formerly victorious; the Gospel of John is in as desperate case as
formerly the Synoptists. The time has come to make a bold resolve, a
decisive choice; either they must give up everything, or else they must
successively re‐occupy the more advanced positions which at an earlier
date they had successively abandoned.” It would be impossible to give a
more accurate picture of the desperate position into which Hase and
Schleiermacher had brought the mediating theology by their ingenious
expedient of giving up the Synoptics in favour of the Gospel of John.
Before any danger threatened, they had abandoned the outworks and
withdrawn into the citadel, oblivious of the fact that they thereby
exposed themselves to the danger of having their own guns turned upon them
from the positions they had abandoned, and being obliged to surrender
without striking a blow the position of which they had boasted as
impregnable. It is impossible to emphasise strongly enough the fact that
it was not Strauss, but Hase and Schleiermacher, who had brought the
mediating theology into this hopeless position, in which the fall of the
Fourth Gospel carried with it the surrender of the historical tradition as
a whole.
But there is no position so desperate that theology cannot find a way out
of it. The mediating theologians simply ignored the problem which Strauss
had raised. As they had been accustomed to do before, so they continued to
do after, taking the Gospel of John as the authentic framework, and
fitting into it the sections of the Synoptic narrative wherever place
could best be found for them. The difference between the Johannine and
Synoptic representations of Jesus’ method of teaching, says Neander, is
only apparently irreconcilable, and he calls out in support of this
assertion all the reserves of old worn‐out expedients and artifices, among
others the argument that the Pauline Christology is only explicable as a
combination of the Synoptic and Johannine views. Other writers who belong
to the same apologetic school, such as Tholuck, Ebrard,(73) Wieseler,(74)
Lange,(75) and Ewald,(76) maintain the same point of view, only that their
defence is usually much less skilful.
The only writer who really in some measure enters into the difficulties is
Ammon. He, indeed, is fully conscious of the difference, and thinks we
cannot rest content with merely recognising it, but must find a solution,
even if rather a forced one, “by subordinating the indefinite
chronological data of the Synoptists, of whom, after all, only one was, or
could have been, an eyewitness, to the ordered narrative of John.” The
fourth Evangelist makes so brief a reference to the Galilaean period
because it was in accordance with his plan to give more prominence to the
discourses of Jesus in the Temple and His dialogues with the Scribes as
compared to the parables and teaching given to the people. The cleansing
of the Temple falls at the outset of Jesus’ ministry; Jesus begins His
Messianic work in Jerusalem by this action of making an end of the
unseemly chaffering in the court of the Temple. The question regarding the
relative authenticity of the reports is decisively settled by a comparison
of the two accounts of the triumphal entry, because there it is quite
evident that “Matthew, the chief authority among the Synoptists, adapts
his narrative to his special Jewish‐Messianic standpoint.” According to
Ammon’s rationalistic view, the work of Jesus consisted precisely in the
transformation of this Jewish‐Messianic idea into the conception of a
“Saviour of the world.” In this lies the explanation of the fate of Jesus:
“The mass of the Jewish people were not prepared to receive a Christ so
spiritual as Jesus was, since they were not ripe for so lofty a view of
religion.”
Ammon here turns his Kantian philosophy to account. It serves especially
to explain to him the consciousness of pre‐existence avowed by the Jesus
of the Johannine narrative as something purely human. We, too, he
explains, can “after the spirit” claim an ideal existence prior to the
spatial creation without indulging any delusion, and without, on the other
hand, thinking of a real existence. In this way Jesus is for Himself a
Biblical idea, with which He has become identified. “The purer and deeper
a man’s self‐consciousness is, the keener may his consciousness of God
become, until time disappears for him, and his partaking in the Divine
nature fills his whole soul.”
But Ammon’s support of the authenticity of John’s Gospel is, even from a
purely literary point of view, not so unreserved as in the case of the
other opponents of Strauss. In the background stands the hypothesis that
our Gospel is only a working‐over of the authentic John, a suggestion in
regard to which Ammon can claim priority, since he had made it as early as
1811,(77) nine years before the appearance of Bretschneider’s
_Probabilia_. Were it not for the ingenuous fashion in which he works the
Synoptic material into the Johannine plan, we might class him with
Alexander Schweizer and Weisse, who in a similar way seek to meet the
objections of Strauss by an elaborate theory of editing.(78)
The first stage of the discussion regarding the relation of John to the
Synoptists passed without result. The mediating theology continued to hold
its positions undisturbed—and, strangest of all, Strauss himself was eager
for a suspension of hostilities.
It is as though history took the trouble to countersign the genuineness of
the great critical discoveries by letting the discoverers themselves
attempt to cancel them. As Kant disfigures his critical idealism by making
inconsistent additions in order to refute a reviewer who had put him in
the same category with Berkeley, so Strauss inserts additions and
retractations in the third edition of his Life of Jesus in deference to
the uncritical works of Tholuck and Neander! Wilke, the only one of his
critics from whom he might have learned something, he ignores. “From the
lofty vantage ground of Tholuck’s many‐sided knowledge I have sometimes,
in spite of a slight tendency to vertigo, gained a juster point of view
from which to look at one matter or another,” is the avowal which he makes
in the preface to this ill‐starred edition.
It would, indeed, have done no harm if he had confined himself to stating
more exactly here and there the extent of the mythical element, had
increased the number of possible cures, had inclined a little less to the
negative side in examining the claims of reported facts to rank as
historical, and had been a little more circumspect in pointing out the
factors which produced the myths; the serious thing was that he now began
to hesitate in his denial of the historical character of the Fourth
Gospel—the very foundation of his critical view.
A renewed study of it, aided by De Wette’s commentary and Neander’s Life
of Jesus, had made him “doubtful about his doubts regarding the
genuineness and credibility of this Gospel.” “Not that I am convinced of
its genuineness,” he admits, “but I am no longer convinced that it is not
genuine.”
He feels bound, therefore, to state whatever makes in its favour, and to
leave open a number of possibilities which formerly he had not recognised.
The adhesion of the first disciples may, he now thinks, have happened
essentially in the form in which it is reported in the Fourth Gospel; in
transferring the cleansing of the Temple to the first period of Jesus’
ministry, John may be right as against the Synoptic tradition “which has
no decisive evidence in its favour”; in regard to the question whether
Jesus had been only once, or several times, in Jerusalem, his opinion now
is that “on this point the superior circumstantiality of the Fourth Gospel
cannot be contested.”
As regards the prominence allowed to the eschatology also all is toned
down and softened. Everywhere feeble compromises! But what led Strauss to
place his foot upon this shelving path was the essentially just perception
that the Synoptists gave him no clearly ordered plan to set against that
of the Fourth Gospel; consequently he felt obliged to make some
concessions to its strength in this respect.
Yet he recognised almost immediately that the result was a mere patchwork.
Even in the summer of 1839 he complained to Hase in conversation that he
had been deafened by the clamour of his opponents, and had conceded too
much to them.(79) In the fourth edition he retracted all his concessions.
“The Babel of voices of opponents, critics, and supporters,” he says in
his preface, “to which I had felt it my duty to listen, had confused me in
regard to the idea of my work; in my diligent comparison of various views
I had lost sight of the thing itself. In this way I was led to make
alterations which, when I came to consider the matter calmly, surprised
myself; and in making which it was obvious that I had done myself an
injustice. In all these passages the earlier text has been restored, and
my work has therefore consisted, it might be said, in removing from my
good sword the notches which had not so much been hewn in it by the enemy
as ground into it by myself.”
Strauss’s vacillation had, therefore, not even been of any indirect
advantage to him. Instead of endeavouring to find a purposeful connexion
in the Synoptic Gospels by means of which he might test the plan of the
Fourth Gospel, he simply restores his former view unaltered, thereby
showing that in the decisive point it was incapable of development. In the
very year in which he prepared his improved edition, Weisse, in his
_Evangelische Geschichte_, had set up the hypothesis that Mark is the
ground‐document, and had thus carried criticism past the “dead‐point”
which Strauss had never been able to overcome. Upon Strauss, however, the
new suggestion made no impression. He does, it is true, mention Weisse’s
book in the preface to his third edition, and describes it as “in many
respects a very satisfactory piece of work.” It had appeared too late for
him to make use of it in his first volume; but he did not use it in his
second volume either. He had, indeed, a distinct antipathy to the Marcan
hypothesis.
It was unfortunate that in this controversy the highly important
suggestions in regard to various historical problems which had been made
incidentally in the course of Strauss’s work were never discussed at all.
The impulse in the direction of progress which might have been given by
his treatment of the relation of Jesus to the law, of the question
regarding His particularism, of the eschatological conception, the Son of
Man, and the Messiahship of Jesus, wholly failed to take effect, and it
was only after long and circuitous wanderings that theology again came in
sight of these problems from an equally favourable point of view. In this
respect Strauss shared the fate of Reimarus; the positive solutions of
which the outlines were visible behind their negative criticism escaped
observation in consequence of the offence caused by the negative side of
their work; and even the authors themselves failed to realise their full
significance.
X. THE MARCAN HYPOTHESIS
_Christian Hermann Weisse._ Die evangelische Geschichte kritisch
und philosophisch bearbeitet. (A Critical and Philosophical Study
of the Gospel History.) 2 vols. Leipzig, Breitkopf and Härtel,
1838. Vol. i. 614 pp. Vol. ii. 543 pp.
_Christian Gottlob Wilke._ Der Urevangelist. (The Earliest
Evangelist.) 1838. Dresden and Leipzig. 694 pp.
_Christian Hermann Weisse._ Die Evangelienfrage in ihrem
gegenwärtigen Stadium. (The Present Position of the Problem of the
Gospels.) Leipzig, 1856.
The “Gospel History” of Weisse was written, like Strauss’s Life of Jesus,
by a philosopher who had been driven out of philosophy and forced back
upon theology. Weisse was born in 1801 at Leipzig, and became Professor
Extraordinary of Philosophy in the university there in 1828. In 1837,
finding his advance to the Ordinary Professorship barred by the
Herbartians, he withdrew from academic teaching and gave himself to the
preparation of this work, the plan of which he had had in mind for some
time. Having brought it to a satisfactory completion, he began again in
1841 as a Privat‐Docent in Philosophy, and became Ordinary Professor in
1845. From 1848 onwards he lectured on Theology also. His work on
“Philosophical Dogmatics, or the Philosophy of Christianity,”(80) is well
known. He died in 1866, of cholera. Lotze and Lipsius were both much
influenced by him.
Weisse admired Strauss and hailed his Life of Jesus as a forward step
towards the reconciliation of religion and philosophy. He expresses his
gratitude to him for clearing the ground of the primeval forest of
theology, thus rendering it possible for him (Weisse) to develop his views
without wasting time upon polemics, “since most of the views which have
hitherto prevailed may be regarded as having received the _coup de grâce_
from Strauss.” He is at one with Strauss also in his general view of the
relations of philosophy and religion, holding that it is only if
philosophy, by following its own path, attains independently to the
conviction of the truth of Christianity that its alliance with theology
and religion can be welcomed as advantageous.(81) His work, therefore,
like that of Strauss, leads up finally to a philosophical exposition in
which he shows how for us the Jesus of history becomes the Christ of
faith.(82)
Weisse is the direct continuator of Strauss. Standing outside the
limitations of the Hegelian formulae, he begins at the point where Strauss
leaves off. His aim is to discover, if possible, some thread of general
connexion in the narratives of the Gospel tradition, which, if present,
would represent a historically certain element in the Life of Jesus, and
thus serve as a better standard by which to determine the extent of myth
than can possibly be found in the subjective impression upon which Strauss
relies. Strauss, by way of gratitude, called him a dilettante. This was
most unjust, for if any one deserved to share Strauss’s place of honour,
it was certainly Weisse.
The idea that Mark’s Gospel might be the earliest of the four, first
occurred to Weisse during the progress of his work. In March 1837, when he
reviewed Tholuck’s “Credibility of the Gospel History,” he was as innocent
of this discovery as Wilke was at the same period. But when once he had
observed that the graphic details of Mark, which had hitherto been
regarded as due to an attempt to embellish an epitomising narrative, were
too insignificant to have been inserted with this purpose, it became clear
to him that only one other possibility remained open, viz., that their
absence in Matthew and Luke was due to omission. He illustrates this from
the description of the first day of Jesus’ ministry at Capernaum. “The
relation of the first Evangelist to Mark,” he avers, “in those portions of
the Gospel which are common to both is, with few exceptions, mainly that
of an epitomiser.”
The decisive argument for the priority of Mark is, even more than his
graphic detail, the composition and arrangement of the whole. “It is true,
the Gospel of Mark shows very distinct traces of having arisen out of
spoken discourses, which themselves were by no means ordered and
connected, but disconnected and fragmentary”—being, he means, in its
original form based on notes of the incidents related by Peter. “It is not
the work of an eyewitness, nor even of one who had had an opportunity of
questioning eyewitnesses thoroughly and carefully; nor even of deriving
assistance from inquirers who, on their part, had made a connected study
of the subject, with a view to filling up the gaps and placing each
individual part in its right position, and so articulating the whole into
an organic unity which should be neither merely inward, nor on the other
hand merely external.” Nevertheless the Evangelist was guided in his work
by a just recollection of the general course of the life of Jesus. “It is
precisely in Mark,” Weisse explains, “that a closer study unmistakably
reveals that the incidental remarks (referring for the most part to the
way in which the fame of Jesus gradually extended, the way the people
began to gather round Him and the sick to besiege Him), far from shutting
off and separating the different narratives, tend rather to unite them
with each other, and so give the impression not of a series of anecdotes
fortuitously thrown together, but of a connected history. By means of
these remarks, and by many other connecting links which he works into the
narration of the individual stories, Mark has succeeded in conveying a
vivid impression of the stir which Jesus made in Galilee, and from Galilee
to Jerusalem, of the gradual gathering of the multitudes to Him, of the
growing intensity of loyalty in the inner circle of disciples, and as the
counterpart of all this, of the growing enmity of the Pharisees and
Scribes—an impression which mere isolated narratives, strung together
without any living connexion, would not have sufficed to produce.” A
connexion of this kind is less clearly present in the other Synoptists,
and is wholly lacking in John. The Fourth Gospel, by itself, would give us
a completely false conception of the relation of Jesus to the people. From
the content of its narratives the reader would form the impression that
the attitude of the people towards Jesus was hostile from the very first,
and that it was only in isolated occasions, for a brief moment, that Jesus
by His miraculous acts inspired the people with astonishment rather than
admiration; that, surrounded by a little company of disciples he contrived
for a time to defy the enmity of the multitude, and that, having
repeatedly provoked it by intemperate invective, he finally succumbed to
it.
The simplicity of the plan of Mark is, in Weisse’s opinion, a stronger
argument for his priority than the most elaborate demonstration; one only
needs to compare it with the perverse design of Luke, who makes Jesus
undertake a journey through Samaria. “How,” asks Weisse, “in the case of a
writer who does things of this kind can it be possible at this time of day
to speak seriously of historical exactitude in the use of his sources?”
To come down to detail, Weisse’s argument for the priority of Mark rests
mainly on the following propositions:—
1. In the first and third Gospels, traces of a common plan are found only
in those parts which they have in common with Mark, not in those which are
common to them, but not to Mark also.
2. In those parts which the three Gospels have in common, the “agreement”
of the other two is mediated through Mark.
3. In those sections which the First and Third Gospels have, but Mark has
not, the agreement consists in the language and incidents, not in the
order. Their common source, therefore, the “Logia” of Matthew, did not
contain any type of tradition which gave an order of narration different
from that of Mark.
4. The divergences of wording between the two other Synoptists is in
general greater in the parts where both have drawn on the Logia document
than where Mark is their source.
5. The first Evangelist reproduces this Logia‐document more faithfully
than Luke does; but his Gospel seems to have been of later origin.
This historical argument for the priority of Mark was confirmed in the
year in which it appeared by Wilke’s work, “The Earliest Gospel,”(83)
which treated the problem more from the literary side, and, to take an
illustration from astronomy, supplied the mathematical confirmation of the
hypothesis.
In regard to the Gospel of John, Weisse fully shared the negative views of
Strauss. What is the use, he asks, of keeping on talking about the plan of
this Gospel, seeing that no one has yet succeeded in showing what that
plan is? And for a very good reason: there is none. One would never guess
from the Gospel of John that Jesus, until His departure from Galilee, had
experienced almost unbroken success. It is no good trying to explain the
want of plan by saying that John wrote with the purpose of supplementing
and correcting his predecessors, and that his omissions and additions were
determined by this purpose. Such a purpose is betrayed by no single word
in the whole Gospel.
The want of plan lies in the very plan itself. “It is a fixed idea, one
may say, with the author of this Gospel, who had heard that Jesus had
fallen a victim in Jerusalem to the hatred of the Jewish rulers,
especially the Scribes, that he must represent Jesus as engaged, from His
first appearance onward, in an unceasing struggle with ‘the Jews’—whereas
we know that the mass of the people, even to the last, in Jerusalem
itself, were on the side of Jesus; so much so, indeed, that His enemies
were only able to get Him into their power by means of a secret betrayal.”
In regard to the graphic descriptions in John, of which so much has been
made, the case is no better. It is the graphic detail of a writer who
desires to work up a vivid picture, not the natural touches of an
eyewitness, and there are, moreover, actual inconsistencies, as in the
case of the healing at the pool of Bethesda. The circumstantiality is due
to the care of the author not to assume an acquaintance, on the part of
his readers, with Jewish usages or the topography of Palestine. “A
considerable proportion of the details are of such a character as
inevitably to suggest that the narrator inserts them because of the
trouble which it has cost him to orientate himself in regard to the scene
of the action and the dramatis personae, his object being to spare his
readers a similar difficulty; though he does not always go about it in the
way best calculated to effect his purpose.”
The impossibility also that the historic Jesus can have preached the
doctrine of the Johannine Christ, is as clear to Weisse as to Strauss. “It
is not so much a picture of Christ that John sets forth, as a conception
of Christ; his Christ does not speak _in_ His own Person, but _of_ His own
Person.”
On the other hand, however, “the authority of the whole Christian Church
from the second century to the nineteenth” carries too much weight with
Weisse for him to venture altogether to deny the Johannine origin of the
Gospel; and he seeks a middle path. He assumes that the didactic portions
really, for the most part, go back to John the Apostle. “John,” he
explains, “drawn on by the interest of a system of doctrine which had
formed itself in his mind, not so much as a direct reflex of the teaching
of his Master, as on the basis of suggestions offered by that teaching in
combination with a certain creative activity of his own, endeavoured to
find this system also in the teaching of his Master.”
Accordingly, with this purpose, and originally for himself alone, not with
the object of communicating it to others, he made an effort to exhibit, in
the light of this system of thought, what his memory still retained of the
discourses of the Lord. “The Johannine discourses, therefore, were
recalled by a laborious effort of memory on the part of the disciple. When
he found that his memory‐image of his Master was threatening to dissolve
into a mist‐wraith, he endeavoured to impress the picture more firmly in
his recollection, to connect and define its rapidly disappearing features,
reconstructing it by the aid of a theory evolved by himself or drawn from
elsewhere regarding the Person and work of the Master.” For the portrait
of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels the mind of the disciples who describe
Him is a neutral medium; for the portrait in John it is a factor which
contributes to the production of the picture. The same portrait is
outlined by the apostle in the first epistle which bears his name.
These tentative “essays,” not originally intended for publication, came,
after the death of the apostle, into the hands of his adherents and
disciples, and they chose the form of a complete Life of Jesus as that in
which to give them to the world. They, therefore, added narrative
portions, which they distributed here and there among the speeches, often
doing some violence to the latter in the process. Such was the origin of
the Fourth Gospel.
Weisse is not blind to the fact that this hypothesis of a Johannine basis
in the Gospel is beset with the gravest—one might almost say with
insuperable—difficulties. Here is a man who was an immediate disciple of
the Lord, one who, in the Synoptic Gospels, in Acts, and in the Pauline
letters, appears in a character which gives no hint of a coming spiritual
metamorphosis, one, moreover, who at a relatively late period, when it
might well have been supposed that his development was in all essentials
closed (at the time of Paul’s visit to Jerusalem, which falls at least
fourteen years after Paul’s conversion), was chosen, along with James and
Peter, and in contrast with the apostles of the Gentiles, Paul and
Barnabas, as an apostle of the Jews—“how is it possible,” asks Weisse, “to
explain and make it intelligible, that a man of these antecedents displays
in his thought and speech, in fact in his whole mental attitude, a
thoroughly Hellenistic stamp? How came he, the beloved disciple, who,
according to this very Gospel which bears his name, was admitted more
intimately than any other into the confidence of Jesus, how came he to
clothe his Master in this foreign garb of Hellenistic speculation, and to
attribute to Him this alien manner of speech? But, however difficult the
explanation may be, whatever extreme of improbability may seem to us to be
involved in the assumption of the Johannine authorship of the Epistle and
of these essential elements of the Gospel, it is better to assent to the
improbability, to submit to the burden of being forced to explain the
inexplicable, than to set ourselves obstinately against the weight of
testimony, against the authority of the whole Christian Church from the
second century to the present day.”
There could be no better argument against the genuineness of the Fourth
Gospel than just such a defence of its genuineness as this. In this form
the hypothesis may well be destined to lead a harmless and never‐ending
life. What matters for the historical study of the Life of Jesus is simply
that the Fourth Gospel should be ruled out. And that Weisse does so
thoroughly that it is impossible to imagine its being done more
thoroughly. The speeches, in spite of their apostolic authority, are
unhistorical, and need not be taken into account in describing Jesus’
system of thought. As for the unhappy redactor, who by adding the
narrative pictures created the Gospel, all possibility of his reports
being accurate is roundly denied, and as if that was not enough, he must
put up with being called a bungler into the bargain. “I have, to tell the
truth, no very high opinion of the literary art of the editor of the
Johannine Gospel‐document,” says Weisse in his “Problem of the Gospels” of
1856, which is the best commentary upon his earlier work.
His treatment of the Fourth Gospel reminds us of the story that Frederic
the Great once appointed an importunate office‐seeker to the post of
“Privy Councillor for War,” on condition that he would never presume to
offer a syllable of advice!
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The hypothesis which was brought forward about the same time by Alexander
Schweizer,(84) with the intention of saving the genuineness of the Gospel
of John, did not make any real contribution to the subject. The reading of
the facts which form his starting‐point is almost the exact converse of
that of Weisse, since he regards, not the speeches, but certain parts of
the narrative as Johannine. That which it is possible, in his opinion, to
refer to the apostle is an account, not involving any miracles, of the
ministry of Jesus at Jerusalem, and the discourses which He delivered
there. The more or less miraculous events which occur in the course of
it—such as, that Jesus had seen Nathanael under the fig‐tree, knew the
past life of the Samaritan woman, and healed the sick man at the Pool of
Bethesda—are of a simple character, and contrast markedly with those which
are represented to have occurred in Galilee, where Jesus turned water into
wine and fed a multitude with a few crusts of bread. We must, therefore,
suppose that this short, authentic, spiritual Jerusalem‐Gospel has had a
Galilaean Life of Jesus worked into it, and this explains the
inconsistencies of the representation and the oscillation between a
sensuous and a spiritual point of view.
This distinction, however, cannot be made good. Schweizer was obliged to
ascribe the reports of a material resurrection to the Galilaean source,
whereas these, since they exclude the Galilaean appearances of Jesus, must
belong to the Jerusalem Gospel; and accordingly, the whole distinction
between a spiritual and material Gospel falls to the ground. Thus this
hypothesis at best preserves the nominal authenticity of the Fourth
Gospel, only to deprive it immediately of all value as a historical
source.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Had Strauss calmly examined the bearing of Weisse’s hypothesis, he would
have seen that it fully confirmed the line he had taken in leaving the
Fourth Gospel out of account, and he might have been less unjust towards
the hypothesis of the priority of Mark, for which he cherished a blind
hatred, because, in its fully developed form, it first met him in
conjunction with seemingly reactionary tendencies towards the
rehabilitation of John. He never in the whole course of his life got rid
of the prejudice that the recognition of the priority of Mark was
identical with a retrograde movement towards an uncritical orthodoxy.
This is certainly not true as regards Weisse. He is far from having used
Mark unreservedly as a historical source. On the contrary, he says
expressly that the picture which this Gospel gives of Jesus is drawn by an
imaginative disciple of the faith, filled with the glory of his subject,
whose enthusiasm is consequently sometimes stronger than his judgment.
Even in Mark the mythopoeic tendency is already actively at work, so that
often the task of historical criticism is to explain how such myths could
have been accepted by a reporter who stands as near the facts as Mark
does.
Of the _miracula_(85)—so Weisse denominates the “non‐genuine” miracles, in
contradistinction to the “genuine”—the feeding of the multitude is that
which, above all others, cries aloud for an explanation. Its historical
strength lies in its being firmly interwoven with the preceding and
following context; and this applies to both the Marcan narratives. It is
therefore impossible to regard the story, as Strauss proposes to do, as
pure myth; it is necessary to show how, growing out of some incident
belonging to that context, it assumed its present literary form. The
authentic saying about the leaven of the Pharisees, which, in Mark viii.
14 and 15, is connected with the two miracles of feeding the multitude,
gives ground for supposing that they rest upon a parabolic discourse
repeated on two occasions, in which Jesus spoke, perhaps with allusion to
the manna, of a miraculous food given through Him. These discourses were
later transformed by tradition into an actual miraculous giving of food.
Here, therefore, Weisse endeavours to substitute for Strauss’s
“unhistorical” conception of myth a different conception, which in each
case seeks to discover a sufficient historical cause.
The miracles at the baptism of Jesus are based upon His account of a
vision which He experienced in that moment. The present form of the story
of the transfiguration has a twofold origin. In the first place, it is
partly based on a real experience shared by the three disciples. That
there is an historical fact here is evident from the way in which it is
connected with the context by a definite indication of time. The six days
of Mark ix. 2 cannot really be connected, as Strauss would have us
suppose, with Ex. xxiv. 16;(86) the meaning is simply that between the
previously reported discourse of Jesus and the event described there was
an interval of six days. The three disciples had a waking, spiritual
vision, not a dream‐vision, and what was revealed in this vision was the
Messiahship of Jesus. But at this point comes in the second, the mythico‐
symbolical element. The disciples see Jesus accompanied, according to the
Jewish Messianic expectations, by those whom the people thought of as His
forerunners. He, however, turns away from them, and Moses and Elias, for
whom the disciples were about to build tabernacles, for them to abide in,
disappear. The mythical element is a reflection of the teaching which
Jesus imparted to them on that occasion, in consequence of which there
dawned on them the spiritual “significance of those expectations and
predictions, which they were to recognise as no longer pointing forward to
a future fulfilment, but as already fulfilled.” The high mountain upon
which, according to Mark, the event took place is not to be understood in
a literal sense, but as symbolical of the sublimity of the revelation; it
is to be sought not on the map of Palestine, but in the recesses of the
spirit.
The most striking case of the formation of myth is the story of the
resurrection. Here, too, myth must have attached itself to an historical
fact. The fact in question is not, however, the empty grave. This only
came into the story later, when the Jews, in order to counteract the
Christian belief in the resurrection, had spread abroad the report that
the body had been stolen from the grave. In consequence of this report the
empty grave had necessarily to be taken up into the story, the Christian
account now making use of the fact that the body of Jesus was not found as
a proof of His bodily resurrection. The emphasis laid on the identity of
the body which was buried with that which rose again, of which the Fourth
Evangelist makes so much, belongs to a time when the Church had to oppose
the Gnostic conception of a spiritual, incorporeal immortality. The
reaction against Gnosticism is, as Weisse rightly remarks, one of the most
potent factors in the development of myth in the Gospel history. As an
additional instance of this he might have cited the anti‐gnostic form of
the Johannine account of the baptism of Jesus.
What, then, is the historical fact in the resurrection? “The historical
fact,” replies Weisse, “is only the existence of a belief—not the belief
of the later Christian Church in the myth of the bodily resurrection of
the Lord—but the personal belief of the Apostles and their companions in
the miraculous presence of the risen Christ in the visions and appearances
which they experienced.” “The question whether those extraordinary
phenomena which, soon after the death of the Lord, actually and undeniably
took place within the community of His disciples, rest upon fact or
illusion—that is, whether in them the departed spirit of the Lord, of
whose presence the disciples supposed themselves to be conscious, was
really present, or whether the phenomena were produced by natural causes
of a different kind, spiritual and psychical, is a question which cannot
be answered without going beyond the confines of purely historical
criticism.” The only thing which is certain is “that the resurrection of
Jesus is a fact which belongs to the domain of the spiritual and psychic
life, and which is not related to outward corporeal existence in such a
way that the body which was laid in the grave could have shared therein.”
When the disciples of Jesus had their first vision of the glorified body
of their Lord, they were far from Jerusalem, far from the grave, and had
no thought of bringing that spiritual corporeity into any kind of relation
with the dead body of the Crucified. That the earliest appearances took
place in Galilee is indicated by the genuine conclusion of Mark, according
to which the angel charges the women with the message that the disciples
were to await Jesus in Galilee.
Strauss’s conception of myth, which failed to give it any point of vital
connexion with the history, had not provided any escape from the dilemma
offered by the rationalistic and supernaturalistic views of the
resurrection. Weisse prepared a new historical basis for a solution. He
was the first to handle the problem from a point of view which combined
historical with psychological considerations, and he is fully conscious of
the novelty and the far‐reaching consequences of his attempt. Theological
science did not overtake him for sixty years; and though it did not for
the most part share his one‐sidedness in recognising only the Galilaean
appearances, that does not count for much, since it was unable to solve
the problem of the double tradition regarding the appearances. His
discussion of the question is, both from the religious and from the
historical point of view, the most satisfying treatment of it with which
we are acquainted; the pompous and circumspect utterances of the very
latest theology in regard to the “empty grave” look very poor in
comparison. Weisse’s psychology requires only one correction—the insertion
into it of the eschatological premise.
It is not only the admixture of myth, but the whole character of the
Marcan representation, which forbids us to use it without reserve as a
source for the life of Jesus. The inventor of the Marcan hypothesis never
wearies of repeating that even in the Second Gospel it is only the main
outline of the Life of Jesus, not the way in which the various sections
are joined together, which is historical. He does not, therefore, venture
to write a Life of Jesus, but begins with a “General Sketch of the Gospel
History” in which he gives the main outlines of the Life of Jesus
according to Mark, and then proceeds to explain the incidents and
discourses in each several Gospel in the order in which they occur.(87)
He avoids the professedly historical forced interpretation of detail,
which later representatives of the Marcan hypothesis, Schenkel in
particular, employ in such distressing fashion that Wrede’s book, by
making an end of this inquisitorial method of extracting the Evangelist’s
testimony, may be said to have released the Marcan hypothesis from the
torture‐chamber. Weisse is free from these over‐refinements. He refuses to
divide the Galilaean ministry of Jesus into a period of success and a
period of failure and gradual falling off of adherents, divided by the
controversy about legal purity in Mark vii.; he does not allow this
episode to counterbalance the general evidence that Jesus’ public work was
accompanied by a constantly growing success. Nor does it occur to him to
conceive the sojourn of the Lord in Phoenician territory, and His journey
to the neighbourhood of Caesarea Philippi, as a compulsory withdrawal from
Galilee, an abandonment of His cause in that district, and to head the
chapter, as was usual in the second period of the exegesis of Mark,
“Flights and Retirements.” He is content simply to state that Jesus once
visited those regions, and explicitly remarks that while the Synoptists
speak of the Pharisees and Scribes as working actively against Him, there
is nowhere any hint of a hostile movement on the part of the people, but
that, on the contrary, in spite of the Scribes and Pharisees the people
are always ready to approve Him and take His part; so much so that His
enemies can only hope to get Him into their power by a secret betrayal.
Weisse does not admit any failure in Jesus’ work, nor that death came upon
Him from without as an inevitable necessity. He cannot, therefore, regard
the thought of suffering as forced upon Jesus by outward events. Later
interpreters of Mark have often held that the essential thing in the
Lord’s resolve to die was that by His voluntary acceptance of a fate which
was more and more clearly revealing itself as inevitable, He raised it
into the sphere of ethico‐religious freedom: this was not Weisse’s view.
Jesus, according to him, was not moved by any outward circumstances when
He set out for Jerusalem in order to die there. He did it in obedience to
a supra‐rational higher necessity. We can at most venture to conjecture
that a cessation of His miracle‐working power, of which He had become
aware, revealed to Him that the hour appointed by God had come. He did, in
fact, no further miracle in Jerusalem.
How far Isaiah liii. may have contributed to suggest the conception of
such a death being a necessary part of Messiah’s work, it is impossible to
discover. In the popular expectation there was no thought of the Messiah
as suffering. The thought was conceived by Jesus independently, through
His deep and penetrating spiritual insight. Without any external
suggestion whatever He announces to His disciples that He is to die at
Jerusalem, and that He is going thither with that end in view. He
journeyed, not to the Passover, but to His death. The fact that it took
place at the time of the Feast was, so far as Jesus was concerned,
accidental. The circumstances of His entry were such as to suggest
anything rather than the fulfilment of His predictions; but though the
jubilant multitude surrounded Him day by day, as with a wall of defence,
He did not let that make Him falter in His purpose; rather He forced the
authorities to arrest Him; He preserved silence before Pilate with the
deliberate purpose of rendering His death inevitable. The theory of later
defenders of the Marcan hypothesis that Jesus, giving up His cause in
Galilee for lost, went up to Jerusalem to conquer or die, is foreign to
Weisse’s conception. In his view, Jesus, breaking off His Galilaean work
while the tide of success was still flowing strongly, journeyed to
Jerusalem, in the scorn of consequence, with the sole purpose of dying
there.
It is true there are some premonitions of the later course of Marcan
exegesis. The Second Gospel mentions no Passover journeys as falling in
the course of the public ministry of Jesus; consequently the most natural
conclusion would be that no Passover journeys fall within that period;
that is, that Jesus’ ministry began after one Passover and closed with the
next, thus lasting less than a full year. Weisse thinks, however, that it
is impossible to understand the success of His teaching unless we assume a
ministry of several years, of more than three years, indeed. Mark does not
mention the Feasts simply because Jesus did not go up to Jerusalem.
“Intrinsic probability is, in our opinion, so strongly in favour of a
duration of a considerable number of years, that we are at a loss to
explain how it is that at least a few unprejudiced investigators have not
found in this a sufficient reason for departing from the traditional
opinion.”
The account of the mission of the Twelve is also, on the ground of
“intrinsic probability,” explained in a way which is not in accordance
with the plain sense of the words. “We do not think,” says Weisse, “that
it is necessary to understand this in the sense that He sent all the
twelve out at one time, two and two, remaining alone in the meantime; it
is much more natural to suppose that He only sent them out two at a time,
keeping the others about Him. The object of this mission was less the
immediate spreading abroad of His teaching than the preparation of the
disciples themselves for the independent activity which they would have to
exercise after His death.” These are, however, the only serious liberties
which he takes with the statements of Mark.
When did Jesus begin to think of Himself as the Messiah? The baptism seems
to have marked an epoch in regard to His Messianic consciousness, but that
does not mean that He had not previously begun to have such thoughts about
Himself. In any case He did not on that occasion arrive all at once at
that point of His inward journey which He had reached at the time of His
first public appearance. We must assume a period of some duration between
the baptism and the beginning of His ministry—a longer period than we
should suppose from the Synoptists—during which Jesus cast off the
Messianic ideas of Judaism and attained to a spiritual conception of the
Messiahship. When He began to teach, His “development” was already closed.
Later interpreters of Mark have generally differed from Weisse in assuming
a development in the thought of Jesus during His public ministry.
His conception of the Messiahship was therefore fully formed when He began
to teach in Capernaum; but He did not allow the people to see that He held
Himself to be the Messiah until His triumphal entry. It was in order to
avoid declaring His Messiahship that He kept away from Jerusalem. “It was
only in Galilee and not in the Jewish capital that an extended period of
teaching and work was possible for Him without being obliged to make an
explicit declaration whether He were the Messiah or no. In Jerusalem
itself the High Priests and Scribes would soon have put this question to
Him in such a way that He could not have avoided answering it, whereas in
Galilee He doubtless on more than one occasion cut short such attempts to
question Him too closely by the incisiveness of His replies.” Like
Strauss, Weisse recognises that the key to the explanation of the
Messianic consciousness of Jesus lies in the self‐designation “Son of
Man.” “We are most certainly justified,” he says, with almost prophetic
insight, in his “Problem of the Gospels,” published in 1856, “in regarding
the question, what sense the Divine Saviour desired to attach to this
predicate?—what, in fact, He intended to make known about Himself by using
the title Son of Man—as an essential question for the right understanding
of His teaching, and not of His teaching only, but also of the very heart
and inmost essence of His personality.”
But at this point Weisse lets in the cloven hoof of that fatal method of
interpretation, by the aid of which the defenders of the Marcan hypothesis
who succeeded him were to wage war, with a kind of dull and dogged
determination, against eschatology, in the interests of an original and
“spiritual” conception of the Messiahship supposed to be held by Jesus.
Under the obsession of the fixed idea that it was their mission to defend
the “originality” of Jesus by ascribing to Him a modernising
transformation and spiritualisation of the eschatological system of ideas,
the defenders of the Marcan hypothesis have impeded the historical study
of the Life of Jesus to an almost unbelievable extent.
The explanation of the name Son of Man had, Weisse explains, hitherto
oscillated between two extremes. Some had held the expression to be, even
in the mouth of Jesus, equivalent to “man” in general, an interpretation
which cannot be carried through; others had connected it with the Son of
Man in Daniel, and supposed that in using the term Jesus was employing a
Messianic title understood by and current among the Jews. But how came He
to employ only this unusual periphrastic name for the Messiah? Further, if
this name were really a Messianic title, how could He repeatedly have
refused Messianic salutations, and not until the triumphal entry suffered
the people to hail Him as Messiah?
The questions are rightly asked; it is therefore the more pity that they
are wrongly answered. It follows, Weisse says, from the above
considerations that Jesus did not assume an acquaintance on the part of
His hearers with the Old Testament Messianic significance of the
expression. “It was therefore incontestably the intention of Jesus—and any
one who considers it unworthy betrays thereby his own want of insight—that
the designation should have something mysterious about it, something which
would compel His hearers to reflect upon His meaning.” The expression Son
of Man was calculated to lead them on to higher conceptions of His nature
and origin, and therefore sums up in itself the whole spiritualisation of
the Messiahship.
Weisse, therefore, passionately rejects any suggestion, however modest,
that Jesus’ self‐designation, Son of Man, implies any measure of
acceptance of the Jewish apocalyptic system of ideas. Ewald had furnished
forth his Life of Jesus(88) with a wealth of Old Testament learning, and
had made some half‐hearted attempts to show the connexion of Jesus’ system
of thought with that of post‐canonical Judaism, but without taking the
matter seriously and without having any suspicion of the real character of
the eschatology of Jesus. But even these parade‐ground tactics excite
Weisse’s indignation; in his book, published in 1856, he reproaches Ewald
with failing to understand his task.
The real duty of criticism is, according to Weisse, to show that Jesus had
no part in those fantastic errors which are falsely attributed to Him when
a literal Jewish interpretation is given to His great sayings about the
future of the Son of Man, and to remove all the obstacles which seem to
have prevented hitherto the recognition of the novel character and special
significance of the expression, Son of Man, in the mouth of Him who, of
His own free choice, applied this name to Himself. “How long will it be,”
he cries, “before theology at last becomes aware of the deep importance of
its task? Historical criticism, exercised with all the thoroughness and
impartiality which alone can produce a genuine conviction, must free the
Master’s own teaching from the imputation that lies upon it—the imputation
of sharing the errors and false expectations in which, as we cannot deny,
owing to imperfect or mistaken understanding of the suggestions of the
Master, the Apostles, and with them the whole early Christian Church,
became involved.”
This fundamental position determines the remainder of Weisse’s views.
Jesus cannot have shared the Jewish particularism. He did not hold the Law
to be binding. It was for this reason that He did not go up to the Feasts.
He distinctly and repeatedly expressed the conviction that His doctrine
was destined for the whole world. In speaking of the parousia of the Son
of Man He was using a figure—a figure which includes in a mysterious
fashion all His predictions of the future. He did not speak to His
disciples of His resurrection, His ascension, and His parousia as three
distinct acts, since the event to which He looked forward is not identical
with any of the three, but is composed of them all. The resurrection is,
at the same time, the ascension and parousia, and in the parousia the
resurrection and the ascension are also included. “The one conclusion to
which we believe we can point with certainty is that Jesus spoke of the
future of His work and His teaching in a way that implied the
consciousness of an influence to be continued after His death, whether
unbrokenly or intermittently, and the consciousness that by this influence
His work and teaching would be preserved from destruction and the final
victory assured to it.”
The personal presence of Jesus which the disciples experienced after His
death was in their view only a partial fulfilment of that general promise.
The parousia appeared to them as still awaiting fulfilment. Thought of
thus, as an isolated event, they could only conceive it from the Jewish
apocalyptic standpoint, and they finally came to suppose that they had
derived these fantastic ideas from the Master Himself.
In his determined opposition to the recognition of eschatology in
Strauss’s first Life of Jesus, Weisse here lays down the lines which were
to be followed by the “liberal” Lives of Jesus of the ’sixties and
following years, which only differ from him, not always to their
advantage, in their more elaborate interpretation of the detail of Mark.
The only work, therefore, which was a conscious continuation of Strauss’s,
takes, in spite of its just appreciation of the character of the sources,
a wrong path, led astray by the mistaken idea of the “originality” of
Jesus, which it exalts into a canon of historical criticism. Only after
long and devious wanderings did the study of the subject find the right
road again. The whole struggle over eschatology is nothing else than a
gradual elimination of Weisse’s ideas. It was only with Johannes Weiss
that theology escaped from the influence of Christian Hermann Weisse.
XI. BRUNO BAUER. THE FIRST SCEPTICAL LIFE OF JESUS
Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes. (Criticism of
the Gospel History of John.) Bremen, 1840. 435 pp.
Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker. (Criticism of
the Gospel History of the Synoptics.) 3 vols., Leipzig, 1841‐1842;
vol. i. 416 pp.; vol. ii. 392 pp.; vol. iii. 341 pp.
Kritik der Evangelien. (Criticism of the Gospels.) 2 vols.,
1850‐1851, Berlin.
Kritik der Apostelgeschichte. (Criticism of Acts.) 1850.
Kritik der Paulinischen Briefe. Berlin, 1850‐1852. In three parts.
Philo, Strauss, Renan und das Urchristentum. (P., S., R., and
Primitive Christianity.) Berlin, 1874. 155 pp.
Christus und die Cäsaren. Der Ursprung des Christentums aus dem
römischen Griechentum. (The Origin of Christianity from Graeco‐
Roman Civilisation.) Berlin, 1877. 387 pp.
Bruno Bauer was born in 1809 at Eisenberg, in the duchy of Sachsen‐
Altenburg. In philosophy, he was at first associated entirely with the
Hegelian “right.” Like Strauss, he received a strong impulse from Vatke.
At this stage of his development he reviewed, in 1835 and 1836, Strauss’s
Life of Jesus in the _Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik_, and wrote
in 1838 a “Criticism of the History of Revelation.”(89)
In 1834 he had become Privat‐Docent in Berlin, but in 1839 he removed to
Bonn. He was then in the midst of that intellectual crisis of which the
evidence appeared in his critical works on John and the Synoptics. In
August 1841 the Minister, Eichhorn, requested the Faculties of the
Prussian Universities to report on the question whether Bauer should be
allowed to retain the _venia docendi_. Most of them returned an evasive
answer, Königsberg replied in the affirmative, and Bonn in the negative.
In March 1842 Bauer was obliged to cease lecturing, and retired to Rixdorf
near Berlin. In the first heat of his furious indignation over this
treatment he wrote a work with the title “Christianity Exposed,”(90)
which, however, was cancelled before publication at Zurich in 1843.
He then turned his attention to secular history and wrote on the French
Revolution, on Napoleon, on the Illuminism of the Eighteenth Century, and
on the party struggles in Germany during the years 1842‐1846. At the
beginning of the ’fifties he returned to theological subjects, but failed
to exercise any influence. His work was simply ignored.
Radical though he was in spirit, Bauer found himself fighting, at the end
of the ’fifties and beginning of the ’sixties, in the ranks of the
Prussian Conservatives—we are reminded how Strauss in the Würtemberg
Chamber was similarly forced to side with the reactionaries. He died in
1882. His was a pure, modest, and lofty character.
At the time of his removal from Berlin to Bonn he was just at the end of
the twenties, that critical age when pupils often surprise their teachers,
when men begin to find themselves and show what they are, not merely what
they have been taught.
In approaching the investigation of the Gospel history, Bauer saw, as he
himself tells us, two ways open to him. He might take as his starting‐
point the Jewish Messianic conception, and endeavour to answer the
question how the intuitive prophetic idea of the Messiah became a fixed
reflective conception. That was the historical method; he chose, however,
the other, the literary method. This starts from the opposite side of the
question, from the end instead of the beginning of the Gospel history.
Taking first the Gospel of John, in which it is obvious that reflective
thought has fitted the life of the Jewish Messiah into the frame of the
Logos conception, he then, starting as it were from the embouchure of the
stream, works his way upwards to the high ground in which the Gospel
tradition takes its rise. The decision in favour of the latter view
determined the character of Bauer’s life‐work; it was his task to follow
out, to its ultimate consequences, the literary solution of the problem of
the life of Jesus.
How far this path would lead him he did not at first suspect. But he did
suspect how strong was the influence upon the formation of history of a
dominant idea which moulds and shapes it with a definite artistic purpose.
His interest was especially arrested by Philo, who, without knowing or
intending it, contributed to the fulfilment of a higher task than that
with which he was immediately engaged. Bauer’s view is that a speculative
principle such as Philo’s, when it begins to take possession of men’s
minds, influences them in the first glow of enthusiasm which it evokes
with such overmastering power that the just claims of that which is actual
and historical cannot always secure the attention which is their due. In
Philo’s pupil, John, we must look, not for history, but for art.
The Fourth Gospel is in fact a work of art. This was now for the first
time appreciated by one who was himself an artist. Schleiermacher, indeed,
had at an earlier period taken up the aesthetic standpoint in considering
this Gospel. But he had used it as an apologist, proceeding to exalt the
artistic truth which he rightly recognised into historic reality, and his
critical sense failed him, precisely because he was an aesthete and an
apologist, when he came to deal with the Fourth Gospel. Now, however,
there comes forward a true artist, who shows that the depth of religious
and intellectual insight which Tholuck and Neander, in opposing Strauss,
had urged on behalf of the Fourth Gospel, is—Christian art.
In Bauer, however, the aesthete is at the same time a critic. Although
much in the Fourth Gospel is finely “felt,” like the opening scenes
referring to the Baptist and to Jesus, which Bauer groups together under
the heading “The Circle of the Expectant,” yet his art is by no means
always perfect. The author who conceived those discourses, of which the
movement consists in a kind of tautological return upon itself, and who
makes the parables trail out into dragging allegories, is no perfect
artist. “The parable of the Good Shepherd,” says Bauer, “is neither
simple, nor natural, nor a true parable, but a metaphor, which is,
nevertheless, much too elaborate for a metaphor, is not clearly conceived,
and, finally, in places shows much too clearly the skeleton of reflection
over which it is stretched.”
Bauer treats, in his work of 1840,(91) the Fourth Gospel only. The
Synoptics he deals with only in a quite incidental fashion, “as opposing
armies make demonstrations in order to provoke the enemy to a decisive
conflict.”
He breaks off at the beginning of the story of the passion, because here
it would be necessary to bring in the Synoptic parallels. “From the
distant heights on which the Synoptic forces have taken up a menacing
position, we must now draw them down into the plain; now comes the pitched
battle between them and the Fourth Gospel, and the question regarding the
historical character of that which we have found to be the ultimate basis
of the last Gospel, can now at length be decided.”
If, in the Gospel of John, no smallest particle could be found which was
unaffected by the creative reflection of the author, how will it stand
with the Synoptists?
When Bauer broke off his work upon John in this abrupt way—for he had not
originally intended to conclude it at this point—how far did he still
retain a belief in the historical character of the Synoptics? It looks as
if he had intended to treat then as the solid foundation, in contrast with
the fantastic structure raised upon it by the Fourth Gospel. But when he
began to use his pick upon the rock, it crumbled away. Instead of a
difference of kind he found only a difference of degree. The “Criticism of
the Gospel History of the Synoptists” of 1841 is built on the site which
Strauss had levelled. “The abiding influence of Strauss,” says Bauer,
“consists in the fact that he has removed from the path of subsequent
criticism the danger and trouble of a collision with the earlier orthodox
system.”
Bauer finds his material laid ready to his hand by Weisse and Wilke.
Weisse had divined in Mark the source from which criticism—becoming barren
in the work of Strauss—might draw a new spring of vigorous life; and
Wilke, whom Bauer places above Weisse, had raised this happy conjecture to
the level of a scientifically assured result. The Marcan hypothesis was no
longer on its trial.
But its bearing upon the history of Jesus had still to be determined. What
position do Weisse and Wilke take up towards the hypothesis of a tradition
lying behind the Gospel of Mark? If it be once admitted that the whole
Gospel tradition, so far as concerns its plan, goes back to a single
writer, who has created the connexion between the different events—for
neither Weisse nor Wilke regards the connexion of the sections as
historical—does not the possibility naturally suggest itself that the
narrative of the events themselves, not merely the connexion in which they
appear in Mark, is to be set down to the account of the author of the
Gospel? Weisse and Wilke had not suspected how great a danger arises when,
of the three witnesses who represent the tradition, only one is allowed to
stand, and the tradition is recognised and allowed to exist in this one
written form only. The triple embankment held; will a single one bear the
strain?
The following considerations have to be taken into account. The criticism
of the Fourth Gospel compels us to recognise that a Gospel _may_ have a
purely literary origin. This discovery dawned upon Bauer at a time when he
was still disinclined to accept Wilke’s conclusions regarding Mark. But
when he had recognised the truth of the latter he felt compelled by the
combination of the two to accept the idea that Mark also might be of
purely literary origin. For Weisse and Wilke the Marcan hypothesis had not
implied this result, because they continued to combine with it the wider
hypothesis of a general tradition, holding that Matthew and Luke used the
collection of “Logia,” and also owed part of their supplementary matter to
a free use of floating tradition, so that Mark, it might almost be said,
merely supplied them with the formative principle by means of which they
might order their material.
But what if Papias’s statement about the collection of “Logia” were
worthless, and could be shown to be so by the literary data? In that case
Matthew and Luke would be purely literary expansions of Mark, and like
him, purely literary inventions.
In this connexion Bauer attaches decisive importance to the phenomena of
the birth‐stories. If these had been derived from tradition they could not
differ from each other as they do. If it is suggested that tradition had
produced a large number of independent, though mutually consistent,
stories of the childhood, out of which the Evangelists composed their
opening narratives, this also is found to be untenable, for these
narratives are not composite structures. The separate stories of which
each of these two histories of the childhood consists could not have been
formed independently of one another; none of them existed by itself; each
points to the others and is informed by a view which implies the whole.
The histories of the childhood are therefore not literary versions of a
tradition, but literary inventions.
If we go on to examine the discourse and narrative material, additional to
that of Mark, which is found in Matthew and Luke, a similar result
appears. The same standpoint is regulative throughout, showing that the
additions do not consist of oral or written traditional material which has
been worked into the Marcan plan, but of a literary development of certain
fundamental ideas and suggestions found in the first author. These
developments, as is shown by the accounts of the Sermon on the Mount and
the charge to the Twelve, are not carried as far in Luke as in Matthew.
The additional material in the latter seems indeed to be worked up from
suggestions in the former. Luke thus forms the transition stage between
Mark and Matthew. The Marcan hypothesis, accordingly, now takes on the
following form. Our knowledge of the Gospel history does not rest upon any
basis of tradition, but only upon three literary works. Two of these are
not independent, being merely expansions of the first, and the third,
Matthew, is also dependent upon the second. Consequently there is no
tradition of the Gospel history, but only a single _literary source_.
But, if so, who is to assure us that this Gospel history, with its
assertion of the Messiahship of Jesus, was already a matter of common
knowledge before it was fixed in writing, and did not first become known
in a literary form? In the latter case, one man would have created out of
general ideas the definite historical tradition in which these ideas are
embodied. The only thing that could be set against this literary
possibility, as a historical counter‐possibility, would be a proof that at
the period when the Gospel history is supposed to take place a Messianic
expectation really existed among the Jews, so that a man who claimed to be
the Messiah and was recognised as such, as Mark represents Jesus to have
been, would be historically conceivable. This presupposition had hitherto
been unanimously accepted by all writers, no matter how much opposed in
other respects. They were all satisfied “that before the appearance of
Jesus the expectation of a Messiah prevailed among the Jews”; and were
even able to explain its precise character.
But where—apart from the Gospels—did they get their information from?
Where is the documentary evidence of the Jewish Messianic doctrine on
which that of the Gospels is supposed to be based? Daniel was the last of
the prophets. Everything tends to suggest that the mysterious content of
his work remained without influence in the subsequent period. Jewish
literature ends with the Wisdom writings, in which there is no mention of
a Messiah. In the LXX there is no attempt to translate in accordance with
a preconceived picture of the Messiah. In the Apocalypses, which are of
small importance, there is reference to a Messianic Kingdom; the Messiah
Himself, however, plays a quite subordinate part, and is, indeed, scarcely
mentioned. For Philo He has no existence; the Alexandrian does not dream
of connecting Him with his Logos speculation. There remain, therefore, as
witnesses for the Jewish Messianic expectations in the time of Tiberius,
only Mark and his imitators. This evidence, however, is of such a
character that in certain points it contradicts itself.
In the first place, if at the time when the Christian community was
forming its view of history and the religious ideas which we find in the
Gospels, the Jews had already possessed a doctrine of the Messiah, there
would have been already a fixed type of interpretation of the Messianic
passages in the Old Testament, and it would have been impossible for the
same passages to be interpreted in a totally different way, as referring
to Jesus and His work, as we find them interpreted in the New Testament.
Next, consider the representation of the Baptist’s work. We should have
expected him to connect his baptism with the preaching of “Him who was to
come”—if this were really the Messiah—by baptizing in the name of this
“Coming One.” He, however, keeps them separate, baptizing in preparation
for the Kingdom, though referring in his discourses to “Him who was to
come.”
The earliest Evangelist did not venture openly to carry back into the
history the idea that Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah, because he was
aware that in the time of Jesus no general expectation of the Messiah had
prevailed among the people. When the disciples in Mark viii. 28 report the
opinions of the people concerning Jesus they cannot mention any who hold
Him to be the Messiah. Peter is the first to attain to the recognition of
His Messiahship. But as soon as the confession is made the Evangelist
makes Jesus forbid His disciples to tell the people who He is. Why is the
attribution of the Messiahship to Jesus made in this surreptitious and
inconsistent way? It is because the writer who gave the history its form
well knew that no one had ever come forward publicly on Palestinian soil
to claim the Messiahship, or had been recognised by the people as Messiah.
The “reflective conception of the Messiah” was not, therefore, taken over
ready‐made from Judaism; that dogma first arose along with the Christian
community, or rather the moment in which it arose was the same in which
the Christian community had its birth.
Moreover, how unhistorical, even on a priori grounds, is the mechanical
way in which Jesus at this first appearance at once sets Himself up as the
Messiah and says, “Behold I am He whom ye have expected.” In essence,
Bauer thinks, there is not so much difference between Strauss and
Hengstenberg. For Hengstenberg the whole life of Jesus is the living
embodiment of the Old Testament picture of the Messiah; Strauss, a less
reverent counterpart of Hengstenberg, made the image of the Messiah into a
mask which Jesus Himself was obliged to assume, and which legend
afterwards substituted for His real features.
“We save the honour of Jesus,” says Bauer, “when we restore His Person to
life from the state of inanition to which the apologists have reduced it,
and give it once more a living relation to history, which it certainly
possessed—that can no longer be denied. If a conception was to become
dominant which should unite heaven and earth, God and man, nothing more
and nothing less was necessary as a preliminary condition, than that a Man
should appear, the very essence of whose consciousness should be the
reconciliation of these antitheses, and who should manifest this
consciousness to the world, and lead the religious mind to the sole point
from which its difficulties can be solved. Jesus accomplished this mighty
work, but not by prematurely pointing to His own Person. Instead He
gradually made known to the people the thoughts which filled and entered
into the very essence of His mind. It was only in this indirect way that
His Person—which He freely offered up in the cause of His historical
vocation and of the idea for which He lived—continued to live on in so far
as this idea was accepted. When, in the belief of His followers, He rose
again and lived on in the Christian community, it was as the Son of God
who had overcome and reconciled the great antithesis. He was that in which
alone the religious consciousness found rest and peace, apart from which
there was nothing firm, trustworthy, and enduring.”
“It was only now that the vague, ill‐defined, prophetic representations
were focused into a point; were not only fulfilled, but were also united
together by a common bond which strengthened and gave greater value to
each of them. With His appearance and the rise of belief in Him, a clear
conception, a definite mental picture of the Messiah became possible; and
thus it was that a Christology(92) first arose.”
While, therefore, at the close of Bauer’s first work it might have seemed
that it was only the Gospel of John which he held to be a literary
creation, here the same thing is said of the original Gospel. The only
difference is that we find more primitive reflection in the Synoptics, and
later work in the representation given by the Fourth Evangelist; the
former is of a more practical character, the latter more dogmatic.
Nevertheless it is false to assert that according to Bauer the earliest
Evangelist invented the Gospel history and the personality of Jesus. That
is to carry back the ideas of a later period and a further stage of
development into the original form of his view. At the moment when, having
disposed of preliminaries, he enters on his investigation, he still
assumes that a great, a unique Personality, who so impressed men by His
character that it lived on among them in an ideal form, had awakened into
life the Messianic idea; and that what the original Evangelist really did
was to portray the life of this Jesus—the Christ of the community which He
founded—in accordance with the Messianic view of Him, just as the Fourth
Evangelist portrayed it in accordance with the presupposition that Jesus
was the revealer of the Logos. It was only in the course of his
investigations that Bauer’s opinion became more radical. As he goes on,
his writing becomes ill‐tempered, and takes the form of controversial
dialogues with “the theologians,” whom he apostrophises in a biting and
injurious fashion, and whom he continually reproaches with not daring,
owing to their apologetic prejudices, to see things as they really are,
and with declining to face the ultimate results of criticism from fear
that the tradition might suffer more loss of historic value than religion
could bear. In spite of this hatred of the theologians, which is
pathological in character, like his meaningless punctuation, his critical
analyses are always exceedingly acute. One has the impression of walking
alongside a man who is reasoning quite intelligently, but who talks to
himself as though possessed by a fixed idea. What if the whole thing
should turn out to be nothing but a literary invention—not only the
incidents and discourses, but even the Personality which is assumed as the
starting‐point of the whole movement? What if the Gospel history were only
a late imaginary embodiment of a set of exalted ideas, and these were the
only historical reality from first to last? This is the idea which
obsesses his mind more and more completely, and moves him to contemptuous
laughter. What, he mocks, will these apologists, who are so sure of
everything, do then with the shreds and tatters which will be all that is
left to them?
But at the outset of his investigations Bauer was far from holding such
views. His purpose was really only to continue the work of Strauss. The
conception of myth and legend of which the latter made use is, Bauer
thinks, much too vague to explain this deliberate “transformation” of a
personality. In the place of myth Bauer therefore sets “reflection.” The
life which pulses in the Gospel history is too vigorous to be explained as
created by legend; it is real “experience,” only not the experience of
Jesus, but of the Church. The representation of this experience of the
Church in the Life of a Person is not the work of a number of persons, but
of a single author. It is in this twofold aspect—as the composition of one
man, embodying the experience of many—that the Gospel history is to be
regarded. As religious art it has a profound truth. When it is regarded
from this point of view the difficulties which are encountered in the
endeavour to conceive it as real immediately disappear.
We must take as our point of departure the belief in the sacrificial death
and the resurrection of Jesus. Everything else attaches itself to this as
to its centre. When the need arose to fix definitely the beginning of the
manifestation of Jesus as the Saviour—to determine the point of time at
which the Lord issued forth from obscurity—it was natural to connect this
with the work of the Baptist; and Jesus comes to his baptism. While this
is sufficient for the earliest Evangelist, Matthew and Luke feel it to be
necessary, in view of the important consequences involved in the connexion
of Jesus with the Baptist, to bring them into relation once more by means
of the question addressed by the Baptist to Jesus, although this addition
is quite inconsistent with the assumptions of the earliest Evangelist. If
he had conceived the story of the baptism with the idea of introducing the
Baptist again on a later occasion, and this time, moreover, as a doubter,
he would have given it a different form. This is a just observation of
Bauer’s; the story of the baptism with the miracle which took place at it,
and the Baptist’s question, understood as implying a doubt of the
Messiahship of Jesus, mutually exclude one another.
The story of the temptation embodies an experience of the early Church.
This narrative represents her inner conflicts under the form of a conflict
of the Redeemer. On her march through the wilderness of this world she has
to fight with temptations of the devil, and in the story composed by Mark
and Luke, and artistically finished by Matthew, she records a vow to build
only on the inner strength of her constitutive principle. In the sermon on
the mount also, Matthew has carried out with greater completeness that
which was more vaguely conceived by Luke. It is only when we understand
the words of Jesus as embodying experiences of the early Church that their
deeper sense becomes clear and what would otherwise seem offensive
disappears. The saying, “Let the dead bury their dead,” would not have
been fitting for Jesus to speak, and had He been a real man, it could
never have entered into His mind to create so unreal and cruel a collision
of duties; for no command, Divine or human, could have sufficed to make it
right for a man to contravene the ethical obligations of family life. So
here again, the obvious conclusion is that the saying originated in the
early Church, and was intended to inculcate renunciation of a world which
was felt to belong to the kingdom of the dead, and to illustrate this by
an extreme example.
The mission of the Twelve, too, is, as an historical occurrence, simply
inconceivable. It would have been different if Jesus had given them a
definite teaching, or form of belief, or positive conception of any kind,
to take with them as their message. But how ill the charge to the Twelve
fulfils its purpose as a discourse of instruction! What the disciples
needed to learn, namely, what and how they were to teach, they are not
told; and the discourse which Matthew has composed, working on the basis
of Luke, implies quite a different set of circumstances. It is concerned
with the struggles of the Church with the world and the sufferings which
it must endure. This is the explanation of the references to suffering
which constantly recur in the discourses of Jesus, in spite of the fact
that His disciples were not enduring any sufferings, and that the
Evangelist cannot even make it conceivable as a possibility that those
before whose eyes Jesus holds up the way of the Cross could ever come into
such a position. The Twelve, at any rate, had no sufferings to encounter
during their mission, and if they were merely being sent by Jesus into the
surrounding districts they were not very likely to meet with kings and
rulers there.
That it is a case of invented history is also shown by the fact that
nothing is said about the doings of the disciples, and they seem to come
back again immediately, though the earliest Evangelist, it is true, to
prevent this from being too apparent, inserts at this point the story of
the execution of the Baptist.
All this is just and acute criticism. The charge to the Twelve is not a
discourse of instruction. What Jesus there sets before the disciples they
could not at that time have understood, and the promises which He makes to
them are not appropriate to their circumstances.
Many of the discourses are mere bundles of heterogeneous sayings, though
this is not so much the case in Mark as in the others. He has not
forgotten that effective polemic consists of short, pointed, incisive
arguments. The others, as advanced theologians, are of opinion that it is
fitting to indulge in arguments which have nothing to do with the matter
in hand, or only the most distant connexion with it. They form the
transition to the discourses of the Fourth Gospel, which usually
degenerate into an aimless wrangle. In the same connexion it is rightly
observed that the discourses of Jesus do not advance from point to point
by the logical development of an idea, the thoughts are merely strung
together one after another, the only connexion, if connexion there is,
being due to a kind of conventional mould in which the discourse is cast.
The parables, Bauer continues, present difficulties no less great. It is
an ineptitude on the part of the apologists to suggest that the parables
are intended to make things clear. Jesus Himself contradicts this view by
saying bluntly and unambiguously to His disciples that to them it was
given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to the people all
His teaching must be spoken as parables, that “seeing they might see and
not perceive, and hearing they might hear and not understand.” The
parables were therefore intended only to exercise the intelligence of the
disciples; and so far from being understood by the people, mystified and
repelled them; as if it would not have been much better to exercise the
minds of the disciples in this way when He was alone with them. The
disciples, however, do not even understand the simple parable of the
Sower, but need to have it interpreted to them, so that the Evangelist
once more stultifies his own theory.
Bruno Bauer is right in his observation that the parables offer a serious
problem, seeing that they were intended to conceal and not to make plain,
and that Jesus nevertheless taught only in parables. The character of the
difficulty, however, is such that even literary criticism has no
explanation ready. Bruno Bauer admits that he does not know what was in
the mind of the Evangelist when he composed these parables, and thinks
that he had no very definite purpose, or at least that the suggestions
which were floating in his mind were not worked up into a clearly ordered
whole.
Here, therefore, Bauer’s method broke down. He did not, however, allow
this to shake his confidence in his reading of the facts, and he continued
to maintain it in the face of a new difficulty which he himself brought
clearly to light. Mark, according to him, is an artistic unity, the
offspring of a single mind. How then is it to be explained that in
addition to other less important doublets it contains two accounts of the
feeding of the multitude? Here Bauer has recourse to the aid of Wilke, who
distinguishes our Mark from an Ur‐Markus,(93) and ascribes these doublets
to later interpolation. Later on he became more and more doubtful about
the artistic unity of Mark, despite the fact that this was the fundamental
assumption of his theory, and in the second edition of his “Criticism of
the Gospels,” of 1851, he carried through the distinction between the
canonical Mark and the Ur‐Markus.
But even supposing the assumption of a redaction were justified, how could
the redactor have conceived the idea of adding to the first account of the
feeding of the multitude a second which is identical with it almost to the
very wording? In any case, on what principle can Mark be distinguished
from Ur‐Markus? There are no fundamental differences to afford a ready
criterion. The distinction is purely one of subjective feeling, that is to
say, it is arbitrary. As soon as Bauer admits that the artistic unity of
Mark, on which he lays so much stress, has been tampered with, he cannot
maintain his position except by shutting his eyes to the fact that it can
only be a question of the weaving in of fragments of tradition, not of the
inventions of an imitator. But if he once admits the presence of
traditional materials, his whole theory of the earliest Evangelist’s
having created the Gospel falls to the ground.
For the moment he succeeds in laying the spectre again, and continues to
think of Mark as a work of art, in which the interpolation alters nothing.
Bauer discusses with great thoroughness those sayings of Jesus in which He
forbids those whom He had healed to noise abroad their cure. In the form
in which they appear these cannot, he argues, be historical, for Jesus
imposes this prohibition in some cases where it is quite meaningless,
since the healing had taken place in the presence of a multitude. It must
therefore be derived from the Evangelist. Only when it is recognised as a
free creation can its meaning be discerned. It finds its explanation in
the inconsistent views regarding miracle which were held side by side in
the early Church. No doubt was felt that Jesus had performed miracles, and
by these miracles had given evidence of His Divine mission. On the other
hand, by the introduction of the Christian principle, the Jewish demand
for a sign had been so far limited, and the other, the spiritual line of
evidence, had become so important, or at least so indispensable, that it
was no longer possible to build on the miracles only, or to regard Jesus
merely as a wonder‐worker; so in some way or other the importance ascribed
to miracle must be reduced. In the graphic symbolism of the Gospel history
this antithesis takes the form that Jesus did miracles—there was no
getting away from that—but on the other hand Himself declared that He did
not wish to lay any stress upon such acts. As there are times when
miracles must hide their light under a bushel, Jesus, on occasion, forbids
that they should be made known. The other Synoptists no longer understood
this theory of the first Evangelist, and introduced the prohibition in
passages where it was absurd.
The way in which Jesus makes known His Messiahship is based on another
theory of the original Evangelist. The order of Mark can give us no
information regarding the chronology of the life of Jesus, since this
Gospel is anything rather than a chronicle. We cannot even assert that
there is a deliberate logic in the way in which the sections are
connected. But there is one fundamental principle of arrangement which
comes quite clearly to light, viz. that it was only at Caesarea Philippi,
in the closing period of His life, that Jesus made Himself known as the
Messiah, and that, therefore, He was not previously held to be so either
by His disciples or by the people. This is clearly shown in the answers of
the disciples when Jesus asked them whom men took Him to be. The implied
course of events, however, is determined by art, not history—as history it
would be inconceivable.
Could there indeed be a more absurd impossibility? “Jesus,” says Bauer,
“must perform these innumerable, these astounding miracles because,
according to the view which the Gospels represent, He is the Messiah; He
must perform them in order to prove Himself to be the Messiah—and yet no
one recognises Him as the Messiah! That is the greatest miracle of all,
that the people had not long ago recognised the Messiah in this wonder‐
worker. Jesus could only be held to be the Messiah in consequence of doing
miracles; but He only began to do miracles when, in the faith of the early
Church, He rose from the dead as Messiah, and the facts that He rose as
Messiah and that He did miracles, are one and the same fact.”
Mark, however, represents a Jesus who does miracles and who nevertheless
does not thereby reveal Himself to be the Messiah. He was obliged so to
represent Him, because he was conscious that Jesus was not recognised and
acknowledged as Messiah by the people, nor even by His immediate
followers, in the unhesitating fashion in which those of later times
imagined Him to have been recognised. Mark’s conception and representation
of the matter carried back into the past the later developments by which
there finally arose a Christian community for which Jesus had become the
Messiah. “Mark is also influenced by an artistic instinct which leads him
to develop the main interest, the origin of the faith, gradually. It is
only after the ministry of Jesus has extended over a considerable period,
and is, indeed, drawing towards its close, that faith arises in the circle
of the disciples; and it is only later still, when, in the person of the
blind man at Jericho, a prototype of the great company of believers that
was to be has hailed the Lord with a Messianic salutation, that, at the
triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the faith of the people suddenly ripens
and finds expression.”
It is true, this artistic design is completely marred when Jesus does
miracles which must have made Him known to every child as the Messiah. We
cannot, therefore, blame Matthew very much if, while he retains this plan
in its external outlines in a kind of mechanical way, he contradicts it
somewhat awkwardly by making Jesus at an earlier point clearly designate
Himself as Messiah and many recognise Him as such. And the Fourth
Evangelist cannot be said to be destroying any very wonderful work of art
when he gives the impression that from the very first any one who wished
could recognise Jesus as the Messiah.
Mark himself does not keep strictly to his own plan. He makes Jesus forbid
His disciples to make known His Messiahship; how then does the multitude
at Jerusalem recognise it so suddenly, after a single miracle which they
had not even witnessed, and which was in no way different from others
which He had done before? If that “chance multitude” in Jerusalem was
capable of such sudden enlightenment it must have fallen from heaven!
The following remarks of Bauer, too, are nothing less than classical. The
incident at Caesarea Philippi is the central fact of the Gospel history;
it gives us a fixed point from which to group and criticise the other
statements of the Gospel. At the same time it introduces a complication
into the plan of the life of Jesus, because it necessitates the carrying
through of the theory—often in the face of the text—that previously Jesus
had never been regarded as the Messiah; and lays upon us the necessity of
showing not only how Peter had come to recognise His Messiahship, but also
how He subsequently became Messiah for the multitude—if indeed He ever did
become Messiah for them. But the very fact that it does introduce this
complication is in itself a proof that in this scene at Caesarea Philippi
we have the one ray of light which history sheds upon the life of Jesus.
It is impossible to explain how any one could come to reject the simple
and natural idea that Jesus claimed from the first to be the Messiah, if
that had been the fact, and accept this complicated representation in its
place. The latter, therefore, must be the original version. In pointing
this out, Bauer gave for the first time the real proof, from internal
evidence, of the priority of Mark.
The difficulty involved in the conception of miracle as a proof of the
Messiahship of Jesus is another discovery of Bauer’s. Only here, instead
of probing the question to the bottom, he stops half‐way. How do we know,
he should have gone on to ask, that the Messiah was expected to appear as
an earthly wonder‐worker? There is nothing to that effect in Jewish
writings. And do not the Gospels themselves prove that any one might do
miracles without suggesting to a single person the idea that he might be
the Messiah? Accordingly the only inference to be drawn from the Marcan
representation is that miracles were not among the characteristic marks of
the Messiah, and that it was only later, in the Christian community, which
made Jesus the miracle‐worker into Jesus the Messiah, that this connexion
between miracles and Messiahship was established. In dealing with the
question of the triumphal entry, too, Bauer halts half‐way. Where do we
read that Jesus was hailed as Messiah upon that occasion? If He had been
taken by the people to be the Messiah, the controversy in Jerusalem must
have turned on this personal question; but it did not even touch upon it,
and the Sanhedrin never thinks of setting up witnesses to Jesus’ claim to
be the Messiah. When once Bauer had exposed the historical and literary
impossibility of Jesus’ being hailed by the people as Messiah, he ought to
have gone on to draw the conclusion that Jesus did not, according to Mark,
make a Messianic entry into Jerusalem.
It was, however, a remarkable achievement on Bauer’s part to have thus set
forth clearly the historical difficulties of the life of Jesus. One might
suppose that between the work of Strauss and that of Bauer there lay not
five, but fifty years—the critical work of a whole generation.
The stereotyped character of the thrice‐repeated prediction of the
passion, which, according to Bauer, betrays a certain poverty and
feebleness of imagination on the part of the earliest Evangelist, shows
clearly, he thinks, the unhistorical character of the utterance recorded.
The fact that the prediction occurs three times, its definiteness
increasing upon each occasion, proves its literary origin.
It is the same with the transfiguration. The group in which the heroic
representatives of the Law and the Prophets stand as supporters of the
Saviour, was modelled by the earliest Evangelist. In order to place it in
the proper light and to give becoming splendour to its great subject, he
has introduced a number of traits taken from the story of Moses.
Bauer pitilessly exposes the difficulties of the journey of Jesus from
Galilee to Jerusalem, and exults over the perplexities of the
“apologists.” “The theologian,” he says, “must not boggle at this journey,
he must just believe it. He must in faith follow the footsteps of his
Lord! Through the midst of Galilee and Samaria—and at the same time, for
Matthew also claims a hearing, through Judaea on the farther side of
Jordan! I wish him _Bon voyage_!”
The eschatological discourses are not history, but are merely an expansion
of those explanations of the sufferings of the Church of which we have had
a previous example in the charge to the Twelve. An Evangelist who wrote
before the destruction of Jerusalem would have referred to the Temple, to
Jerusalem, and to the Jewish people, in a very different way.
The story of Lazarus deserves special attention. Did not Spinoza say that
he would break his system in pieces if he could be convinced of the
reality of this event? This is the decisive point for the question of the
relation between the Synoptists and John. Vain are all the efforts of the
apologists to explain why the Synoptists do not mention this miracle. The
reason they ignore it is that it originated after their time in the mind
of the Fourth Evangelist, and they were unacquainted with his Gospel. And
yet it is the most valuable of all, because it shows clearly the
concentric circles of progressive intensification by which the development
of the Gospel history proceeds. “The Fourth Gospel,” remarks Bauer,
“represents a dead man as having been restored to life after having been
four days under the power of death, and having consequently become a prey
to corruption; Luke represents the young man at Nain as being restored to
life when his body was being carried to the grave; Mark, the earliest
Evangelist, can only tell us of the restoration of a dead person who had
the moment before succumbed to an illness. The theologians have a great
deal to say about the contrast between the canonical and the apocryphal
writings, but they might have found a similar contrast even within the
four Gospels, if the light had not been so directly in their eyes.”
The treachery of Judas, as described in the Gospels, is inexplicable.
The Lord’s Supper, considered as an historic scene, is revolting and
inconceivable. Jesus can no more have instituted it than He can have
uttered the saying, “Let the dead bury their dead.” In both cases the
objectionableness arises from the fact that a tenet of the early Church
has been cast into the form of an historical saying of Jesus. A man who
was present in person, corporeally present, could not entertain the idea
of offering others his flesh and blood to eat. To demand from others that
they should, while he was actually present, imagine the bread and wine
which they were eating to be his body and blood, would be for an actual
man wholly impossible. It was only when Jesus’ actual bodily presence had
been removed, and only when the Christian community had existed for some
time, that such a conception as is expressed in that formula could have
arisen. A point which clearly betrays the later composition of the
narrative is that the Lord does not turn to the disciples sitting with Him
at table and say, “This is my blood which is shed for you,” but, since the
words were invented by the early Church, speaks of the “many” for whom He
gives Himself. The only historical fact is that the Jewish Passover was
gradually transformed by the Christian community into a feast which had
reference to Jesus.
As regards the scene in Gethsemane, Mark, according to Bauer, held it
necessary that in the moment when the last conflict and final catastrophe
were coming upon Jesus, He should show clearly by His actions that He met
this fate of His own free will. The reality of His choice could only be
made clear by showing Him first engaged in an inner struggle against the
acceptance of His vocation, before showing how He freely submitted to His
fate.
The last words ascribed to Jesus by Mark, “My God, my God, why hast Thou
forsaken me?” were written without thinking of the inferences that might
be drawn from them, merely with the purpose of showing that even to the
last moment of His passion Jesus fulfilled the rôle of the Messiah, the
picture of whose sufferings had been revealed to the Psalmist so long
beforehand by the Holy Spirit.
It is scarcely necessary now, Bauer thinks, to go into the contradictions
in the story of the resurrection, for “the doughty Reimarus, with his
thorough‐going honesty, has already fully exposed them, and no one has
refuted him.”
The results of Bauer’s analysis may be summed up as follows:—
The Fourth Evangelist has betrayed the secret of the original Gospel,
namely, that it too can be explained on purely literary grounds. Mark has
“loosed us from the theological lie.” “Thanks to the kindly fate,” cries
Bauer, “which has preserved to us this writing of Mark by which we have
been delivered from the web of deceit of this hellish pseudo‐science!”
In order to tear this web of falsehood the critic and historian must,
despite his repugnance, once more take up the pretended arguments of the
theologians in favour of the historicity of the Gospel narratives and set
them on their feet, only to knock them down again. In the end Bauer’s only
feeling towards the theologians was one of contempt. “The expression of
his contempt,” he declares, “is the last weapon which the critic, after
refuting the arguments of the theologians, has at his disposal for their
discomfiture; it is his right to use it; that puts the finishing touch
upon his task and points forward to the happy time when the arguments of
the theologians shall no more be heard of.”
These outbreaks of bitterness are to be explained by the feeling of
repulsion which German apologetic theology inspired in every genuinely
honest and thoughtful man by the methods which it adopted in opposing
Strauss. Hence the fiendish joy with which he snatches away the crutches
of this pseudo‐science, hurls them to a distance, and makes merry over its
helplessness. A furious hatred, a fierce desire to strip the theologians
absolutely bare, carried Bauer much farther than his critical acumen would
have led him in cold blood.
Bauer hated the theologians for still holding fast to the barbarous
conception that a great man had forced himself into a stereotyped and
unspiritual system, and in that way had set in motion great ideas, whereas
he held that that would have signified the death of both the personality
and the ideas; but this hatred is only the surface symptom of another
hatred, which goes deeper than theology, going down, indeed, to the very
depths of the Christian conception of the world. Bruno Bauer hates not
only the theologians, but Christianity, and hates it because it expresses
a truth in a wrong way. It is a religion which has become petrified in a
transitional form. A religion which ought to have led on to the true
religion has usurped the place of the true religion, and in this petrified
form it holds prisoner all the real forces of religion.
Religion is the victory over the world of the self‐conscious ego. It is
only when the ego grasps itself in its antithesis to the world as a whole,
and is no longer content to play the part of a mere “walking gentleman” in
the world‐drama, but faces the world with independence and reserve, that
the necessary conditions of universal religion are present. These
conditions came into being with the rise of the Roman Empire, in which the
individual suddenly found himself helpless and unarmed in face of a world
in which he could no longer find free play for his activities, but must
stand prepared at any moment to be ground to powder by it.
The self‐conscious ego, recognising this position, found itself faced by
the necessity of breaking loose from the world and standing alone, in
order in this way to overcome the world. Victory over the world by
alienation from the world—these were the ideas out of which Christianity
was born. But it was not the true victory over the world; Christianity
remained at the stage of violent opposition to the world.
Miracle, to which the Christian religion has always appealed, and to which
it gives a quite fundamental importance, is the appropriate symbol of this
false victory over the world. There are some wonderfully deep thoughts
scattered through Bauer’s critical investigations. “Man’s realisation of
his personality,” he says, “is the death of Nature, but in the sense that
he can only bring about this death by the knowledge of Nature and its
laws, that is to say from within, being himself essentially the
annihilation and negation of Nature.... Spirit honours and recognises the
worth of the very thing which it negates.... Spirit does not fume and
bluster, and rage and rave against Nature, as it is supposed to do in
miracle, for that would be the denial of its inner law, but quietly works
its way through the antithesis. In short the death of Nature implied in
the conscious realisation of personality is the resurrection of Nature in
a nobler form, not the maltreatment, mockery, and insult to which it would
be exposed by miracle.” Not only miracle, however, but the portrait of
Jesus Christ as drawn in the Gospels, is a stereotyping of that false idea
of victory over the world. The Christ of the Gospel history, thought of as
a really historic figure, would be a figure at which humanity would
shudder, a figure which could only inspire dismay and horror. The
historical Jesus, if He really existed, can only have been One who
reconciled in His own consciousness the antithesis which obsessed the
Jewish mind, namely the separation between God and Man; He cannot in the
process of removing this antithesis have called into existence a new
principle of religious division and alienation; nor can He have shown the
way of escape, by the principle of inwardness, from the bondage of the Law
only to impose a new set of legal fetters.
The Christ of the Gospel history, on the other hand, is Man exalted by the
religious consciousness to heaven, who, even if He comes down to earth to
do miracles, to teach, and to suffer, is no longer true man. The Son of
Man of religion, even though His mission be to reconcile, is man as
alienated from himself. This Christ of the Gospel history, the ego exalted
to heaven and become God, overthrew antiquity, and conquered the world in
the sense that He exhausted it of all its vitality. This magnified ego
would have fulfilled its historical vocation if, by means of the terrible
disorganisation into which it threw the real spirit of mankind, it had
compelled the latter to come to a knowledge of itself, to become self‐
conscious with a thoroughness and decisiveness which had not been possible
to the simple spirit of antiquity. It was disastrous that the figure which
stood for the first emancipation of the ego, remained alive. That
transformation of the human spirit which was brought about by the
encounter of the world‐power of Rome with philosophy was represented by
the Gospels, under the influence of the Old Testament, as realised in a
single historic Personality; and the strength of the spirit of mankind was
swallowed up by the omnipotence of the pure absolute ego, an ego which was
alien from actual humanity. The self‐consciousness of humanity finds
itself reflected in the Gospels, a self, indeed, in alienation from
itself, and therefore a grotesque parody of itself, but, after all, in
some sense, itself; hence the magical charm which attracted mankind and
enchained it, and, so long as it had not truly found itself, urged it to
sacrifice everything to grasp the image of itself, to prefer it to all
other and all else, counting all, as the apostle says, but “dung” in
comparison with it.
Even when the Roman world was no more, and a new world had come into
being, the Christ so created did not die. The magic of His enchantment
became only more terrible, and as new strength came flooding into the old
world, the time arrived when it was to accomplish its greatest work of
destruction. Spirit, in its abstraction, became a vampire, the destroyer
of the world. Sap and strength, blood and life, it sucked, to the last
drop, out of humanity. Nature and art, family, nation, state, all were
destroyed by it; and in the ruins of the fallen world the ego, exhausted
by its efforts, remained the only surviving power.
Having made a desert all about it, the ego could not immediately create
anew, out of the depths of its inner consciousness, nature and art, nation
and state; the awful process which now went on, the only activity of which
it was now capable, was the absorption into itself of all that had
hitherto had life in the world. The ego was now everything; and yet it was
a void. It had become the universal power, and yet as it brooded over the
ruins of the world it was filled with horror at itself and with despair at
all that it had lost. The ego which had devoured all things and was still
a void now shuddered at itself.
Under the oppression of this awful power the education of mankind has been
going on; under this grim task‐master it has been preparing for true
freedom, preparing to rouse itself from the depths of its distress, to
escape from its opposition to itself and cast out that alien ego which is
wasting its substance. Odysseus has now returned to his home, not by
favour of the gods, not laid on the shore in sleep, but awake, by his own
thought and his own strength. Perchance, as of yore, he will have need to
fight with the suitors who have devoured his substance and sought to rob
him of all he holds most dear. Odysseus must string the bow once more.
The baleful charm of the self‐alienated ego is broken the moment any one
proves to the religious sense of mankind that the Jesus Christ of the
Gospels is its creation and ceases to exist as soon as this is recognised.
The formation of the Church and the arising of the idea that the Jesus of
the Gospels is the Messiah are not two different things, they are one and
the same thing, they coincide and synchronise; but the idea was only the
imaginative conception of the Church, the first movement of its life, the
religious expression of its experience.
The question which has so much exercised the minds of men—whether Jesus
was the historic Christ (= Messiah)—is answered in the sense that
everything that the historical Christ is, everything that is said of Him,
everything that is known of Him, belongs to the world of imagination, that
is, of the imagination of the Christian community, and therefore has
nothing to do with any man who belongs to the real world.
The world is now free, and ripe for a higher religion in which the ego
will overcome nature, not by self‐alienation, but by penetrating it and
ennobling it. To the theologian we may fling as a gift the shreds of his
former science, when we have torn it to pieces; that will be something to
occupy himself with, that time may not hang heavy upon his hands in the
new world whose advent is steadily drawing nearer.
Thus the task which Bauer had set himself at the beginning of his
criticism of the Gospel history, turned, before he had finished, into
something different. When he began, he thought to save the honour of Jesus
and to restore His Person from the state of inanition to which the
apologists had reduced it, and hoped by furnishing a proof that the
historical Jesus could not have been the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, to
bring Him into a living relation with history. This task, however, was
given up in favour of the larger one of freeing the world from the
domination of the Judaeo‐Roman idol, Jesus the Messiah, and in carrying
out this endeavour the thesis that Jesus Christ is a product of the
imagination of the early Church is formulated in such a way that the
existence of a historic Jesus becomes problematical, or, at any rate,
quite indifferent.
At the end of his study of the Gospels, Bauer is inclined to make the
decision of the question whether there ever was a historic Jesus depend on
the result of a further investigation which he proposed to make into the
Pauline Epistles. It was not until ten years later (1850‐1851) that he
accomplished this task,(94) and applied the result in his new edition of
the “Criticism of the Gospel History.”(95) The result is negative: there
never was any historical Jesus. While criticising the four great Pauline
Epistles, which the Tübingen school fondly imagined to be beyond the reach
of criticism, Bauer shows, however, his inability to lay a positive
historic foundation for his view of the origin of Christianity. The
transference of the Epistles to the second century is effected in so
arbitrary a fashion that it refutes itself. However, this work professes
to be only a preliminary study for a larger one in which the new theory
was to be fully worked out. This did not appear until 1877; it was
entitled “Christ and the Caesars; How Christianity originated from Graeco‐
Roman Civilisation.”(96) The historical basis for his theory, which he
here offers, is even more unsatisfactory than that suggested in the
preliminary work on the Pauline Epistles. There is no longer any pretence
of following an historical method, the whole thing works out into an
imaginary picture of the life of Seneca. Nero’s tutor had, Bauer thinks,
already in his inmost consciousness fully attained to inner opposition to
the world. There are expressions in his works which, in their mystical
emancipation from the world, prelude the utterances of Paul. The same
thoughts, since they belong not to Seneca only, but to his time, are found
also in the works of the three poets of the Neronian period, Persius,
Lucan, and Petronius. Though they had but a feeble breath of the divine
afflatus, they are interesting witnesses to the spiritual condition of the
time. They, too, contributed to the making of Christianity.
But Seneca, in spite of his inner alienation from the world, remained in
active relations with the world. He desired to found a kingdom of virtue
upon earth. At the courts of Claudius and Nero he used the arts of
intrigue to further his ends, and even quietly approved deeds of violence
which he thought likely to serve his cause. Finally, he grasped at the
supreme power; and paid the supreme penalty. Stoicism had made an attempt
to reform the world, and had failed. The great thinkers began to despair
of exercising any influence upon history, the Senate was powerless, all
public bodies were deprived of their rights. Then a spirit of resignation
came over the world. The alienation from the world, which in Seneca had
still been only half serious, was come in earnest. The time of Nero and
Domitian was a great epoch in that hidden spiritual history which goes
silently forward side by side with the noisy outward history of the world.
When Stoicism, in this development, had been deepened by the introduction
of neo‐Platonic ideas, it was on its way to become the Gospel.
But by itself it would not have given birth to that new thing. It attached
itself as a formative principle to Judaism, which was then just breaking
loose from the limitations of nationality. Bauer points to Josephus as a
type of this new Roman Judaism. This “neo‐Roman” lived in the conviction
that his God, who had withdrawn from His Temple, would take possession of
the world, and make the Roman Empire submit to His law. Josephus realised
in his life that for which the way had been spiritually prepared by Philo.
The latter did not merely effect a fusion of Jewish ideas with Greek
speculations; he took advantage of the universal dominion established by
the Romans to found upon it his spiritual world. Bauer had already
pictured him in this rôle in his work “Philo, Strauss, and Renan, and
Primitive Christianity.”
Thus was the new religion formed. The spirit of it came from the west, the
outward frame was furnished by Judaism. The new movement had two foci,
Rome and Alexandria. Philo’s “Therapeutae” were real people; they were the
forerunners of Christianity. Under Trajan the new religion began to be
known. Pliny’s letter asking for instructions as to how to deal with the
new movement is its certificate of birth—the original form of the letter,
it must be understood, not the present form, which has undergone editing
at the hands of Christians.
The literary process by which the origin of the movement was thrown back
to an earlier date in history lasted about fifty years.
When this latest work of Bauer’s appeared he had long been regarded by
theologians as an extinct force; nay, more, had been forgotten. And he had
not even kept his promise. He had not succeeded in showing what that
higher form of victory over the world was, which he declared superior to
Christianity; and in place of the personality of Jesus he had finally set
up a hybrid thing, laboriously compounded out of two personalities of so
little substance as those of Seneca and Josephus. That was the end of his
great undertaking.
But it was a mistake to bury, along with the Bauer of the second period,
also the Bauer of the first period, the critic—for the latter was not
dead. It was, indeed, nothing less than a misfortune that Strauss and
Bauer appeared within so short a time of one another. Bauer passed
practically unnoticed, because every one was preoccupied with Strauss.
Another unfortunate thing was that Bauer overthrew with his powerful
criticism the hypothesis which attributed real historical value to Mark,
so that it lay for a long time disregarded, and there ensued a barren
period of twenty years in the critical study of the Life of Jesus.
The only critic with whom Bauer can be compared is Reimarus. Each
exercised a terrifying and disabling influence upon his time. No one else
had been so keenly conscious as they of the extreme complexity of the
problem offered by the life of Jesus. In view of this complexity they
found themselves compelled to seek a solution outside the confines of
verifiable history. Reimarus, by finding the basis of the story of Jesus
in a deliberate imposture on the part of the disciples; Bauer, by
postulating an original Evangelist who invented the history. On this
ground it was just that they should lose their case. But in dismissing the
solutions which they offered, their contemporaries also dismissed the
problems which had necessitated such solutions; they dismissed them
because they were as little able to grasp as to remove these difficulties.
But the time is past for pronouncing judgment upon Lives of Christ on the
ground of the solutions which they offer. For us the great men are not
those who solved the problems, but those who discovered them. Bauer’s
“Criticism of the Gospel History” is worth a good dozen Lives of Jesus,
because his work, as we are only now coming to recognise, after half a
century, is the ablest and most complete collection of the difficulties of
the Life of Jesus which is anywhere to be found.
Unfortunately, by the independent, the too loftily independent way in
which he developed his ideas, he destroyed the possibility of their
influencing contemporary theology. The shaft which he had driven into the
mountain broke down behind him, so that it needed the work of a whole
generation to lay bare once more the veins of ore which he had struck. His
contemporaries could not suspect that the abnormality of his solutions was
due to the intensity with which he grasped the problems as problems, and
that he had become blind to history by examining it too microscopically.
Thus for his contemporaries he was a mere eccentric.
But his eccentricity concealed a penetrating insight. No one else had as
yet grasped with the same completeness the idea that primitive
Christianity and early Christianity were not merely the direct outcome of
the preaching of Jesus, not merely a teaching put into practice, but more,
much more, since to the experience of which Jesus was the subject there
allied itself the experience of the world‐soul at a time when its
body—humanity under the Roman Empire—lay in the throes of death. Since
Paul, no one had apprehended so powerfully the mystic idea of the super‐
sensible σῶμα Χριστοῦ. Bauer transferred it to the historical plane and
found the “body of Christ” in the Roman Empire.
XII. FURTHER IMAGINATIVE LIVES OF JESUS
_Charles Christian Hennell._ Untersuchungen über den Ursprung des
Christentums. (An Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity.)
1840. With a preface by David Friedrich Strauss. English edition,
1838.
Wichtige Enthüllungen über die wirkliche Todesart Jesu. Nach einem
alten zu Alexandria gefundenen Manuskripte von einem Zeitgenossen
Jesu aus dem heiligen Orden der Essäer. (Important Disclosures
concerning the Manner of Jesus’ Death. From an ancient MS. found
at Alexandria, written by a contemporary of Jesus belonging to the
sacred Order of the Essenes.) 1849. 5th ed., Leipzig. (Anonymous.)
Historische Enthüllungen über die wirklichen Ereignisse der Geburt
und Jugend Jesu. Als Fortsetzung der zu Alexandria aufgefundenen
alten Urkunden aus dem Essäerorden. (Historical Disclosures
concerning the real circumstances of the Birth and Youth of Jesus.
A Continuation of the ancient Essene MS. discovered at
Alexandria.) 1849. 2nd ed., Leipzig.
_August Friedrich Gfrörer._ Kritische Geschichte des
Urchristentums. (Critical History of Primitive Christianity.)
Vol. i. 1st ed., 1831; 2nd, 1835. Part i. 543 pp.; Part ii. 406
pp. Vol. ii. 1838. Part i. 452 pp.; Part ii. 417 pp.
_Richard von der Alm._ (Pseudonym of _Friedrich Wilhelm
Ghillany_.) Theologische Briefe an die Gebildeten der deutschen
Nation, 1863. (Theological Letters to the Cultured Classes of the
German People, 1863.) Vol. i. 929 pp.; Vol. ii. 656 pp.; Vol. iii.
802 pp.
_Ludwig Noack._ Die Geschichte Jesu auf Grund freier
geschichtlicher Untersuchungen über das Evangelium und die
Evangelien. (The History of Jesus on the Basis of a free
Historical Inquiry regarding the Gospel and the Gospels.) 2nd ed.,
1876, Mannheim. Book i. 251 pp.; Book ii. 187 pp.; Book iii. 386
pp.; Book iv. 285 pp.
Strauss can hardly be said to have done himself honour by contributing a
preface to the translation of Hennell’s work, which is nothing more than
Venturini’s “Non‐miraculous History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth”
tricked out with a fantastic paraphernalia of learning.(97)
The two series of “Important Disclosures” also are really “conveyed” with
no particular ability from that classic romance of the Life of Jesus, but
that did not prevent their making something of a sensation at the time
when they appeared.(98) Jesus, according to his narrative, was the son of
a member of the Essene Order. The child was watched over by the Order and
prepared for His future mission. He entered on His public ministry as a
tool of the Essenes, who after the crucifixion took Him down from the
cross and resuscitated Him.
These “Disclosures” only preserve the more external features of
Venturini’s representation. His Life of Jesus had been more than a mere
romance, it had been an imaginative solution of problems which he had
intuitively perceived. It may be regarded as the Forerunner of
rationalistic criticism. The problems which Venturini had intuitively
perceived were not solved either by the rationalists, or by Strauss, or by
Weisse. These writers had not succeeded in providing that of which
Venturini had dreamed—a living purposeful connexion between the events of
the life of Jesus—or in explaining His Person and Work as having a
relation, either positive or negative, to the circumstances of Late
Judaism. Venturini’s plan, however fantastic, connects the life of Jesus
with Jewish history and contemporary thought much more closely than any
other Life of Jesus, for that connexion is of course vital to the plot of
the romance. In Weisse’s “Gospel History” criticism had deliberately
renounced the attempt to explain Jesus directly from Judaism, finding
itself unable to establish any connexion between His teachings and
contemporary Jewish ideas. The way was therefore once more open to the
imagination. Accordingly several imaginative Lives preluded a new era in
the study of the subject, in so far as they endeavoured to understand
Jesus on the basis of purely Jewish ideas, in some cases as affirming
these, in others as opposing them in favour of a more spiritual
conception. In Gfrörer, Richard von der Alm, and Noack, begins the
skirmishing preparatory to the future battle over eschatology.(99)
August Friedrich Gfrörer, born in 1803 at Calw, was “Repetent” at the
Tübingen theological seminary at the time when Strauss was studying there.
After being curate at the principal church in Stuttgart for a year he gave
up, in 1830, the clerical profession in order to devote himself wholly to
his clerical studies.
By that time he had abandoned Christianity. In the preface to the first
edition of the first volume of his work, he describes Christianity as a
system which now only maintains itself by the force of custom, after
having commended itself to antiquity “by the hope of the mystic Kingdom of
the future world and having ruled the middle ages by the fear of the same
future.” By enunciating this view he has made an end, he thinks, of all
high‐flying Hegelian ideas, and being thus freed from all speculative
prejudices he feels himself in a position to approach his task from a
purely historical standpoint, with a view to showing how much of
Christianity is the creation of one exceptional Personality, and how much
belongs to the time in which it arose. In the first volume he describes
how the transformation of Jewish theology in Alexandria reacted upon
Palestinian theology, and how it came to its climax in Philo. The great
Alexandrian anticipated, according to Gfrörer, the ideas of Paul. His
“Therapeutae” are identical with the Essenes. At the same period Judaea
was kept in a ferment by a series of risings, to all of which the
incentive was found in Messianic expectations. Then Jesus appeared. The
three points to be investigated in His history are: what end He had in
view; why He died; and what modifications His work underwent at the hands
of the Apostles.
The second volume, entitled “The Sacred Legend,” does not, however, carry
out this plan. The works of Strauss and Weisse necessitated a new method
of treatment. The fame of Strauss’s achievement stirred Gfrörer to
emulation, and Weisse, with his priority of Mark and rejection of John,
must be refuted. The work is therefore almost a polemic against Weisse for
his “want of historic sense,” and ends in setting up views which had not
entered into Gfrörer’s mind at the time when he wrote his first volume.
The statements of Papias regarding the Synoptists, which Weisse followed,
are not deserving of credence. For a whole generation and more the
tradition about Jesus had passed from mouth to mouth, and it had absorbed
much that was legendary. Luke was the first—as his preface shows—who
checked that process, and undertook to separate what was genuine from what
was not. He is the most trustworthy of the Evangelists, for he keeps
closely to his sources and adds nothing of his own, in contrast with
Matthew who, writing at a later date, used sources of less value and
invented matter of his own, which Gfrörer finds especially in the story of
the passion in this Gospel. The lateness of Matthew is also evident from
his tendency to carry over the Old Testament into the New. In Luke, on the
other hand, the sources are so conscientiously treated that Gfrörer finds
no difficulty in analysing the narrative into its component parts,
especially as he always has a purely instinctive feeling “whenever a
different wind begins to blow.”
Both Gospels, however, were written long after the destruction of the holy
city, since they do not draw their material from the Jerusalem tradition,
but “from the Christian legends which had grown up in the neighbourhood of
the Sea of Tiberias,” and in consequence “mistakenly transferred the scene
of Jesus’ ministry to Galilee.” For this reason it is not surprising “that
even down into the second century many Christians had doubts about the
truth of the Synoptics and ventured to express their doubts.” Such doubts
only ceased when the Church became firmly established and began to use its
authority to suppress the objections of individuals. Mark is the earliest
witness to doubts within the primitive Christian community regarding the
credibility of his predecessors. Luke and Matthew are for him not yet
sacred books; he desires to reconcile their inconsistencies, and at the
same time to produce “a Gospel composed of materials of which the
authenticity could be maintained even against the doubters.” For this
reason he omits most of the discourses, ignores the birth‐story, and of
the miracles retains only those which were most deeply embedded in the
tradition. His Gospel was probably produced between 110 and 120. The “non‐
genuine” conclusion was a later addition, but by the Evangelist himself.
Thus Mark proves that the Synoptists contain legendary matter even though
they are separated from the events which they relate only by a generation
and a half, or at most two generations. To show that there is nothing
strange in this, Gfrörer gives a long catalogue of miracles found in
historians who were contemporaries of the events which they describe, and
in some cases were concerned in them—in this connexion Cortez affords him
a rich storehouse of material. On the other hand, all objections against
the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel collapse miserably. It is true that,
like the others, it offers no historically accurate report of the
discourses of Jesus. It pictures Him as the Logos‐Christ and makes Him
speak in this character; which Jesus certainly did not do. Inadvertently
the author makes John the Baptist speak in the same way. That does not
matter, however, for the historical conditions are rightly represented;
rightly, because Jerusalem was the scene of the greater part of the
ministry, and the five Johannine miracles are to be retained. The healing
of the nobleman’s son, that of the lame man at the pool of Bethesda, and
that of the man blind from birth happened just as they are told. The story
of the miracle at Cana rests on a misunderstanding, for the wine which
Jesus provided was really the wedding‐gift which He had brought with Him.
In the raising of Lazarus a real case of apparent death is combined with a
polemical exaggeration of it, the restoration to life becoming, in the
course of controversy with the Jews, an actual resurrection. Having thus
won free, dragging John along with him, from the toils of the Hegelian
denial of miracle—only, it is true, by the aid of Venturini—and being
prepared to explain the feeding of the multitude on the most commonplace
rationalistic lines, he may well boast that he has “driven the doubt
concerning the Fourth Gospel into a very small corner.”
“The miserable era of negation,” cries Gfrörer, “is now at an end;
affirmation begins. We are ascending the eastern mountains from which the
pure airs of heaven breathe upon the spirit. Our guide shall be historical
mathematics, a science which is as yet known to few, and has not been
applied by any one to the New Testament.” This “mathematic” of Gfrörer’s
consists in developing his whole argument out of a single postulate. Let
it be granted to him that all other claimants of the Messiahship—Gfrörer,
in defiance of the evidence of Josephus, makes all the leaders of revolt
in Palestine claimants of the Messiahship—were put to death by the Romans,
whereas Jesus was crucified by His own people: it follows that the
Messiahship of Jesus was not political, but spiritual. He had declared
Himself to be in a certain sense the longed‐for Messiah, but in another
sense He was not so. His preaching moved in the sphere of Philonian ideas;
although He did not as yet explicitly apply the Logos doctrine, it was
implicit in His thought, so that the discourses of the Fourth Gospel have
an essential truth. All Messianic conceptions, the Kingdom of God, the
judgment, the future world, are sublimated into the spiritual region. The
resurrection of the dead becomes a present eternal life. The saying in
John v. 24, “He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me,
hath eternal life and cometh not into judgment; but is passed from death
into life,” is the only authentic part of that discourse. The reference
which follows to the coming judgment and the resurrection of the dead is a
Jewish interpolation. Jesus did not believe that He Himself was to rise
from the dead. Nevertheless, the “resurrection” is historic; Joseph of
Arimathea, a member of the Essene Order, whose tool Jesus unconsciously
was, had bribed the Romans to make the crucifixion of Jesus only a
pretence, and to crucify two others with Him in order to distract
attention from Him. After He was taken down from the cross, Joseph removed
Him to a tomb of his own which had been hewn out for the purpose in the
neighbourhood of the cross, and succeeded in resuscitating Him. The
Christian Church grew out of the Essene Order by giving a further
development to its ideas, and it is impossible to explain the organisation
of the Church without taking account of the regulations of the Order. The
work closes with a rhapsody on the Church and its development into the
Papal system.
Gfrörer thus works into Venturini’s plan a quantity of material drawn from
Philo. His first volume would have led one to expect a more original and
scientific result. But the author is one of those “epileptics of
criticism” for whom criticism is not a natural and healthy means of
arriving at a result, but who, in consequence of the fits of criticism to
which they are subject, and which they even endeavour to intensify, fall
into a condition of exhaustion, in which the need for some fixed point
becomes so imperative that they create it for themselves by self‐
suggestion—as they previously did their criticism—and then flatter
themselves that they have really found it.
This need for a fixed point carried the former rival of Strauss into
Catholicism, for which his “General History of the Church” (1841‐1846)
already shows a strong admiration. After the appearance of this work
Gfrörer became Professor of History in the University of Freiburg. In 1848
he was active in the German Parliament in endeavouring to promote a
reunion of the Protestants with the Catholics. In 1853 he went over to the
Roman Church. His family had already gone over, at Strassburg, during the
revolutionary period. In the conflict of the church with the Baden
Government he vehemently supported the claims of the Pope. He died in
1861.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Incomparably better and more thorough is the attempt to write a Life of
Jesus embodied in the “Theological Letters to the Cultured Classes of the
German Nation.” Their writer takes Gfrörer’s studies as his starting‐
point, but instead of spiritualising unjustifiably he ventures to conceive
the Jewish world of thought in which Jesus lived in its simple realism. He
was the first to place the eschatology recognised by Strauss and Reimarus
in an historical setting—that of Venturini’s plan—and to write a Life of
Jesus entirely governed by the idea of eschatology.
The author, Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany, was born in 1807 at Erlangen. His
first studies were in theology. His rationalistic views, however,
compelled him to abandon the clerical profession. He became librarian at
Nuremberg in 1841 and engaged in controversial writing of an anti‐orthodox
character, but distinguished himself also by historical work of
outstanding merit. A year after the publication of the “Theological
Letters,” which he issued under the pseudonym of Richard von der Alm, he
published a collection of “The Opinions of Heathen and Christian Writers
of the first Christian Centuries about Jesus Christ” (1864), a work which
gives evidence of a remarkable range of reading. In 1855 he removed to
Munich in the hope of obtaining a post in the diplomatic service, but in
spite of his solid acquirements he did not succeed. No one would venture
to appoint a man of such outspoken anti‐ecclesiastical views. He died in
1876.
As regards the question of the sources, Ghillany occupies very nearly the
Tübingen standpoint, except that he holds Matthew to be later than Luke,
and Mark to be extracted, not from these Gospels in their present form,
but from their sources. John is not authentic.
The worship offered to Jesus after His death by the Christian community
is, according to Ghillany, not derived from pure Judaism, but from a
Judaism influenced by oriental religions. The influence of the cult of
Mithra, for example, is unmistakable. In it, as in Christianity, we find
the virgin‐birth, the star, the wise men, the cross, and the resurrection.
Were it not for the human sacrifice of the Mithra cult, the idea which is
operative in the Supper, of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of the
Son of Man, would be inexplicable.
The whole Eastern world was at that time impregnated with Gnostic ideas,
which centred in the revelation of the Divine in the human. In this way
there arose, for example, a Samaritan Gnosis, independent of the
Christian. Christianity itself is a species of Gnosis. In any case the
metaphysical conception of the Divine Sonship of Jesus is of secondary
origin. If He was in any sense the Son of God for the disciples, they can
only have thought of this sonship in a Gnostic fashion, and supposed that
the “highest angel,” the Son of God, had taken up His abode in Him.
John the Baptist had probably come forth from among the Essenes, and he
preached a spiritualised Kingdom of Heaven. He held himself to be Elias.
Jesus’ aims were originally similar; He came forward “in the cause of
sound religious teaching for the people.” He made no claim to Davidic
descent; that is to be credited to dogmatic theology. Similarly Papias is
wrong in ascribing to Jesus the crude eschatological expectations implied
in the saying about the miraculous vine in the Messianic Kingdom.
It is certain, however, that Jesus held Himself to be Messiah and expected
the early coming of the Kingdom. His teaching is Rabbinic; all His ideas
have their source in contemporary Judaism, whose world of thought we can
reconstruct from the Rabbinic writings; for even if these only became
fixed at a later period, the thoughts on which they are based were already
current in the time of Jesus. Another source of great importance is
Justin’s “Dialogue with the Jew Trypho.”
The starting‐point in interpreting the teaching of Jesus is the idea of
repentance. In the tractate “Sanhedrin” we find: “The set time of the
Messiah is already here; His coming depends now upon repentance and good
works. Rabbi Eleazer says, ‘When the Jews repent they shall be
redeemed.’ ” The Targum of Jonathan observes, on Zech. x. 3, 4,(100) “The
Messiah is already born, but remains in concealment because of the sins of
the Hebrews.” We find the same thoughts put into the mouth of Trypho in
Justin. In the same Targum of Jonathan, Isa. liii. is interpreted with
reference to the sufferings of the Messiah. Judaism, therefore, was not
unacquainted with the idea of a suffering Messiah. He was not identified,
however, with the heavenly Messiah of Daniel. The Rabbis distinguished two
Messiahs, one of Israel and one of Judah. First the Messiah of the Kingdom
of Israel, denominated the Son of Joseph, was to come from Galilee to
suffer death at the hands of the Gentiles in order to make atonement for
the sins of the Hebrew nation. Only after that would the Messiah predicted
by Daniel, the son of David, of the tribe of Judah, appear in glory upon
the clouds of heaven. Finally, He also, after two‐and‐sixty weeks of
years, should be taken away, since the Messianic Kingdom, even as
conceived by Paul, was only a temporary supernatural condition of the
world.
The Messianic expectation, being directed to supernatural events, had no
political character, and one who knew Himself to be the Messiah could
never dream of using earthly means for the attainment of His ends; He
would expect all things to be brought about by the Divine intervention. In
this respect Ghillany grasps clearly the character of the eschatology of
Jesus—more clearly than any one had ever done before.
The rôle of the Messiah, who prior to His supernatural manifestation
remains in concealment upon earth, is therefore passive. He who is
conscious of a Messianic vocation does not seek to found a Kingdom among
men. He waits with confidence. He issues forth from His passivity with the
sole purpose of making atonement, by vicarious suffering, for the sins of
the people, in order that it may be possible for God to bring about the
new condition of things. If, in spite of the repentance of the people and
the occurrence of the signs which pointed to its being at hand, the coming
of the Kingdom should be delayed, the man who is conscious of a Messianic
vocation must, by His death, compel the intervention of God. His vocation
in this world is to die.
Brought within the lines of these reflections the Life of Jesus shapes
itself as follows.
Jesus was the tool of a mystical sect allied to the Essenes, the head of
which was doubtless that Joseph of Arimathea who makes so sudden and
striking an appearance in the Gospel narrative. This party desired to
bring about the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven by mystical means, whereas
the mass of the people, led astray by the Pharisees, thought to force on
its coming by means of a rising. In the preacher of a spiritual Kingdom of
Heaven, who was resolved to go to death for His cause, the mystical party
discovered Messiah the son of Joseph, and they recognised that His death
was necessary to make possible the coming of the heavenly Messiah
predicted by Daniel. That Jesus Himself was the Messiah of Daniel, that He
would immediately rise again in order to ascend to His heavenly throne,
and would come thence with the hosts of heaven to establish the Kingdom of
Heaven, these people did not themselves believe. But they encouraged Him
in this belief, thinking that He would hardly commit Himself to a
sacrificial death from which there was to be no resurrection. It was left
uncertain to His mind whether Jehovah would be content with the repentance
of the people, in so far as it had taken place, as realising the necessary
condition for the bringing in of the Kingdom of Heaven, or whether an
atonement by blood, offered by the death of Messiah the son of Joseph,
would be needful. It had been explained to Him that when the calculated
year of grace arrived, He must go up to Jerusalem and endeavour to rouse
the Jews to Messianic enthusiasm in order to compel Jehovah to come to
their aid with His heavenly hosts. From the action of Jehovah it could
then be discovered whether the preaching of repentance and baptism would
suffice to make atonement for the people before God or not. If Jehovah did
not appear, a deeper atonement must be made; Jesus must pay the penalty of
death for the sins of the Jews, but on the third day would rise again from
the dead and ascend to the throne of God and come again thence to found
the Kingdom of Heaven. “Any one can see,” concludes Ghillany, “that our
view affords a very natural explanation of the anxiety of the disciples,
the suspense of Jesus Himself, and the prayer, ‘If it be possible let this
cup pass from me.’ ”
“It was apparently only towards the close of His life that Jesus revealed
to the disciples the possibility that the Son of Man might have to suffer
and die before He could found the Messianic Kingdom.”
With this possibility before Him, He came to Jerusalem and there awaited
the Divine intervention. Meanwhile Joseph of Arimathea lent his aid
towards securing His condemnation in the Sanhedrin. He must die on the day
of the Passover; on the day of the Preparation He must be at hand and
ready in Jerusalem. He held, with His disciples, a love‐feast after the
Essene custom, not a Paschal meal, and in doing so associated thoughts of
His death with the breaking of bread and the pouring out of the wine. “He
did not lay upon His disciples any injunction to continue the celebration
of a feast of this kind until the time of His return, because He thought
of His resurrection and His heavenly glory as about to take place after
three days. But when His return was delayed the early Christians attached
these sayings of His about the bread and wine to their Essene love‐feast,
and explained this common meal of the community as a commemoration of the
Last Supper of Jesus and His disciples, a memorial Feast in honour of
their Saviour, the celebration of which must be continued until His
coming.”
When the armed band came to arrest Him, Jesus surrendered to His fate.
Pilate almost set Him free, holding Him to be a mere enthusiast who placed
His hopes only in the Divine intervention. Joseph of Arimathea, however,
succeeded in averting this danger. “Even on the cross Jesus seems to have
continued to hope for the Divine intervention, as is evidenced by the cry,
‘My God! My God! why hast thou forsaken me?’ ” Joseph of Arimathea
provided for His burial.
The belief in His resurrection rests upon the visions of the disciples,
which are to be explained by their intense desire for the Parousia, of
which He had given them the promise. After setting their affairs in order
in Galilee they returned at the Feast of Pentecost to Jerusalem, which
they had left in alarm, in order there to await the Parousia in company
with other Galilaean believers.
The confession of faith of the primitive Christian community was the
simplest conceivable: Jesus the Messiah had come, not as a temporal
conqueror, but as the Son of Man foretold by Daniel, and had died for the
sins of the people. In other respects they were strict Jews, kept the Law,
and were constantly in the Temple. Only the community of goods and the
brotherhood‐meal are of an Essene character.
“The Christianity of the original community in Jerusalem was thus a
mixture of Zealotism and Mysticism which did not include any wholly new
element, and even in its conception of the Messiah had nothing peculiar to
itself except the belief that the Son of Man predicted by Daniel had
already come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth ... that He was now
enthroned at the right hand of God, and would again appear as the expected
Son of Man upon the clouds of heaven according to Daniel’s prophecy.”
Jesus, therefore, had triumphed over the mystical party who desired to
make use of Him in the character of Messiah the son of Joseph—their
Messiah, the heavenly Son of Man, had not come. Jesus, in virtue of what
He had done, had taken His place both in heaven and in earth.
How much of Venturini’s plan is here retained? Only the “mystical part”
which serves the purpose of setting the action of the drama in motion. All
the rest of it, the rationalistic part, has been transmuted into an
historical conception. Miracle and trickery, along with the stage‐play
resurrection, have been purged away in the fires of Strauss’s criticism.
There remains only a fundamental conception which has a certain
greatness—a brotherhood which looks for the coming of the Kingdom of
Heaven appoints one of its members to undergo as Messiah an atoning death,
that the coming of the Kingdom, for which the time is at hand, may not be
delayed. This brotherhood is the only fictitious element in the whole
construction—much as in the primitive steam‐engine the valves were still
worked by hand while the rest of the machinery was actuated by its own
motive‐power. So in this Life of Jesus the motive‐power is drawn entirely
from historical sources, and the want of an automatic starting arrangement
is a mere anachronism. Strike out the superfluous rôle of Joseph of
Arimathea, and the distinction of the two Messiahs, which is not clear
even in the Rabbis, and substitute the simple hypothesis that Jesus, in
the course of His Messianic vocation, when He thinks the time for the
coming of the Kingdom has arrived, goes freely to Jerusalem, and, as it
were, compels the secular power to put Him to death, in order by this act
of atonement to win for the world the immediate coming of the Kingdom, and
for Himself the glory of the Son of Man—make these changes, and you have a
life of Jesus in which the motive‐power is a purely historical force. It
is impossible to indicate briefly all the parts of which the seemingly
complicated, but in reality impressively simple, mechanism of this Life of
Jesus is composed. The conduct of Jesus, alike in its resolution and in
its hesitation, becomes clear, and not less so that of the disciples. All
far‐fetched historical ingenuity is dispensed with. Jesus acts “because
His hour is come.” This decisive placing of the Life of Jesus in the “last
time” (_cf._ 1 Peter i. 20 φανερωθέντος δὲ ἐπ᾽ ἐσχάτων τῶν χρόνων δἰ ὑμᾶς)
is an historical achievement without parallel. Not less so is the placing
of the thought of the passion in its proper eschatological setting as an
act of atonement. Where had the character and origin of the primitive
community ever been brought into such clear connexion with the death of
Jesus? Who had ever before so earnestly considered the problem why the
Christian community arose in Jerusalem and not in Galilee? “But the
solution is too simple, and, moreover, is not founded on a severely
scientific chain of reasoning, but on historical intuition and experiment,
the simple experiment of introducing the Life of Jesus into the Jewish
eschatological world of thought”—so the theologians replied, or so, at
least, they might have replied if they had taken this curious work
seriously, if, indeed, they had read it at all. But how were they to
suspect that in a book which seemed to aim at founding a new Deistic
Church, and which went out with the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist into the
desert of the most barren natural religion, a valuable historical
conception might be found? It is true that no one suspected at that time
that in the forgotten work of Reimarus there lay a dangerous historical
discovery, a kind of explosive material such as can only be collected by
those who stand free from every responsibility towards historical
Christianity, who have abandoned every prejudice, in the good sense as
well as in the bad—and whose one desire in regard to the Gospel history is
to be “spirits that constantly deny.”(101) Such thinkers, if they have
historical gifts, destroy artificial history in the cause of true history
and, willing evil, do good—if it be admitted that the discovery of truth
is good. If this negative work is a good thing, the author of the “Letters
to the German People” performed a distinguished service, for his negation
is radical. The new Church which was to be founded on this historic
overcoming of historic Christianity was to combine “only what was
according to reason in Judaism and Christianity.” From Judaism it was to
take the belief in one sole, spiritual, perfect God; from Christianity the
requirement of brotherly love to all men. On the other hand, it was to
eliminate what was contrary to reason in each: from Judaism the ritual
system and the sacrifices; from Christianity the deification of Jesus and
the teaching of redemption through His blood. How comes so completely
unhistorical a temperament to be combined with so historical an intellect?
His Jesus, after all, has no individuality; He is a mere eschatological
machine.
In accordance with the confession of faith of the new Church of which
Ghillany dreamed, the calendar of the Feasts is to be transformed as
follows:—
1. Feast of the Deity, the first and second of January.
2. Feast of the Dignity of Man and Brotherly Love, first and second of
April.
3. Feast of the Divine Blessing in Nature, first and second of July.
4. Feast of Immortality, first and second of October.
Apart from these eight Feast days, and the Sundays, all the other days of
the year are working days.
From the order of divine service we may note the following: “The sermon,
which should begin with instruction and exhortation and close with
consolation and encouragement, must not last longer than half an hour.”
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The series of Lives of Jesus which combine criticism with fiction is
closed by Noack’s Story of Jesus. A freethinker like Ghillany, but lacking
the financial independence which a kindly fate had conferred upon the
latter, Noack led a life which may properly be described as a constant
martyrdom, lightened only by his intense love of theological studies,
which nevertheless were responsible for all his troubles. Born in 1819, of
a clerical family in Hesse, he became in 1842 Pastor’s assistant and
teacher of religion at Worms in the Hessian Palatinate. The Darmstadt
reactionaries drove him out of this position in 1844 without his having
given any ground of offence. In 1849 he became “Repetent” in Philosophy at
the University of Giessen at a salary of four hundred gulden. In 1855 he
was promoted to be Professor Extraordinary without having his salary
raised. In 1870, at the age of 51, he was appointed assistant at the
University Library and received at the same time the title of Ordinary
Professor. He died in 1885. He was an extremely prolific writer, always
ingenious, and possessed of wide knowledge, but he never did anything of
real permanent value either in philosophy or theology. He was not without
critical acumen, but there was too much of the poet in him; a critical
discovery was an incitement to an imaginative reconstruction of the
history. In 1870‐1871 he published, after many preliminary studies, his
chief work, “From the Jordan Uplands to Golgotha; four books on the Gospel
and the Gospels.”(102) It passed unnoticed. Attributing its failure to the
excitement aroused by the war, which ousted all other interests, he issued
a revised edition in 1876 under the title “The History of Jesus, on the
Basis of Free Historical Inquiry concerning the Gospel and the
Gospels,”(103) but with hardly greater success.
And yet the fundamental critical ideas which can be detected beneath this
narrative, in spite of its having the form of fiction, give this work a
significance such as the contemporary Lives of Jesus which won the
applause of theologians did not possess. It is the only Life of Jesus
hitherto produced which is written consistently from the Johannine point
of view from beginning to end. Strauss had not, after all, in Noack’s
opinion, conclusively shown the absolute incompatibility of the Synoptics
with the Fourth Gospel; neither he nor any other critic had felt the full
difficulty of the question why the Fourth Evangelist should be at pains to
invent the numerous journeys to the Feasts, seeing that the development of
the Logos Christology did not necessarily involve any alteration of the
scene of the ministry; on the contrary, it would, one might think, have
been the first care of the Evangelist to inweave his novel theory with the
familiar tradition in order to avoid discrediting his narrative in advance
by his innovations. Noack’s conclusion is that the inconsistency is not
due to a single author; it is the result of a long process of redaction in
which various divergent tendencies have been at work. But as the Fourth
Gospel is not the logical terminus of the process of alteration, the only
alternative is to place it at the beginning. What we have to seek in it is
the original Gospel from which the process of transforming the tradition
started.
There is also another line of argument based on the contradictions in the
Gospel tradition which leads to the hypothesis that we have to do with
redactions of the Gospels. Either Jesus was the Jewish Messiah of the
Synoptics, or a Son of God in the Greek, spiritual sense, whose self‐
consciousness must be interpreted by means of the Logos doctrine: He
cannot have been both at the same time. But it is inconceivable that a
Jewish claimant of the Messiahship would have been left unmolested up to
the last, and have had virtually to force the authorities to put him to
death. On the other hand, if He were a simple enthusiast claiming to be a
Son of God, a man who lived only for his own “self‐consciousness,” He
might from the beginning have taken up this attitude without being in any
way molested, except by the scorn of men. In this respect also, therefore,
the primitive Gospel which we can recover from John has the advantage. It
was only later that this “Son of God” became the Jewish Messiah.
We arrive at the primitive Johannine writing when we cancel in the Fourth
Gospel all Jewish doctrine and all miracles.(104) Its date is the year 60
and it was composed by—Judas, the beloved disciple. This primitive Gospel
received little modification and still shows clearly “the wonderful
reality of its history.” It aims only at giving a section of Jesus’
history, a representation of His attitude of mind and spirit. With “simple
ingenuousness” it gives, “along with the kernel of the historical material
of the Gospel, Jesus’ thoughts about His own Person in the mysterious
oracular sayings and deeply thoughtful and moving discourses by which the
Nazarene stirred rather than enlightened the world.” Events of a striking
character were, however, absent from it. The feeding of the multitude was
represented in it as effected by natural means. It was a philanthropic
feeding of a multitude which certainly did not number thousands, the
numbers are a later insertion; Jesus fed them with bread and fish which He
purchased from a “sutler‐lad.” The healing of the lame man at the pool of
Bethesda was the unmasking of a malingerer, whom the Lord exposed and
ordered to depart. As He had bidden him carry his bed, and it was on the
Sabbath, this brought Him into conflict with the authorities. His only
“acts” were acts of self‐revelation—mystical sayings which He threw out to
the people. “The problem which meets us in His history is in truth a
psychological problem, how, namely, His exalted view of Himself came to be
accepted as the purest and highest truth—in His lifetime, it is true, only
by a limited circle of disciples, but after His departure by a constantly
growing multitude of believing followers.” The gospel of the beloved
disciple Judas made its way quietly into the world, understood by few,
even as Jesus Himself had been understood by a few only.
About ten years later, according to Noack, appeared the original form of
Luke, which we can reconstruct from what is known of Marcion’s Luke.(105)
This Evangelist is under Pauline influence, and writes with an apologetic
purpose. He desires to refute the calumny that Jesus was “possessed of a
devil,” and he does this by making Him cast out devils. It was in this way
that miracle forced itself into the Gospel history.
But this primitive Luke, as Noack reconstructs it by combining the
statements of the Fathers regarding Marcion’s Gospel, knows nothing of
Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem to die. This circumstance is of capital
importance to Noack, because in the course of his attempt to bring the
topography of the Fourth Gospel into harmony with that of the Synoptics he
had arrived at the remarkable result that the Johannine Christ worked in
Galilee, not in Judaea. On the basis of the _Onomasticon_ of
Eusebius—which Noack, with the aid of topographical traditions derived
from the Crusaders and statements of Mohammedan writers, interprets with a
recklessness which is nothing short of criminal—Cana and Bethany
(Bethabara) were not in the latitude of Jerusalem, but “near the head‐
waters of the Jordan in the upper part of the Jordan valley before it
flows into the lake of Huleh. There, in Coele‐Syria, on the southern slope
of Hermon, was the scene of John the Baptist’s labours; there Jesus began
His ministry; thither He returned to die.” “It is in the Galilaean
district which forms the scene of the Song of Solomon that the reader of
this book must be prepared to find the Golgotha of the cross.” That is the
sentence with which Noack’s account of the Life of Jesus opens. This
alludes to an idea which had already been worked out in his “Studies on
the Song of Solomon,”(106) namely, that the mountain country surrounding
the upper Jordan was the pre‐exilic Judaea, and that the “city of David”
was situated there. The Jews on their return from exile had at first
endeavoured to rebuild that Coele‐Syrian city of David with the ruins of
Solomon’s Temple, but had been driven away from it and had then taken the
desperate resolution to build the temple of Zerubbabel upon the high
plateau lying far to the south of ancient Israel. Ezra the Scribe
interpolated the forgery on the ground of which this site began to be
accepted as the former city of David. Under the Syrian oppression all
remembrance of the ancient city of David entirely disappeared.
This fantastic edifice, in the construction of which the wildest
etymologies play a part, is founded on the just recognition that a
reconciliation of John with the Synoptists can only be effected by
transferring some of the Johannine localities to the North; but this
involves not only finding Bethany, Arimathea and the other places, but
even the scene of Jesus’ death in this district. The brook Kedron
conveniently becomes the “brook of Cedars.”
For fifty years the two earliest Evangelists, in spite of their poverty of
incident, sufficed for the needs of the Christians. The “fire of Jesus”
was fed chiefly by the Pauline Gospel. The original form of the Gospel of
Luke accordingly became the starting‐point of the next stage of
development. Thus arose the Gospel of Mark. Mark was not a native of
Palestine, but a man of Roman extraction living in Decapolis, who had not
the slightest knowledge of the localities in which the life of Jesus was
really passed. He undertook, about the year 130, “in the interest of the
new Christian settlement at Jerusalem in Hadrian’s time, deliberately and
consciously to transform the original plan of the Gospel history and to
represent the Lord as crucified at Jerusalem.” The man who from the year
132 onward, as Mark the Bishop, preached the word of the Crucified to a
Gentile Christian community amid the ruins of the holy city, had
previously, as Mark the Evangelist, taken care that a prophet should not
perish out of Jerusalem. In composing his Gospel he made use, in addition
to Luke, of a traditional source which he found in Decapolis. He
deliberately omitted the frequent journeys to Jerusalem which were still
found in the original Luke, and inserted instead Jesus’ journey to His
death. He it was, also, who made the Nazarite into the Nazarene, laying
the scene of Jesus’ youth in Nazareth. To the cures of demoniacs he added
magical acts such as the feeding of the multitude and the resurrection.
In Matthew, who appeared about 135, legend and fiction riot unchecked. In
addition, Jewish parables and sayings are put into the mouth of Jesus,
whereas He really had nothing to do with the Jewish world of ideas. For if
anything is certain, it is that the moral maxims of the latest Gospel are
of a distinctively Jewish origin. About the middle of the second century
the originals of John and Luke underwent redaction. The redaction of the
Logos Gospel was completed by the addition of the twenty‐first chapter;
the last redaction of Luke was perhaps carried out by Justin Martyr, fresh
from completing his “Dialogue with Trypho”! Thus John and Luke are, in
this final form, which is full of contradictions, the latest Gospels, and
the saying is fulfilled about the first being last, and the last first.
Arbitrary as these suggestions are, there is nevertheless something
impressive in the attempt to explain the remarkable inconsistencies which
are found within the Gospel tradition by considerations relating to its
origin and development. Despite all his far‐fetched ideas, Noack really
stands higher than some of his contemporaries who showed more prudence in
their theological enterprises, and about that time were earning the
applause of the faculty, and quieting the minds of the laity, by
performing once more the old conjuring trick—assisted by some new feats of
legerdemain—of harmonising John with the Synoptists in such a way as to
produce a Life of Jesus which could be turned to the service of
ecclesiastical theology.
The outline of the public Life of Jesus, as reconstructed by Noack, is as
follows. It lasted from early in the year 35 to the 14th Nisan of the year
37, and began in the moment when Jesus revealed His consciousness of what
He was. We do not know how long previously He had cherished it in secret.
It is certain that the Baptist helped to bring about this revelation. This
is the only part which he plays in the Gospel of John. He was neither a
preacher of repentance, nor an Elias, nor the forerunner of Jesus, nor a
mere signpost pointing to the Messiah, such as the secondary tradition
makes him out to be.
Similarly everything that is Messianic in the consciousness of Jesus is
secondary. The lines of His thought were guided by the Greek ideas about
sons of God, for the soil of northern Galilee was saturated with these
ideas. Other sources which contributed something were the personification
of the Divine Wisdom in the “Wisdom Literature” and some of Philo’s
doctrines. Jesus became the son of God in an ecstatic trance! Had not
Philo recognised ecstasy as the last and highest means of rising to union
with the Divine?
Jesus’ temperament, according to Noack, was pre‐disposed to ecstasy, since
He was born out of wedlock. One who had this burden upon His spirit may
well have early taken refuge in His own thoughts, above the clouds, in the
presence of the God of His fathers. Assailed in a thousand ways by the
cruelty of the world, it would seem to Him as though His Heavenly Father,
though unseen, was stretching out to Him the arms of consolation.
Imagination, which ever mercifully lightens for men the yoke of misery,
charmed the fatherless child out of His earthly sufferings and put into
His hand a coloured glass through which He saw the world and life in a
false light. Ecstatic enthusiasm had carried Him up to the dizzy height of
spiritual union with the Father in Heaven. A hundred times He was cast
down out of His dreams into the hard world of reality, to experience once
more His earthly distresses, but ever anew He won His way by fasting,
vigil, and prayer to the starry heaven of ecstasy.
“Jesus,” Noack explains, “had in thought projected Himself beyond His
earthly nativity and risen to the conception that His ego had been in
existence before this earthly body in which He stood visibly upon the
stage of the world. He felt that His ego had had being and life before He
became incarnate upon earth.... This new conception of Himself, born of
His solitary musings, was incorporated into the very substance of His
natural personal ego. A new ego had superseded the old natural,
corporeally conditioned ego.”
Ambition, too, came into play—the high ambition to do God a service by the
offering up of Himself. The passion of self‐sacrifice is characteristic of
a consciousness such as this. According to the document which underlies
the Johannine Gospel it was not in consequence of outward events that
Jesus took His resolve to die. “It was the later Gospel tradition which
exhibited His fate as an inevitable consequence of His conflict with a
world impervious to spiritual impression.” In the original Gospel that
fate was freely embraced from the outset as belonging to the vocation of
the Son of God. Only by the constant presence of the thought of death
could a life which for two years walked the razor edge of such dizzy
dreams have been preserved from falling. The conviction, or perhaps rather
the instinctive feeling, that the rôle of a Son of God upon earth was not
one to be maintained for decades was the necessary counterpoise to the
enthusiasm of Jesus’ spirit. From the first He was as much at home with
the thought of death as with His Heavenly Father.
This Son of Man—according to Noack’s interpretation the title is
equivalent to Son of Hope—requires of the multitude that they shall take
His lofty dream for solid reality. “He revealed His message from heaven to
the world at the Paschal Feast of the year 35, by throwing out a challenge
to the Sadducaean hierarchy in Jerusalem.” In the time between John’s
removal from the scene and John’s death, there falls the visit of Jesus to
Samaria and a sojourn in the neighbourhood of His Galilaean home. At the
Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem in the autumn of that year, the healing
of the lame man at the pool of Bethesda led to a breach with the Sabbatic
regulations of the Pharisees. Later on, in consequence of His generous
feeding of the multitude in the Gaulonite table‐land, there is an attempt
to make Him into a Messianic King; which He, however, repudiates. At the
time of the Passover in Galilee in the year 36, in the synagogue at
Capernaum, He tests the spiritual insight of those who may, He hopes, be
ripe for the higher teaching concerning the Son of God made flesh, by the
touchstone of His mystical words about the bread of life. At the next
Feast of Tabernacles, in the city of Zion, He makes a last desperate
attempt to move men’s hearts by the parable of the Good Shepherd who is
ready to lay down His life for His sheep, the people of Israel.
But His adversaries are remorseless; they wound Him to the very depths of
His spirit by bringing to Him the woman taken in adultery, and asking Him
what they are to do with her. When this question was sprung upon Him, He
saw in a moment the public humiliation designed by His adversaries. All
eyes were turned upon Him, and for a few moments the embarrassment of One
who was usually so self‐possessed was patent to all. He stooped as though
He desired to write with His finger upon the ground. Was it shame at His
dishonourable birth that compelled Him thus to lower His gaze? But the
painful silence of expectation among the spectators did not last long. His
adversaries repeated their question, He raised His head and spoke the
undying words: “Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone
at her.”
Incensed by His constant references to His heavenly Sonship, they
endeavour at last to stone Him. He flees from the Temple and takes refuge
in the Jordan uplands. His purpose is, at the next Passover, that of the
year 37, here in the mountains which were blessed as Joseph’s portion, to
offer His atoning death as that of the true paschal lamb, and with this
act to quit the stage of the world’s history. He remained in hiding in
order to avoid the risk of assassination by the emissaries of the
Pharisees. In Bethany He receives the mysterious visit of the Greeks, who
doubtless desired to tempt Him to raise the standard of revolt as a
claimant of the Messiahship, but He refuses to be shaken in His
determination to die. The washing of the disciples’ feet signifies their
baptism with water, that they might thereafter receive the baptism of the
Holy Spirit.
Judas, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who was a man of much resource,
helped Him to avoid being arrested as a disturber of the peace by
arranging that the “betrayal” should take place on the evening before the
Passover, in order that Jesus might die, as He desired, on the day of the
Passover. For this service of love he was, in the secondary tradition,
torn from the bosom of the Lord and branded as a traitor.
XIII. RENAN
_Ernest Renan._ La Vie de Jésus. 1863. Paris, Michel Lévy Frères.
462 pp.
_E. de Pressensé._ Jésus‐Christ, son temps, sa vie, son œuvre.
Paris, 1865. 684 pp.
Ernest Renan was born in 1823 at Tréguier in Brittany. Intended for the
priesthood, he entered the seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris, but there, in
consequence of reading the German critical theology, he began to doubt the
truth of Christianity and of its history. In October 1845, shortly before
the time arrived for him to be ordained a sub‐deacon, he left the seminary
and began to work for his living as a private teacher. In 1849 he received
a government grant to enable him to make a journey to Italy for the
prosecution of his studies, the fruits of which appeared in his _Averroès
et l’Averroïsme_ (Paris, 1852); in 1856 he was made a member of the
Académie des Inscriptions; in 1860 he received from Napoléon III. the
means to make a journey to Phoenicia and Syria. After his return in 1862
he obtained the professorship of Semitic Languages at the Collège de
France. But the widespread indignation aroused by his Life of Jesus, which
appeared in the following year, forced the Government to remove him from
his office. He refused a post as Librarian of the Imperial Library, and
lived in retirement until the Republic of 1871 restored him to his
professorship. In politics, as in religion, his position was somewhat
indefinite. In religion he was no longer a Catholic; avowed free‐thought
was too plebeian for his taste, and in Protestantism the multiplicity of
sects repelled him. Similarly in politics, in the period immediately
following the fall of the Empire, he was in turn Royalist, Republican, and
Bonapartist. At bottom he was a sceptic. He died in 1892, already half‐
forgotten by the public; until his imposing funeral and interment in the
Panthéon recalled him to its memory.
Like Strauss, Renan designed his Life of Jesus to form part of a complete
account of the history and dogma of the early Church. His purpose,
however, was purely historical; it was no part of his project to set up,
on the basis of the history, a new system of dogma, as Strauss had desired
to do. This plan was not only conceived, but carried out. _Les Apôtres_
appeared in 1866; _St. Paul_ in 1869; _L’Anté‐Christ_ in 1873; _Les
Évangiles_ in 1877; _L’Église chrétienne_ in 1879; _Marc‐Aurèle et la fin
du monde antique_ in 1881. Several of these works were more valuable than
the one which opened the series, but for the world Renan continued to be
the author of the _Vie de Jésus_, and of that alone.
He planned the work at Gaza, and he dedicated it to his sister Henriette,
who died soon after, in Syria, and lies buried at Byblus.
This was the first Life of Jesus for the Catholic world, which had
scarcely been touched—the Latin peoples least of all—by the two and a half
generations of critical study which had been devoted to the subject. It is
true, Strauss’s work had been translated into French,(107) but it had made
only a passing stir, and that only among a little circle of intellectuals.
Now came a writer with the characteristic French mental accent, who gave
to the Latin world in a single book the result of the whole process of
German criticism.
But Renan’s work marked an epoch, not for the Catholic world only, but for
general literature. He laid the problem which had hitherto occupied only
theologians before the whole cultured world. And not as a problem, but as
a question of which he, by means of his historical science and aesthetic
power of reviving the past, could provide a solution. He offered his
readers a Jesus who was alive, whom he, with his artistic imagination, had
met under the blue heaven of Galilee, and whose lineaments his inspired
pencil had seized. Men’s attention was arrested, and they thought to see
Jesus, because Renan had the skill to make them see blue skies, seas of
waving corn, distant mountains, gleaming lilies, in a landscape with the
Lake of Gennesareth for its centre, and to hear with him in the whispering
of the reeds the eternal melody of the Sermon on the Mount.
Yet the aesthetic feeling for nature which gave birth to this Life of
Jesus was, it must be confessed, neither pure nor profound. It is a
standing enigma why French art, which in painting grasps nature with a
directness and vigour, with an objectivity in the best sense of the word,
such as is scarcely to be found in the art of any other nation, has in
poetry treated it in a fashion which scarcely ever goes beyond the lyrical
and sentimental, the artificial, the subjective, in the worst sense of the
word. Renan is no exception to this rule, any more than Lamartine or
Pierre Loti. He looks at the landscape with the eye of a decorative
painter seeking a _motif_ for a lyrical composition upon which he is
engaged. But that was not noticed by the many, because they, after all,
were accustomed to have nature dressed up for them, and had had their
taste so corrupted by a certain kind of lyricism that they had lost the
power of distinguishing between truth and artificiality. Even those who
might have noticed it were so astonished and delighted at being shown
Jesus in the Galilaean landscape that they were content to yield to the
enchantment.
Along with this artificial feeling for nature a good many other things
were accepted without question. There is scarcely any other work on the
subject which so abounds in lapses of taste—and those of the most
distressing kind—as Renan’s _Vie de Jésus_. It is Christian art in the
worst sense of the term—the art of the wax image. The gentle Jesus, the
beautiful Mary, the fair Galilaeans who formed the retinue of the “amiable
carpenter,” might have been taken over in a body from the shop‐window of
an ecclesiastical art emporium in the Place St. Sulpice. Nevertheless,
there is something magical about the work. It offends and yet it attracts.
It will never be quite forgotten, nor is it ever likely to be surpassed in
its own line, for nature is not prodigal of masters of style, and rarely
is a book so directly born of enthusiasm as that which Renan planned among
the Galilaean hills.
The essay on the sources of the Life of Jesus with which it opens is
itself a literary masterpiece. With a kind of effortless ease he makes his
readers acquainted with the criticism of Strauss, of Baur, of Reuss, of
Colani. He does not argue, but simply sets the result vividly before the
reader, who finds himself at once at home in the new world of ideas. He
avoids any hard or glaring effects; by means of that skilful transition
from point to point which Wagner in one of his letters praises as the
highest art, everything is surrounded with atmosphere. But how much
trickery and illusion there is in this art! In a few strokes he indicates
the relation of John to the Synoptists; the dilemma is made clear, it
seems as if one horn or the other must be chosen. Then he begins by artful
touches to soften down the contrast. The discourses of John are not
authentic; the historical Jesus cannot have spoken thus. But what about
the statements of fact? Here Renan declares himself convinced by the
graphic presentment of the passion story. Touches like “it was night,”
“they had lighted a fire of coals,” “the coat was without seam,” cannot
have been invented. Therefore the Gospel must in some way go back to the
disciple whom Jesus loved. It is possible, nay certain, that when as an
old man he read the other Gospels, he was displeased by certain
inaccuracies, and perhaps vexed that he was given so small a place in the
history. He began to dictate a number of things which he had better means
of knowing than the others; partly, too, with the purpose of showing that
in many cases where Peter only had been mentioned he also had played a
part, and indeed the principal part. Sometimes his recollection was quite
fresh, sometimes it had been modified by time. When he wrote down the
discourses, he had forgotten the Lake of Gennesareth and the winsome words
which he had listened to upon its shores. He was now living in quite a
different world. The events of the year 70 destroyed his hopes of the
return of his Master. His Jewish prejudices fell away, and as he was still
young, he adapted himself to the syncretistic, philosophic, gnostic
environment amid which he found himself in Ephesus. Thus even Jesus’ world
of thought took on a new shape for him; although the discourses are
perhaps rather to be referred to his school than to himself. But, when all
is said, John remains the best biographer. Or, to put it more accurately,
while all the Gospels are biographies, they are legendary biographies,
even though they come down from the first century. Their texts need
interpretation, and the clue to the interpretation can be supplied by
aesthetic feeling. They must be subjected to a gentle pressure to bring
them together, and make them coalesce into a unity in which all the data
are happily combined.
How this is to be done Renan shows later in his description of the death
of Jesus. “Suddenly,” he says, “Jesus gave a terrible cry in which some
thought they heard ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,’ but which
others, whose thoughts were running on the fulfilment of prophecy,
reported as ‘It is finished.’ ”
The authentic sayings of Jesus are more or less self‐evidencing. Coming in
contact with one of them amid the welter of heterogeneous traditions, you
feel a thrill of recognition. They leap forth and take their proper place,
where their vivid power becomes apparent. For one who writes the life of
Jesus on His native soil, the Gospels are not so much sources of
information as incentives to revelation. “I had,” Renan avows, “a fifth
Gospel before my eyes, mutilated in parts, but still legible, and taking
it for my guide I saw behind the narratives of Matthew and Mark, instead
of an ideal Being of whom it might be maintained that He had never
existed, a glorious human countenance full of life and movement.” It is
this Jesus of the fifth Gospel that he desires to portray.
In looking at the picture, the reader must not allow the vexed question of
miracle to distract him and disturb the proper frame of mind. The author
refuses to assert either the possibility or the impossibility of miracle,
but speaks only as an historian. “We do not say miracle is impossible, we
say only that there has never been a satisfactorily authenticated
miracle.”
In view of the method of treatment adopted by Renan there can, of course,
be no question of an historical plan. He brings in each saying at the
point where it seems most appropriate. None of them is passed over, but
none of them appears in its historical setting. He shifts individual
incidents hither and thither in the most arbitrary fashion. For example,
the coming of Jesus’ mother to seek Him (in the belief that He is beside
Himself) must belong to the later part of Jesus’ life, since it is out of
tone with the happy innocence of the earlier period. Certain scenes are
transposed from the later period to the earlier, because they are not
gloomy enough for the later time. Others again are made the basis of an
unwarranted generalisation. It is not enough that Jesus once rode upon an
ass while the disciples in the intoxication of joy cast their garments in
the way; according to Renan, He constantly rode about, even in Galilee,
upon a mule, “that favourite riding‐animal of the East, which is so docile
and sure‐footed and whose great dark eyes, shaded by long lashes, are full
of gentleness.” Sometimes the disciples surrounded Him with rustic pomp,
using their garments by way of carpeting. They laid them upon the mule
which carried Him, or spread them before Him on the way.
Scenes of little significance are sometimes elaborately described by Renan
while more important ones are barely touched on. “One day, indeed,” he
remarks in describing the first visit to Jerusalem, “anger seems to have,
as the saying goes, overmastered Him; He struck some of the miserable
chafferers with the scourge, and overthrew their tables.” Such is the
incidental fashion in which the cleansing of the temple was brought in. In
this way it is possible to smuggle in a miracle without giving any further
explanation of it. The miracle at Cana is brought, by means of the
following unobtrusive turn of phrase, into the account of the period of
success in Galilee. “One of His miracles was done by Jesus for the sole
purpose of increasing the happiness of a wedding‐party in a little country
town.”
This Life of Jesus is introduced by a kind of prelude. Jesus had been
living in Galilee before He came to the Baptist; when He heard of the
latter’s success He went to him with His little company of followers. They
were both young, and Jesus became the imitator of the Baptist. Fortunately
the latter soon disappeared from the scene, for his influence on Jesus was
in some respects injurious. The Galilaean teacher was on the verge of
losing the sunny religion which He had learned from His only teacher, the
glorious natural scenery which surrounded His home, and of becoming a
gloomy Jewish fanatic. But this influence fell away from Him again; when
He returned to Galilee He became Himself once more. The only thing which
He had gained from John was some knowledge of the art of preaching. He had
learned from him how to influence masses of men. From that time forward He
preached with much more power and gained greater ascendancy over the
people.
With the return to Galilee begins the first act of the piece. The story of
the rise of Christianity is a pastoral play. Bauer, in his “Philo,
Strauss, and Renan,” writes with biting sarcasm: “Renan, who is at once
the author of the play, the stage‐manager, and the director of the
theatre, gives the signal to begin, and at a sign from him the electric
lights are put on full power, the Bengal fires flare up, the footlights
are turned higher, and while the flutes and shawms of the orchestra strike
up the overture, the people enter and take their places among the bushes
and by the shore of the Lake.” And how confiding they were, this gentle
and peaceful company of Galilaean fisher folk! And He, the young
carpenter, conjured the Kingdom of Heaven down to earth for a year, by the
spell of the infinite tenderness which radiated from Him. A company of men
and women, all of the same youthful integrity and simple innocence, became
His followers and constantly repeated “Thou art the Messiah.” By the women
He was more beloved than He Himself liked, but from His passion for the
glory of His Father He was content to attract these “fair creatures”
(_belles créatures_) and suffered them to serve Him, and God through Him.
Three or four devoted Galilaean women constantly accompanied Him and
strove with one another for the pleasure (_le plaisir_) of listening to
His teaching and attending to His comfort. Some of them were wealthy and
used their means to enable the “amiable” (_charmant_) prophet to live
without needing to practise His handicraft. The most devoted of all was
Mary Magdalene, whose disordered mind had been healed by the influence of
the pure and gracious beauty (_par la beauté pure et douce_) of the young
Rabbi.
Thus He rode, on His long‐eyelashed gentle mule, from village to village,
from town to town. The sweet theology of love (_la délicieuse théologie de
l’amour_) won Him all hearts. His preaching was gentle and mild (_suave et
douce_), full of nature and the fragrance of the country. Wherever He went
the people kept festival. At marriages He was a welcome guest; to the
feasts which He gave He invited women who were sinners, and publicans like
the good Zacchaeus.
“The Frenchman,” remarks Noack, “takes the mummied figure of the Galilaean
Rabbi, which criticism has exhumed, endows it with life and energy, and
brings Him upon the stage, first amid the lustre of the earthly happiness
which it was His pleasure to bestow, and then in the moving aspect of one
doomed to suffer.”
When Jesus goes up to the Passover at the end of this first year, He comes
into conflict with the Rabbis of the capital. The “winsome teacher, who
offered forgiveness to all on the sole condition of loving Him,” found in
the capital people upon whom His charm had no effect. When He returned to
Galilee He had entirely abandoned His Jewish beliefs, and a revolutionary
ardour glowed in His heart. The second act begins. “The action becomes
more serious and gloomy, and the pupil of Strauss turns down the
footlights of his stage.”(108) The erstwhile “winsome moralist” has become
a transcendental revolutionary. Up to this point He had thought to bring
about the triumph of the Kingdom of God by natural means, by teaching and
influencing men. The Jewish eschatology stood vaguely in the background.
Now it becomes prominent. The tension set up between His purely ethical
ideas and these eschatological expectations gives His words from this time
forward a special force. The period of joyous simplicity is past.
Even the character of the hero loses its simplicity. In the furtherance of
His cause He becomes a wonder‐worker. It is true that even before He had
sometimes practised innocent arts such as Joan of Arc made use of
later.(109) He had, for instance, pretended to know the unspoken thoughts
of one whom He desired to win, had reminded him, perhaps, of some
experience of which he cherished the memory. He allowed the people to
believe that He received knowledge of certain matters through a kind of
revelation. Finally, it came to be whispered that He had spoken with Moses
and Elias upon the mountains. But He now finds Himself compelled to adopt
in earnest the rôle which He had formerly taken, as it were, in play.
Against His will He is compelled to found His work upon miracle. He must
face the alternative of either renouncing His mission or becoming a
thaumaturge. He consented, therefore, to play an active part in many
miracles. In this astute friends gave Him their aid. At Bethany something
happened which could be regarded as a raising of the dead. Perhaps this
miracle was arranged by Lazarus himself. When very ill he had allowed
himself to be wrapped in the cerements of the dead and laid in the grave.
His sisters sent for Jesus and brought Him to the tomb. He desired to look
once more upon His friend, and when, overcome with grief, He cried his
name aloud, Lazarus came forth from the grave. Why should the brother and
sisters have hesitated to provide a miracle for the Master, in whose
miracle‐working power they, indeed, believed? Where, then, was Renan’s
allegiance to his “honoured master” Strauss, when he thus enrolled himself
among the rationalists?
On these lines Jesus played His part for eighteen months, from the Easter
of 31 to the Feast of Tabernacles of 32. How great is the change from the
gentle teacher of the Sermon on the Mount! His discourse takes on a
certain hardness of tone. In the synagogue at Capernaum He drives many
from Him, offended by the saying about eating and drinking His flesh and
blood. The “extreme materialism of the expression,” which in Him had
always been the natural counterpoise to the “extreme idealism of the
thought,” becomes more and more pronounced. His “Kingdom of God” was
indeed still essentially the kingdom of the poor, the kingdom of the soul,
the great spiritual kingdom; but He now preached it as the kingdom of the
apocalyptic writings. And yet in the very moment when He seems to be
staking everything upon a supernatural fulfilment of His hopes, He
provides with remarkable prescience the basis of a permanent Church. He
appoints the Twelve Apostles and institutes the fellowship‐meal. It is
certain, Renan thinks, that the “Supper” was not first instituted on that
last evening; even in the second Galilaean period He must have practised
with His followers the mystic rite of the Breaking of Bread, which in some
way symbolised His death.
By the end of this period He had cast off all earthly ambitions. Nothing
of earth existed for Him any more. A strange longing for persecution and
martyrdom had taken possession of Him. It was not, however, the resolve to
offer an atonement for the sins of His people which familiarised Him with
the thought of death; it was forced upon Him by the knowledge that He had
entered upon a path in which it was impossible for Him to sustain His rôle
for more than a few months, or perhaps even weeks. So He sets out for
Jerusalem, outwardly a hero, inwardly half in despair because He has
turned aside from His true path. The gentle, faithful, long‐eyelashed mule
bears Him, amid the acclamations of the multitude, through the gate of the
capital.
The third act begins: the stage is dark and becomes constantly darker,
until at last, through the darkness of the scene, there is faintly visible
only the figure of a woman—of her who in her deep grief beside the grave
was by her vision to call to life again Him whom she loved. There was
darkness, too, in the souls of the disciples, and in that of the Master.
The bitter jealousy between Judas and John made one of them a traitor. As
for Jesus, He had His hour of gloom to fight through in Gethsemane. For a
moment His human nature awakened in Him; all that He thought He had slain
and put behind Him for ever rose up and confronted Him as He knelt there
upon the ground. “Did He remember the clear brooks of Galilee at which He
might have slaked His thirst—the vine and the fig‐tree beneath which He
might have rested—the maidens who would perhaps have been willing to love
Him? Did He regret His too exalted nature? Did He, a martyr to His own
greatness, weep that He had not remained the simple carpenter of Nazareth?
We do not know!”
He is dead. Renan, as though he stood in Père Lachaise, commissioned to
pronounce the final allocution over a member of the Academy, apostrophises
Him thus: “Rest now, amid Thy glory, noble pioneer. Thou conqueror of
death, take the sceptre of Thy Kingdom, into which so many centuries of
Thy worshippers shall follow Thee, by the highway which Thou hast opened
up.”
The bell rings; the curtain begins to fall; the swing‐seats tilt. The
epilogue is scarcely heard: “Jesus will never have a rival. His religion
will again and again renew itself; His story will call forth endless
tears: His sufferings will soften the hearts of the best; every successive
century will proclaim that among the sons of men there hath not arisen a
greater than Jesus.”
The book passed through eight editions in three months. The writings of
those who opposed it had an equal vogue. That of Freppel had reached its
twelfth edition in 1864.(110) Their name was legion. Whatever wore a
soutane and could wield a pen charged against Renan, the bishops leading
the van. The tone of these attacks was not always very elevated, nor their
logic very profound. In most cases the writers were only concerned to
defend the Deity of Christ,(111) and the miracles, and are satisfied that
they have done so when they have pointed out some of the glaring
inconsistencies in Renan’s work. Here and there, however, among these
refutations we catch the tone of a loftier ethical spirit which has
recognised the fundamental weakness of the work, the lack of any definite
ethical principles in the writer’s outlook upon life.(112) There were some
indeed who were not content with a refutation; they would gladly have seen
active measures taken against Renan. One of his most embittered
adversaries, Amadée Nicolas,(113) reckons up in an appendix to his work
the maximum penalties authorised by the existing enactments against free‐
thought, and would welcome the application of the law of the 25th of March
1822, according to which five years’ imprisonment could be imposed for the
crime of “insulting or making ridiculous a religion recognised by the
state.”
Renan was defended by the _Siècle_, the _Débats_, at that time the leading
French newspaper, and the _Temps_, in which Scherer published five
articles upon the book. Even the _Revue des deux mondes_, which had
formerly raised a warning voice against Strauss, allowed itself to go with
the stream, and published in its August number of 1863 a critical analysis
by Havet(114) who hailed Renan’s work as a great achievement, and
criticised only the inconsistencies by which he had endeavoured to soften
down the radical character of his undertaking. Later on the _Revue_
changed its attitude and sided with Renan’s opponents. In the Protestant
camp there was an even keener sense of distaste than in the Catholic for
the sentimental gloss which Renan had spread over his work to make it
attractive to the multitude by its iridescent colours. In four remarkable
letters Athanase Coquerel the younger took the author to task for
this.(115) From the standpoint of orthodox scholarship E. de Pressensé
condemned him;(116) and proceeded without loss of time to refute him in a
large‐scale Life of Jesus.(117) He was answered by Albert Réville,(118)
who claims recognition for Renan’s services to criticism.
In general, however, the rising French school of critical theology was
disappointed in Renan. Their spokesman was Colani. “This is not the Christ
of history, the Christ of the Synoptics,” he writes in 1864 in the _Revue
de théologie_, “but the Christ of the Fourth Gospel, though without His
metaphysical halo, and painted over with a brush which has been dipped in
the melancholy blue of modern poetry, in the rose of the eighteenth‐
century idyll, and in the grey of a moral philosophy which seems to be
derived from La Rochefoucauld.” “In expressing this opinion,” he adds, “I
believe I am speaking in the name of those who belong to what is known as
the new Protestant theology, or the Strassburg school. We opened M.
Renan’s book with sympathetic interest; we closed it with deep
disappointment.”(119)
The Strassburg school had good cause to complain of Renan, for he had
trampled their growing crops. They had just begun to arouse some interest,
and slowly and surely to exercise an influence upon the whole spiritual
life of France. Sainte‐Beuve had called attention to the work of Reuss,
Colani, Réville, and Scherer. Others of the school were Michel Nicolas of
Montauban and Gustave d’Eichthal. Nefftzer, the editor of the _Temps_, who
was at the same time a prophet of coming political events, defended their
cause in the Parisian literary world. The _Revue germanique_ of that
period, the influence of which upon French literature can hardly be over‐
estimated, was their sworn ally. Then came Renan and threw public opinion
into a ferment of excitement. Everything in the nature of criticism, and
of progress in religious thought, was associated with his name, and was
thereby discredited. By his untimely and over‐easy popularisation of the
ideas of the critical school he ruined their quiet work. The excitement
roused by his book swept away all that had been done by those noble and
lofty spirits, who now found themselves involved in a struggle with the
outraged orthodoxy of Paris, and were hard put to it to defend themselves.
Even down to the present day Renan’s work forms the greatest hindrance to
any serious advance in French religious thought.
The excitement aroused upon the other side of the Rhine was scarcely less
than in Paris. Within a year there appeared five different German
translations, and many of the French criticisms of Renan were also
translated.(120) The German Catholic press was wildly excited;(121) the
Protestant press was more restrained, more inclined to give the author a
fair hearing, and even ventured to express admiration of the historical
merits of his performance. Beyschlag(122) saw in Renan an advance upon
Strauss, inasmuch as for him the life of Jesus as narrated in the Gospels,
while not, indeed, in any sense supernatural, is nevertheless historical.
For a certain school of theology, therefore, Renan was a deliverer from
Strauss; they were especially grateful to him for his defence, sophistical
though it was, of the Fourth Gospel. Weizsäcker expressed his admiration.
Strauss, far from directing his “Life of Jesus for the German People,”
with which he was then occupied, against the superficial and frivolous
French treatment of the subject—as has sometimes been alleged—hailed Renan
in his preface as a kindred spirit and ally, and “shook hands with him
across the Rhine.” Luthardt,(123) however, remained inexorable. “What is
there lacking in Renan’s work?” he asks. And he replies, “It lacks
conscience.”
That is a just judgment. From this lack of conscience, Renan has not been
scrupulous where he ought to have been so. There is a kind of insincerity
in the book from beginning to end. Renan professes to depict the Christ of
the Fourth Gospel, though he does not believe in the authenticity or the
miracles of that Gospel. He professes to write a scientific work, and is
always thinking of the great public and how to interest it. He has thus
fused together two works of disparate character. The historian finds it
hard to forgive him for not going more deeply into the problem of the
development in the thought of Jesus, with which he was brought face to
face by the emphasis which he laid on eschatology, and for offering in
place of a solution the highly‐coloured phrases of the novelist.
Nevertheless, this work will always retain a certain interest, both for
Frenchmen and for Germans. The German is often so completely fascinated by
it as to lose his power of criticism, because he finds in it German
thought in a novel and piquant form. Conversely the Frenchman discovers in
it, behind the familiar form, which is here handled in such a masterly
fashion, ideas belonging to a world which is foreign to him, ideas which
he can never completely assimilate, but which yet continually attract him.
In this double character of the work lies its imperishable charm.
And its weakness? That it is written by one to whom the New Testament was
to the last something foreign, who had not read it from his youth up in
the mother‐tongue, who was not accustomed to breathe freely in its simple
and pure world, but must perfume it with sentimentality in order to feel
himself at home in it.
XIV. THE “LIBERAL” LIVES OF JESUS
_David Friedrich Strauss._ Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk
bearbeitet. (A Life of Jesus for the German People.) Leipzig,
1864. 631 pp.
Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der Geschichte. Eine
Kritik des Schleiermacher’schen Lebens Jesu. (The Christ of Faith
and the Jesus of History, a Criticism of Schleiermacher’s Life of
Jesus.) Berlin, 1865. 223 pp. Appendix, pp. 224‐240.
Der Schenkel’sche Handel in Baden. (The Schenkel Affair in Baden.)
A corrected reprint from No. 441 of the _National‐Zeitung_, of the
21st September 1864.
Die Halben und die Ganzen. (The Half‐way‐ers and the Whole‐way‐
ers.) 1865.
_Daniel Schenkel._ Das Charakterbild Jesu. (The Portrait of
Jesus.) Wiesbaden, 1864 (ed. 1 and 2). 405 pp. Fourth edition,
with a preface opposing Strauss’s “Der alte und der neue Glaube”
(The Old Faith and the New), 1873.
_Karl Heinrich Weizsäcker._ Untersuchungen über die evangelische
Geschichte, ihre Quellen und den Gang ihrer Entwicklung. (Studies
in the Gospel History, its Sources and the Progress of its
Development.) Gotha, 1864. 580 pp.
_Heinrich Julius Holtzmann._ Die synoptischen Evangelien. Ihr
Ursprung und geschichtlicher Charakter. (The Synoptic Gospels.
Their Origin and Historical Character.) Leipzig, 1863. 514 pp.
_Theodor Keim._ Die Geschichte Jesu von Nazara. (The History of
Jesus of Nazara.) 3 vols., Zurich; vol. i., 1867, 446 pp.; vol.
ii., 1871, 616 pp.; vol. iii., 1872, 667 pp.
Die Geschichte Jesu. Zurich, 1872. 398 pp.
_Karl Hase._ Geschichte Jesu. Nach akademischen Vorlesungen. (The
History of Jesus. Academic Lectures, revised.) Leipzig, 1876. 612
pp.
_Willibald Beyschlag._ Das Leben Jesu. First Part: Preliminary
Investigations, 1885, 450 pp. Second Part: Narrative, 1886, 495
pp.; 2nd ed., 1887‐1888.
_Bernhard Weiss._ Das Leben Jesu. 1st ed., 2 vols., 1882; 2nd ed.,
1884. First vol., down to the Baptist’s question, 556 pp. Second
vol., 617 pp.
“My hope is,” writes Strauss in concluding the preface of his new Life of
Jesus, “that I have written a book as thoroughly well adapted for Germans
as Renan’s is for Frenchmen.” He was mistaken; in spite of its title the
book was not a book for the people. It had nothing new to offer, and what
it did offer was not in a form calculated to become popular. It is true
Strauss, like Renan, was an artist, but he did not write, like an
imaginative novelist, with a constant eye to effect. His art was
unpretentious, even austere, appealing to the few, not to the many. The
people demand a complete and vivid picture. Renan had given them a figure
which was theatrical no doubt, but full of life and movement, and they had
been grateful to him for it. Strauss could not do that.
Even the arrangement of the work is thoroughly unfortunate. In the first
part, which bears the title “The Life of Jesus,” he attempts to combine
into a harmonious portrait such of the historical data as have some claim
to be considered historical; in the second part he traces the “Origin and
Growth of the Mythical History of Jesus.” First, therefore, he tears down
from the tree the ivy and the rich growth of creepers, laying bare the
worn and corroded bark; then he fastens the faded growths to the stem
again, and describes the nature, origin, and characteristics of each
distinct species.
How vastly different, how much more full of life, had been the work of
1835! There Strauss had not divided the creepers from the stem. The
straining strength which upheld this wealth of creepers was but vaguely
suspected. Behind the billowy mists of legend we caught from time to time
a momentary glimpse of the gigantic figure of Jesus, as though lit up by a
lightning‐flash. It was no complete and harmonious picture, but it was
full of suggestions, rich in thoughts thrown out carelessly, rich in
contradictions even, out of which the imagination could create a portrait
of Jesus. It is just this wealth of suggestion that is lacking in the
second picture. Strauss is trying now to give a definite portrait. In the
inevitable process of harmonising and modelling to scale he is obliged to
reject the finest thoughts of the previous work because they will not fit
in exactly; some of them are altered out of recognition, some are filed
away.
There is wanting, too, that perfect freshness as of the spring which is
only found when thoughts have but newly come into flower. The writing is
no longer spontaneous; one feels that Strauss is setting forth thoughts
which have ripened with his mind and grown old with it, and now along with
their definiteness of form have taken on a certain stiffness. There are
now no hinted possibilities, full of promise, to dance gaily through the
movement of his dialectic; all is sober reason—a thought too sober. Renan
had one advantage over Strauss in that he wrote when the material was
fresh to him—one might almost say strange to him—and was capable of
calling up in him the response of vivid feeling.
For a popular book, too, it lacks that living interplay of reflection with
narration without which the ordinary reader fails to get a grip of the
history. The first Life of Jesus had been rich in this respect, since it
had been steeped in the Hegelian theory regarding the realisation of the
Idea. In the meantime Strauss had seen the Hegelian philosophy fall from
its high estate, and himself had found no way of reconciling history and
idea, so that his present Life of Jesus was a mere objective presentment
of the history. It was, therefore, not adapted to make any impression upon
the popular mind.
In reality it is merely an exposition, in more or less popular form, of
the writer’s estimate of what had been done in the study of the subject
during the past thirty years, and shows what he had learnt and what he had
failed to learn.
As regards the Synoptic question he had learnt nothing. In his opinion the
criticism of the Gospels has “run to seed.” He treats with a pitying
contempt both the earlier and the more recent defenders of the Marcan
hypothesis. Weisse is a dilettante; Wilke had failed to make any
impression on him; Holtzmann’s work was as yet unknown to him. But in the
following year he discharged the vials of his wrath upon the man who had
both strengthened the foundations and put on the coping‐stone of the new
hypothesis. “Our lions of St. Mark, older and younger,” he says in the
appendix to his criticism of Schleiermacher’s Life of Jesus, “may roar as
loud as they like, so long as there are six solid reasons against the
priority of Mark to set against every one of their flimsy arguments in its
favour—and they themselves supply us with a store of counter‐arguments in
the shape of admissions of later editing and so forth. The whole theory
appears to me a temporary aberration, like the ’music of the future’ or
the anti‐vaccination movement; and I seriously believe that it is the same
order of mind which, in different circumstances, falls a victim to the one
delusion or the other.” But he must not be supposed, he says, to take the
critical mole‐hills thrown up by Holtzmann for veritable mountains.
Against such opponents he does not scruple to seek aid from
Schleiermacher, whose unbiased but decided opinion had ascribed a tertiary
character to Mark. Even Gfrörer’s view that Mark adapted his Gospel to the
needs of the Church by leaving out everything which was open to objection
in Matthew and Luke, is good enough to be brought to bear against the bat‐
eyed partisans of Mark. F. C. Baur is reproached for having given too much
weight to the “tendency” theory in his criticism of the Gospels; and also
for having taken suggestions of Strauss’s and worked them out, supposing
that he was offering something new when he was really only amplifying. In
the end he had only given a criticism of the Gospels, not of the Gospel
history.
But this irritation against his old teacher is immediately allayed when he
comes to speak of the Fourth Gospel. Here the teacher has carried to a
successful issue the campaign which the pupil had begun. Strauss feels
compelled to “express his gratitude for the work done by the Tübingen
school on the Johannine question.” He himself had only been able to deal
with the negative side of the question—to show that the Fourth Gospel was
not an historical source, but a theological invention; they had dealt with
it positively, and had assigned the document to its proper place in the
evolution of Christian thought. There is only one point with which he
quarrels. Baur had made the Fourth Gospel too completely spiritual,
“whereas the fact is,” says Strauss, “that it is the most material of
all.” It is true, Strauss explains, that the Evangelist starts out to
interpret miracle and eschatology symbolically; but he halts half‐way and
falls back upon the miraculous, enhancing the professed fact in proportion
as he makes it spiritually more significant. Beside the spiritual return
of Jesus in the Paraclete he places His return in a material body, bearing
the marks of the wounds; beside the inward present judgment, a future
outward judgment; and the fact that he sees the one in the other, finds
the one present and visible in the other, is just what constitutes the
mystical character of his Gospel. This mysticism attracts the modern
world. “The Johannine Christ, who in His descriptions of Himself seems to
be always out‐doing Himself, is the counterpart of the modern believer,
who in order to remain a believer must continually out‐do himself; the
Johannine miracles which are always being interpreted spiritually, and at
the same time raised to a higher pitch of the miraculous, which are
counted and documented in every possible way, and yet must not be
considered the true ground of faith, are at once miracles and no miracles.
We must believe them, and yet can believe without them; in short they
exactly meet the taste of the present day, which delights to involve
itself in contradictions and is too lethargic and wanting in courage for
any clear insight or decided opinion on religious matters.”
Strictly speaking, however, the Strauss of the second Life of Jesus has no
right to criticise the Fourth Gospel for sublimating the history, for he
himself gives what is nothing else than a spiritualisation of the Jesus of
the Synoptics. And he does it in such an arbitrary fashion that one is
compelled to ask how far he does it with a good conscience. A typical case
is the exposition of Jesus’ answer to the Baptist’s message. “Is it
possible,” Jesus means, “that you fail to find in Me the miracles which
you expect from the Messiah? And yet I daily open the eyes of the
spiritually blind and the ears of the spiritually deaf, make the lame walk
erect and vigorous, and even give new life to those who are morally dead.
Any one who understands how much greater these spiritual miracles are,
will not be offended at the absence of bodily miracles; only such an one
can receive, and is worthy of, the salvation which I am bringing to
mankind.”
Here the fundamental weakness of his method is clearly shown. The vaunted
apparatus for the evaporation of the mythical does not work quite
satisfactorily. The ultimate product of this process was expected to be a
Jesus who should be essential man; the actual product, however, is Jesus
the historical man, a being whose looks and sayings are strange and
unfamiliar. Strauss is too purely a critic, too little of the creative
historian, to recognise this strange being. That Jesus really lived in a
world of Jewish ideas and held Himself to be Messiah in the Jewish sense
is for the writer of the Life of Jesus an impossibility. The deposit which
resists the chemical process for the elimination of myth, he must
therefore break up with the hammer.
How different from the Strauss of 1835! He had then recognised eschatology
as the most important element in Jesus’ world of thought, and in some
incidental remarks had made striking applications of it. He had, for
example, proposed to regard the Last Supper not as the institution of a
feast for coming generations, but as a Paschal meal, at which Jesus
declared that He would next partake of the Paschal bread and Paschal wine
along with His disciples in the heavenly kingdom. In the second Life of
Jesus this view is given up; Jesus did found a feast. “In order to give a
living centre of unity to the society which it was His purpose to found,
Jesus desired to institute this distribution of bread and wine as a feast
to be constantly repeated.” One might be reading Renan. This change of
attitude is typical of much else.
Strauss is not in the least disquieted by finding himself at one with
Schleiermacher in these attempts to spiritualise. On the contrary, he
appeals to him. He shares, he says, Schleiermacher’s conviction “that the
unique self‐consciousness of Jesus did not develop as a consequence of His
conviction that He was the Messiah; on the contrary, it was a consequence
of His self‐consciousness that He arrived at the view that the Messianic
prophecies could point to no one but Himself.” The moment eschatology
entered into the consciousness of Jesus it came in contact with a higher
principle which over‐mastered it and gradually dissolved it. “Had Jesus
applied the Messianic idea to Himself before He had had a profound
religious consciousness to which to relate it, doubtless it would have
taken possession of Him so powerfully that He could never have escaped
from its influence.” We must suppose the ideality, the concentration upon
that which was inward, the determination to separate religion, on the one
hand, from politics, and on the other, from ritual, the serene
consciousness of being able to attain to peace with God and with Himself
by purely spiritual means—all this we must suppose to have reached a
certain ripeness, a certain security, in the mind of Jesus, before He
permitted Himself to entertain the thought of His Messiahship, and this we
may believe is the reason why He grasped it in so independent and
individual a fashion. In this, therefore, Strauss has become the pupil of
Weisse.
Even in the Old Testament prophecies, he explains, we find two
conceptions, a more ideal and a more practical. Jesus holds consistently
to the first, He describes Himself as the Son of Man because this
designation “contains the suggestion of humility and lowliness, of the
human and natural.” At Jerusalem, Jesus, in giving His interpretation of
Psalm cx., “made merry over the Davidic descent of the Messiah.” He
desired “to be Messiah in the sense of a patient teacher exercising a
quiet influence.” As the opposition of the people grew more intense, He
took up some of the features of Isaiah liii. into His conception of the
Messiah.
Of His resurrection, Jesus can only have spoken in a metaphorical sense.
It is hardly credible that one who was pure man could have arrogated to
himself the position of judge of the world. Strauss would like best to
ascribe all the eschatology to the distorting medium of early
Christianity, but he does not venture to carry this through with logical
consistency. He takes it as certain, however, that Jesus, even though it
sometimes seems as if He did not expect the Kingdom to be realised in the
present, but in a future, world‐era, and to be brought about by God in a
supernatural fashion, nevertheless sets about the establishment of the
Kingdom by purely spiritual influence.
With this end in view He leaves Galilee, when He judges the time to be
ripe, in order to work on a larger scale. “In case of an unfavourable
issue, He reckons on the influence which a martyr‐death has never failed
to exercise in giving momentum to a lofty idea.” How far He had advanced,
when He entered on the fateful journey to Jerusalem, in shaping His plan,
and especially in organising the company of adherents who had gathered
about Him, it is impossible to determine with any exactness. He permitted
the triumphal entry because He did not desire to decline the role of the
Messiah in every aspect of it.
Owing to this arbitrary spiritualisation of the Synoptic Jesus, Strauss’s
picture is in essence much more unhistorical than Renan’s. The latter had
not needed to deny that Jesus had done miracles, and he had been able to
suggest an explanation of how Jesus came in the end to fall back upon the
eschatological system of ideas. But at what a price! By portraying Jesus
as at variance with Himself, a hero broken in spirit. This price is too
high for Strauss. Arbitrary as his treatment of history is, he never loses
the intuitive feeling that in Jesus’ self‐consciousness there is a unique
absence of struggle; that He does not bear the scars which are found in
those natures which win their way to freedom and purity through strife and
conflict, that in Him there is no trace of the hardness, harshness, and
gloom which cleave to such natures throughout life, but that He “is
manifestly a beautiful nature from the first.” Thus, for all Strauss’s
awkward, arbitrary handling of the history he is greater than the
rival(124) who could manufacture history with such skill.
Nevertheless, from the point of view of theological science, this work
marks a standstill. That was the net result of the thirty years of
critical study of the life of Jesus for the man who had inaugurated it so
impressively. This was the only fruit which followed those blossoms so
full of promise of the first Life of Jesus.
It is significant that in the same year there appeared Schleiermacher’s
lectures on the Life of Jesus, which had not seen the light for forty
years, because, as Strauss himself remarked in his criticism of the
resurrected work, it had neither anodyne nor dressing for the wounds which
his first Life of Jesus had made.(125) The wounds, however, had cicatrised
in the meantime. It is true Strauss is a just judge, and makes ample
acknowledgment of the greatness of Schleiermacher’s achievement.(126) He
blames Schleiermacher for setting up his “presuppositions in regard to
Christ” as an historical canon, and considering it a proof that a
statement is unhistorical if it does not square with those
presuppositions. But does not the purely human, but to a certain extent
unhistorical, man, who is to be the ultimate product of the process of
eliminating myth, serve Strauss as his “theoretic Christ” who determines
the presentment of his historical Jesus? Does he not share with
Schleiermacher the erroneous, artificial, “double” construction of the
consciousness of Jesus? And what about their views of Mark? What
fundamental difference is there, when all is said, between
Schleiermacher’s de‐rationalised Life of Jesus and Strauss’s? Certainly
this second Life of Jesus would not have frightened Schleiermacher’s away
into hiding for thirty years.
So Schleiermacher’s Life of Jesus might now safely venture forth into the
light. There was no reason why it should feel itself a stranger at this
period, and it had no need to be ashamed of itself. Its rationalistic
birth‐marks were concealed by its brilliant dialectic.(127) And the only
real advance in the meantime was the general recognition that the Life of
Jesus was not to be interpreted on rationalistic, but on historical lines.
All other, more definite, historical results had proved more or less
illusory; there is no vitality in them. The works of Renan, Strauss,
Schenkel, Weizsäcker, and Keim are in essence only different ways of
carrying out a single ground‐plan. To read them one after another is to be
simply appalled at the stereotyped uniformity of the world of thought in
which they move. You feel that you have read exactly the same thing in the
others, almost in identical phrases. To obtain the works of Schenkel and
Weizsäcker you only need to weaken down in Strauss the sharp
discrimination between John and the Synoptists so far as to allow of the
Fourth Gospel being used to some extent as an historical source “in the
higher sense,” and to put the hypothesis of the priority of Mark in place
of the Tübingen view adopted by Strauss. The latter is an external
operation and does not essentially modify the view of the Life of Jesus,
since by admitting the Johannine scheme the Marcan plan is again
disturbed, and Strauss’s arbitrary spiritualisation of the Synoptics comes
to something not very different from the acceptance of that “in a higher
sense historical Gospel” alongside of them. The whole discussion regarding
the sources is only loosely connected with the process of arriving at the
portrait of Jesus, since this portrait is fixed from the first, being
determined by the mental atmosphere and religious horizon of the ’sixties.
They all portray the Jesus of liberal theology; the only difference is
that one is a little more conscientious in his colouring than another, and
one perhaps has a little more taste than another, or is less concerned
about the consequences.
The desire to escape in some way from the alternative between the
Synoptists and John was native to the Marcan hypothesis. Weisse had
endeavoured to effect this by distinguishing between the sources in the
Fourth Gospel.(128) Schenkel and Weizsäcker are more modest. They do not
feel the need of any clear literary view of the Fourth Gospel, of any
critical discrimination between original and secondary elements in it;
they are content to use as historical whatever their instinct leads them
to accept. “Apart from the fourth Gospel,” says Schenkel, “we should miss
in the portrait of the Redeemer the unfathomable depths and the
inaccessible heights.” “Jesus,” to quote his aphorism, “was not always
thus in reality, but He was so in truth.” Since when have historians had
the right to distinguish between reality and truth? That was one of the
bad habits which the author of this characterisation of Jesus brought with
him from his earlier dogmatic training.
Weizsäcker(129) expresses himself with more circumspection. “We possess,”
he says, “in the Fourth Gospel genuine apostolic reminiscences as much as
in any part of the first three Gospels; but between the facts on which the
reminiscences are based and their reproduction in literary form there lies
the development of their possessor into a great mystic, and the influence
of a philosophy which here for the first time united itself in this way
with the Gospel; they need, therefore, to be critically examined; and the
historical truth of this gospel, great as it is, must not be measured with
a painful literality.”
One wonders why both these writers appeal to Holtzmann, seeing that they
practically abandon the Marcan plan which he had worked out at the end of
his very thorough examination of this Gospel. They do not accept as
sufficient the controversy regarding the ceremonial regulations in Mark
vii. which, with the rejection at Nazareth, constitute, in Holtzmann’s
view, the turning‐point of the Galilaean ministry, but find the cause of
the change of attitude on the part of the people rather in the Johannine
discourse about eating and drinking the flesh and blood of the Son of Man.
The section Mark x.‐xv., which has a certain unity, they interpret in the
light of the Johannine tradition, finding in it traces of a previous
ministry of Jesus in Jerusalem and interweaving with it the Johannine
story of the Passion. According to Schenkel the last visit to Jerusalem
must have been of considerable duration. When confronted with John, the
admission may be wrung from the Synoptists that Jesus did not travel
straight through Jericho to the capital, but worked first for a
considerable time in Judaea. Strauss tartly observes that he cannot see
what the author of the “characterisation” stood to gain by underwriting
Holtzmann’s Marcan hypothesis.(130)
Weizsäcker is still bolder in making interpolations from the Johannine
tradition. He places the cleansing of the Temple, in contradiction to
Mark, in the early period of Jesus’ ministry, on the ground that “it bears
the character of a first appearance, a bold deed with which to open His
career.” He fails to observe, however, that if this act really took place
at this point of time, the whole development of the life of Jesus which
Holtzmann had so ingeniously traced in Mark, is at once thrown into
confusion. In describing the last visit to Jerusalem, Weizsäcker is not
content to insert the Marcan stones into the Johannine cement; he goes
farther and expressly states that the great farewell discourses of Jesus
to His disciples agree with the Synoptic discourses to the disciples
spoken during the last days, however completely they of all others bear
the peculiar stamp of the Johannine diction.
Thus in the second period of the Marcan hypothesis the same spectacle
meets us as in the earlier. The hypothesis has a literary existence,
indeed it is carried by Holtzmann to such a degree of demonstration that
it can no longer be called a mere hypothesis, but it does not succeed in
winning an assured position in the critical study of the Life of Jesus. It
is common‐land not yet taken into cultivation.
That is due in no small measure to the fact that Holtzmann did not work
out the hypothesis from the historical side, but rather on literary lines,
recalling Wilke—as a kind of problem in Synoptic arithmetic—and in his
preface expresses dissent from the Tübingen school, who desired to leave
no alternative between John on the one side and the Synoptics on the
other, whereas he approves the attempt to evade the dilemma in some way or
other, and thinks he can find in the didactic narrative of the Fourth
Gospel the traces of a development of Jesus similar to that portrayed in
the Synoptics, and has therefore no fundamental objection to the use of
John alongside of the Synoptics. In taking up this position, however, he
does not desire to be understood as meaning that “it would be to the
interests of science to throw Synoptic and Johannine passages together
indiscriminately and thus construct a life of Jesus out of them.” “It
would be much better first to reconstruct separately the Synoptic and
Johannine pictures of Christ, composing each of its own distinctive
material. It is only when this has been done that it is possible to make a
fruitful comparison of the two.” Exactly the same position had been taken
up sixty‐seven years before by Herder. In Holtzmann’s case, however, the
principle was stated with so many qualifications that the adherents of his
view read into it the permission to combine, in a picture treated “in the
grand style,” Synoptic with Johannine passages.
In addition to this, the plan which Holtzmann finally evolved out of Mark
was much too fine‐drawn to bear the weight of the remainder of the
Synoptic material. He distinguishes seven stages in the Galilaean
ministry,(131) of which the really decisive one is the sixth, in which
Jesus leaves Galilee and goes northward, so that Schenkel and Weizsäcker
are justified in distinguishing practically only two great Galilaean
periods, the first of which—down to the controversy about ceremonial
purity—they distinguish as the period of success, the second—down to the
departure from Judaea—as the period of decline. What attracted these
writers to the Marcan hypothesis was not so much the authentification
which it gave to the detail of Mark, though they were willing enough to
accept that, but the way in which this Gospel lent itself to the a priori
view of the course of the life of Jesus which they unconsciously brought
with them. They appealed to Holtzmann because he showed such wonderful
skill in extracting from the Marcan narrative the view which commended
itself to the spirit of the age as manifested in the ’sixties.
Holtzmann read into this Gospel that Jesus had endeavoured in Galilee to
found the Kingdom of God in an ideal sense; that He concealed His
consciousness of being the Messiah, which was constantly growing more
assured, until His followers should have attained by inner enlightenment
to a higher view of the Kingdom of God and of the Messiah; that almost at
the end of His Galilaean ministry He declared Himself to them as the
Messiah at Caesarea Philippi; that on the same occasion He at once began
to picture to them a suffering Messiah, whose lineaments gradually became
more and more distinct in His mind amid the growing opposition which He
encountered, until finally, He communicated to His disciples His decision
to put the Messianic cause to the test in the capital, and that they
followed Him thither and saw how His fate fulfilled itself. It was this
fundamental view which made the success of the hypothesis. Holtzmann, not
less than his followers, believed that he had discovered it in the Gospel
itself, although Strauss, the passionate opponent of the Marcan
hypothesis, took essentially the same view of the development of Jesus’
thought. But the way in which Holtzmann exhibited this characteristic view
of the ’sixties as arising naturally out of the detail of Mark, was so
perfect, so artistically charming, that this view appeared henceforward to
be inseparably bound up with the Marcan tradition. Scarcely ever has a
description of the life of Jesus exercised so irresistible an influence as
that short outline—it embraces scarcely twenty pages—with which Holtzmann
closes his examination of the Synoptic Gospels. This chapter became the
creed and catechism of all who handled the subject during the following
decades. The treatment of the life of Jesus had to follow the lines here
laid down until the Marcan hypothesis was delivered from its bondage to
that a priori view of the development of Jesus. Until then any one might
appeal to the Marcan hypothesis, meaning thereby only that general view of
the inward and outward course of development in the life of Jesus, and
might treat the remainder of the Synoptic material how he chose, combining
with it, at his pleasure, material drawn from John. The victory,
therefore, belonged, not to the Marcan hypothesis pure and simple, but to
the Marcan hypothesis as psychologically interpreted by a liberal
theology.
The points of distinction between the Weissian and the new interpretation
are as follows:—Weisse is sceptical as regards the detail; the new Marcan
hypothesis ventures to base conclusions even upon incidental remarks in
the text. According to Weisse there were not distinct periods of success
and failure in the ministry of Jesus; the new Marcan hypothesis
confidently affirms this distinction, and goes so far as to place the
sojourn of Jesus in the parts beyond Galilee under the heading “Flights
and Retirements.”(132) The earlier Marcan hypothesis expressly denies that
outward circumstances influenced the resolve of Jesus to die; according to
the later, it was the opposition of the people, and the impossibility of
carrying out His mission on other lines which forced Him to enter on the
path of suffering.(133) The Jesus of Weisse’s view has completed His
development at the time of His appearance; the Jesus of the new
interpretation of Mark continues to develop in the course of His public
ministry.
There is complete agreement, however, in the rejection of eschatology. For
Holtzmann, Schenkel, and Weizsäcker, as for Weisse, Jesus desires “to
found an inward kingdom of repentance.”(134) It was Israel’s duty,
according to Schenkel, to believe in the presence of the Kingdom which
Jesus proclaimed. John the Baptist was unable to believe in it, and it was
for this reason that Jesus censured him—for it is in this sense that
Schenkel understands the saying about the greatest among those born of
women who is nevertheless the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. “So near the
light and yet shutting his eyes to its beams—is there not some blame here,
an undeniable lack of spiritual and moral receptivity?”
Jesus makes Messianic claims only in a spiritual sense. He does not grasp
at super‐human glory; it is His purpose to bear the sin of the whole
people, and He undergoes baptism “as a humble member of the national
community.”
His whole teaching consists, when once He Himself has attained to clear
consciousness of His vocation, in a constant struggle to root out from the
hearts of His disciples their theocratic hopes and to effect a
transformation of their traditional Messianic ideas. When, on Simon’s
hailing Him as the Messiah, He declares that flesh and blood has not
revealed it to him, He means, according to Schenkel, “that Simon has at
this moment overcome the false Messianic ideas, and has recognised in Him
the ethical and spiritual deliverer of Israel.”
“That Jesus predicted a personal, bodily, Second Coming, in the brightness
of His heavenly splendour and surrounded by the heavenly hosts, to
establish an earthly kingdom, is not only not proved, it is absolutely
impossible.” His purpose is to establish a community of which His
disciples are to be the foundation, and by means of this community to
bring about the coming of the Kingdom of God. He can, therefore, only have
spoken of His return as an impersonal return in the Spirit. The later
exponents of the Marcan view were no doubt generally inclined to regard
the return as personal and corporeal. For Schenkel, however, it is
historically certain that the real meaning of the eschatological
discourses is more faithfully preserved in the Fourth Gospel than in the
Synoptics.
In his anxiety to eliminate any enthusiastic elements from the
representation of Jesus, he ends by drawing a bourgeois Messiah whom he
might have extracted from the old‐fashioned rationalistic work of the
worthy Reinhard. He feels bound to save the credit of Jesus by showing
that the entry into Jerusalem was not intended as a provocation to the
government. “It is only by making this supposition,” he explains, “that we
avoid casting a slur upon the character of Jesus. It was certainly a
constant trait in His character that He never unnecessarily exposed
Himself to danger, and never, except for the most pressing reasons, did He
give any support to the suspicions which were arising against Him; He
avoided provoking His opponents to drastic measures by any overt act
directed against them.” Even the cleansing of the Temple was not an act of
violence but merely an attempt at reform.
Schenkel is able to give these explanations because he knows the most
secret thoughts of Jesus and is therefore no longer bound to the text. He
knows, for example, that immediately after His baptism He attained to the
knowledge “that the way of the Law was no longer the way of salvation for
His people.” Jesus cannot therefore have uttered the saying about the
permanence of the Law in Mark v. 18. In the controversies about the
Sabbath “He proclaims freedom of worship.”
As time went on, He began to take the heathen world into the scope of His
purpose. “The hard saying addressed to the Canaanite woman represents
rather the proud and exclusive spirit of Pharisaism than the spirit of
Jesus.” It was a test of faith, the success of which had a decisive
influence upon Jesus’ attitude towards the heathen. Henceforth it is
obvious that He is favourably disposed towards them. He travels through
Samaria and establishes a community there. In Jerusalem He openly calls
the heathen to Him. At certain feasts which they had arranged for that
purpose, some of the leaders of the people set a trap for Him, and
betrayed Him into liberal sayings in regard to the Gentiles which sealed
His fate.
This was the course of development of the Master, who, according to
Schenkel, “saw with a clear eye into the future history of the world,” and
knew that the fall of Jerusalem must take place in order to close the
theocratic era and give the Gentiles free access to the universal
community of Christians which He was to found. “This period He described
as the period of His coming, as in a sense His Second Advent upon earth.”
The same general procedure is followed by Weizsäcker in his “Gospel
History,” though his work is of a much higher quality than Schenkel’s. His
account of the sources is one of the clearest that has ever been written.
In the description of the life of Jesus, however, the unhesitating
combination of material from the Fourth Gospel with that of the Synoptics
rather confuses the picture. And whereas Renan only offers the results of
the completed process, Weizsäcker works out his, it might almost be said,
under the eyes of the reader, which makes the arbitrary character of the
proceeding only the more obvious. But in his attitude towards the sources
Weizsäcker is wholly free from the irresponsible caprice in which Schenkel
indulges. From time to time, too, he gives a hint of unsolved problems in
the background. For example, in treating of the declaration of Jesus to
His judges that He would come as the Son of Man upon the clouds of heaven,
he remarks how surprising it is that Jesus could so often have used the
designation Son of Man on earlier occasions without being accused of
claiming the Messiahship. It is true that this is a mere scraping of the
keel upon a sandbank, by which the steersman does not allow himself to be
turned from his course, for Weizsäcker concludes that the name Son of Man,
in spite of its use in Daniel, “had not become a generally current or
really popular designation of the Messiah.” But even this faint suspicion
of the difficulty is a welcome sign. Much emphasis, in fact, in practice
rather too much emphasis, is laid on the principle that in the great
discourses of Jesus the structure is not historical; they are only
collections of sayings formed to meet the needs of the Christian community
in later times. In this Weizsäcker is sometimes not less arbitrary than
Schenkel, who represents the Lord’s Prayer as given by Jesus to the
disciples only in the last days at Jerusalem. It was an axiom of the
school that Jesus could not have delivered discourses such as the
Evangelists record.
If Schenkel’s picture of Jesus’ character attracted much more attention
than Weizsäcker’s work, that is mainly due to the art of lively popular
presentation by which it is distinguished. The writer knows well how to
keep the reader’s interest awake by the use of exciting headlines.
Catchwords abound, and arrest the ear, for they are the catchwords about
which the religious controversies of the time revolved. There is never far
to look for the moral of the history, and the Jesus here portrayed can be
imagined plunging into the midst of the debates in any ministerial
conference. The moralising, it must be admitted, sometimes becomes the
occasion of the feeblest ineptitudes. Jesus sent out His disciples two and
two; this is for Schenkel a marvellous exhibition of wisdom. The Lord
designed, thereby, to show that in His opinion “nothing is more inimical
to the interests of the Kingdom of God than individualism, self‐will,
self‐pleasing.” Schenkel entirely fails to recognise the superb irony of
the saying that in this life all that a man gives up for the sake of the
Kingdom of God is repaid a hundredfold in persecutions, in order that in
the Coming Age he may receive eternal life as his reward. He interpreted
it as meaning that the sufferer shall be compensated by love; his fellow‐
Christians will endeavour to make it up to him, and will offer him their
own possessions so freely that, in consequence of this brotherly love, he
will soon have, for the house which he has lost, a hundred houses, for the
lost sisters, brothers, and so forth, a hundred sisters, a hundred
brothers, a hundred fathers, a hundred mothers, a hundred farms. Schenkel
forgets to add that, if this is to be the interpretation of the saying,
the persecuted man must also receive through this compensating love, a
hundred wives.(135)
This want of insight into the largeness, the startling originality, the
self‐contradictoriness, and the terrible irony in the thought of Jesus, is
not a peculiarity of Schenkel’s; it is characteristic of all the liberal
Lives of Jesus from Strauss’s down to Oskar Holtzmann’s.(136) How could it
be otherwise? They had to transpose a way of envisaging the world which
belonged to a hero and a dreamer to the plane of thought of a rational
bourgeois religion. But in Schenkel’s representation, with its popular
appeal, this banality is particularly obtrusive.
In the end, however, what made the success of the book was not its popular
characteristics, whether good or bad, but the enmity which it drew down
upon the author. The Basle Privat‐Docent who, in his work of 1839, had
congratulated the Zurichers on having rejected Strauss, now, as Professor
and Director of the Seminary at Heidelberg, came very near being adjudged
worthy of the martyr’s crown himself. He had been at Heidelberg since
1851, after holding for a short time De Wette’s chair at Basle. At his
first coming a mildly reactionary theology might have claimed him as its
own. He gave it a right to do so by the way in which he worked against the
philosopher, Kuno Fischer, in the Higher Consistory. But in the struggles
over the constitution of the Church he changed his position. As a defender
of the rights of the laity he ranged himself on the more liberal side.
After his great victory in the General Synod of 1861, in which the new
constitution of the Church was established, he called a German Protestant
assembly at Frankfort, in order to set on foot a general movement for
Church reform. This assembly met in 1863, and led to the formation of the
Protestant Association.
When the _Charakterbild Jesu_ appeared, friend and foe were alike
surprised at the thoroughness with which Schenkel advocated the more
liberal views. “Schenkel’s book,” complained Luthardt, in a lecture at
Leipzig,(137) “has aroused a painful interest. We had learnt to know him
in many aspects; we were not prepared for such an apostasy from his own
past. How long is it since he brought about the dismissal of Kuno Fischer
from Heidelberg because he saw in the pantheism of this philosopher a
danger to Church and State? It is still fresh in our memory that it was he
who in the year 1852 drew up the report of the Theological Faculty of
Heidelberg upon the ecclesiastical controversy raised by Pastor Dülon at
Bremen, in which he denied Dülon’s Christianity on the ground that he had
assailed the doctrines of original sin, of justification by faith, of a
living and personal God, of the eternal Divine Sonship of Christ, of the
Kingdom of God, and of the credibility of the holy Scriptures.” And now
this same Schenkel was misusing the Life of Jesus as a weapon in “party
polemics”!
The agitation against him was engineered from Berlin, where his successful
attack upon the illiberal constitution of the Church had not been
forgiven. One hundred and seventeen Baden clerics signed a protest
declaring the author unfitted to hold office as a theological teacher in
the Baden Church. Throughout the whole of Germany the pastors agitated
against him. It was especially demanded that he should be immediately
removed from his post as Director of the Seminary. A counter‐protest was
issued by the Durlach Conference in the July of 1864, in which Bluntschli
and Holtzmann vigorously defended him. The Ecclesiastical Council
supported him, and the storm gradually died away, especially when Schenkel
in two “Defences” skilfully softened down the impression made by his work,
and endeavoured to quiet the public mind by pointing out that he had only
attempted to set forth one side of the truth.(138)
The position of the prospective martyr was not rendered any more easy by
Strauss. In an appendix to his criticism of Schleiermacher’s Life of Jesus
he settled accounts with his old antagonist.(139) He recognises no
scientific value whatever in the work. None of the ideas developed in it
are new. One might fairly say, he thinks, “that the conclusions which have
given offence had been carried down the Neckar from Tübingen to
Heidelberg, and had there been salvaged by Herr Schenkel—in a somewhat
sodden and deteriorated condition, it must be admitted—and incorporated
into the edifice which he was constructing.” Further, Strauss censures the
book for its want of frankness, its half‐and‐half character, which
manifests itself especially in the way in which the author clings to
orthodox phraseology. “Over and over again he gives criticism with one
hand all that it can possibly ask, and then takes back with the other
whatever the interests of faith seem to demand; with the constant result
that what is taken back is far too much for criticism and not nearly
enough for faith.” “In the future,” he concludes, “it will be said of the
seven hundred Durlachers that they fought like paladins to prevent the
enemy from capturing a standard which was really nothing but a patched
dish‐clout.”
Schenkel died in 1885 after severe sufferings. As a critic he lacked
independence, and was, therefore, always inclined to compromises; in
controversy he was vehement. Though he did nothing remarkable in theology,
German Protestantism owes him a vast debt for acting as its tribune in the
’sixties.
That was the last time that any popular excitement was aroused in
connexion with the critical study of the life of Jesus; and it was a mere
storm in a tea‐cup. Moreover, it was the man and not his work that aroused
the excitement. Henceforth public opinion was almost entirely indifferent
to anything which appeared in this department. The great fundamental
question whether historical criticism was to be applied to the life of
Jesus had been decided in connexion with Strauss’s first work on the
subject. If here and there indignation aroused by a Life of Jesus brought
inconveniences to the author and profit to the publisher, that was
connected in every case with purely external and incidental circumstances.
Public opinion was not disquieted for a moment by Volkmar and Wrede,
although they are much more extreme than Schenkel.
Most of the Lives of Jesus which followed had, it is true, nothing very
exciting about them. They were mere variants of the type established
during the ’sixties, variants of which the minute differences were only
discernible by theologians, and which were otherwise exactly alike in
arrangement and result. As a contribution to criticism, Keim’s(140)
“History of Jesus of Nazara” was the most important Life of Jesus which
appeared in a long period.
It is not of much consequence that he believes in the priority of Matthew,
since his presentment of the history follows the general lines of the
Marcan plan, which is preserved also in Matthew. He gives it as his
opinion that the life of Jesus is to be reconstructed from the Synoptics,
whether Matthew has the first place or Mark. He sketches the development
of Jesus in bold lines. As early as his inaugural address at Zurich,
delivered on the 17th of December 1860, which, short as it was, made a
powerful impression upon Holtzmann as well as upon others, he had set up
the thesis that the Synoptics “artlessly, almost against their will, show
us unconsciously in incidental, unobtrusive traits the progressive
development of Jesus as youth and man.”(141) His later works are the
development of this sketch.
His grandiose style gave the keynote for the artistic treatment of the
portrait of Jesus in the ’sixties. His phrases and expressions became
classical. Every one follows him in speaking of the “Galilaean spring‐
tide” in the ministry of Jesus.
On the Johannine question he takes up a clearly defined position, denying
the possibility of using the Fourth Gospel side by side with the Synoptics
as an historical source. He goes very far in finding special significance
in the details of the Synoptists, especially when he is anxious to
discover traces of want of success in the second period of Jesus’
ministry, since the plan of his Life of Jesus depends on the sharp
antithesis between the periods of success and failure. The whole of the
second half of the Galilaean period consists for him in “flights and
retirements.” “Beset by constantly renewed alarms and hindrances, Jesus
left the scene of His earlier work, left His dwelling‐place at Capernaum,
and accompanied only by a few faithful followers, in the end only by the
Twelve, sought in all directions for places of refuge for longer or
shorter periods, in order to avoid and elude His enemies.” Keim frankly
admits, indeed, that there is not a syllable in the Gospels to suggest
that these journeys are the journeys of a fugitive. But instead of
allowing that to shake his conviction, he abuses the narrators and
suggests that they desired to conceal the truth. “These flights,” he says,
“were no doubt inconvenient to the Evangelists. Matthew is here the
frankest, but in order to restore the impression of Jesus’ greatness he
transfers to this period the greatest miracles. The later Evangelists are
almost completely silent about these retirements, and leave us to suppose
that Jesus made His journeys to Caesarea Philippi and the neighbourhood of
Tyre and Sidon in the middle of winter from mere pleasure in travel, or
for the extension of the Gospel, and that He made His last journey to
Jerusalem without any external necessity, entirely in consequence of His
free decision, even though the expectation of death which they ascribe to
Him goes far to counteract the impression of complete freedom.” Why do
they thus correct the history? “The motive was the same difficulty which
draws from us also the question, ‘Is it possible that Jesus should
flee?’ ” Keim answers “Yes.” Here the liberal psychology comes clearly to
light. “Jesus fled,” he explains, “because He desired to preserve Himself
for God and man, to secure the continuance of His ministry to Israel, to
defeat as long as possible the dark designs of His enemies, to carry His
cause to Jerusalem, and there, while acting, as it was His duty to do,
with prudence and foresight in his relations with men, to recognise
clearly, by the Divine silence or the Divine action, what the Divine
purpose really was, which could not be recognised in a moment. He acts
like a man who knows the duty both of examination and action, who knows
His own worth and what is due to Him and His obligations towards God and
man.”(142)
In regard to the question of eschatology, however, Keim does justice to
the texts.(143) He admits that eschatology, “a Kingdom of God clothed with
material splendours,” forms an integral part of the preaching of Jesus
from the first; “that He never rejected it, and therefore never by a so‐
called advance transformed the sensuous Messianic idea into a purely
spiritual one.” “Jesus does not uproot from the minds of the sons of
Zebedee their belief in the thrones on His right hand and His left; He
does not hesitate to make His entry into Jerusalem in the character of the
Messiah; He acknowledges His Messiahship before the Council without making
any careful reservations; upon the cross His title is The King of the
Jews; He consoles Himself and His followers with the thought of His return
as an earthly ruler, and leaves with His disciples, without making any
attempt to check it, the belief, which long survived, in a future
establishment or restoration of the Kingdom in an Israel delivered from
bondage.” Keim remarks with much justice “that Strauss had been wrong in
rejecting his own earlier and more correct formula,” which combined the
eschatological and spiritual elements as operating side by side in the
plan of Jesus.
Keim, however, himself in the end allows the spiritual elements
practically to cancel the eschatological. He admits, it is true, that the
expression Son of Man which Jesus uses designated the Messiah in the sense
of Daniel’s prophecy, but he thinks that these pictorial representations
in Daniel did not repel Jesus because He interpreted them spiritually, and
“intended to describe Himself as belonging to mankind even in His
Messianic office.” To solve the difficulty Keim assumes a development.
Jesus’ consciousness of His vocation had been strengthened both by success
and by disappointment. As time went on He preached the Kingdom not as a
future Kingdom, as at first, but as one which was present in Him and with
Him, and He declares His Messiahship more and more openly before the
world. He thinks of the Kingdom as undergoing development, but not with an
unlimited, infinite horizon as the moderns suppose; the horizon is bounded
by the eschatology. “For however easy it may be to read modern ideas into
the parables of the draught of fishes, the mustard seed and the leaven,
which, taken by themselves, seem to suggest the duration contemplated by
the modern view, it is nevertheless indubitable that Jesus, like Paul, by
no means looks forward to so protracted an earthly development; on the
contrary, nothing appears more clearly from the sources than that He
thought of its term as rapidly approaching, and of His victory as nigh at
hand; and looked to the last decisive events, even to the day of judgment,
as about to occur during the lifetime of the existing generation,
including Himself and His apostles.” “It was the overmastering pressure of
circumstances which held Him prisoner within the limitations of this
obsolete belief.” When His confidence in the development of His Kingdom
came into collision with barriers which He could not pass, when His belief
in the presence of the Kingdom of God grew dim, the purely eschatological
ideas won the upper hand, “and if we may suppose that it was precisely
this thought of the imminent decisive action of God, taking possession of
His mind with renewed force at this point, which steeled His human
courage, and roused Him to a passion of self‐sacrifice with the hope of
saving from the judgment whatever might still be saved, we may welcome His
adoption of these narrower ideas as in accordance with the goodwill of
God, which could only by this means maintain the failing strength of its
human instrument and secure the spoils of the Divine warfare—the souls of
men subdued and conquered by Him.”
The thought which had hovered before the mind of Renan, but which in his
hands had become only the motive of a romance—_une ficelle dé roman_ as
the French express it—was realised by Keim. Nothing deeper or more
beautiful has since been written about the development of Jesus.
Less critical in character is Hase’s “History of Jesus,”(144) which
superseded in 1876 the various editions of the Handbook on the Life of
Jesus which had first appeared in 1829.
The question of the use of John’s Gospel side by side with the Synoptics
he leaves in suspense, and speaks his last word on the subject in the form
of a parable. “If I may be allowed to use an avowedly parabolic form of
speech, the relation of Jesus to the two streams of Gospel tradition may
be illustrated as follows. Once there appeared upon earth a heavenly
Being. According to His first three biographers He goes about more or less
incognito, in the long garment of a Rabbi, a forceful popular figure,
somewhat Judaic in speech, only occasionally, almost unmarked by His
biographers, pointing with a smile beyond this brief interlude to His
home. In the description left by His favourite disciple, He has thrown off
the _talar_ of the Rabbi, and stands before us in His native character,
but in bitter and angry strife with those who took offence at His
magnificent simplicity, and then later—it must be confessed, more
attractively—in deep emotion at parting with those whom, during His
pilgrimage on earth, He had made His friends, though they did not rightly
understand His strange, unearthly speech.”
This is Hase’s way, always to avoid a final decision. The fifty years of
critical study of the subject which he had witnessed and taken part in had
made him circumspect, sometimes almost sceptical. But his notes of
interrogation do not represent a covert supernaturalism like those in the
Life of Jesus of 1829. Hase had been penetrated by the influence of
Strauss and had adopted from him the belief that the true life of Jesus
lies beyond the reach of criticism. “It is not my business,” he says to
his students in an introductory lecture, “to recoil in horror from this or
that thought, or to express it with embarrassment as being dangerous; I
would not forbid even the enthusiasm of doubt and destruction which makes
Strauss so strong and Renan so seductive.”
It is left uncertain whether Jesus’ consciousness of His Messiahship
reaches back to the days of His childhood, or whether it arose in the
ethical development of His ripening manhood. The concealment of His
Messianic claims is ascribed, as by Schenkel and others, to paedagogic
motives; it was necessary that Jesus should first educate the people and
the disciples up to a higher ethical view of His office. In the stress
which he lays upon the eschatology Hase has points of affinity with Keim,
for whom he had prepared the way in his Life of Jesus of 1829, in which he
had been the first to assert a development in Jesus in the course of which
He at first fully shared the Jewish eschatological views, but later
advanced to a more spiritual conception. In his Life of Jesus of 1876 he
is prepared to make the eschatology the dominant feature in the last
period also, and does not hesitate to represent Jesus as dying in the
enthusiastic expectation of returning upon the clouds of heaven. He feels
himself driven to this by the eschatological ideas in the last discourses.
“Jesus’ clear and definite sayings,” he declares, “with the whole context
of the circumstances in which they were spoken and understood, have been
forcing me to this conclusion for years past.”
“That lofty Messianic dream must therefore continue to hold its place,
since Jesus, influenced as much by the idea of the Messianic glories taken
over from the beliefs of His people as by His own religious exaltation,
could not think of the victory of His Kingdom except as closely connected
with His own personal action. But that was only a misunderstanding due to
the unconscious poesy of a high‐ranging religious imagination, the ethical
meaning of which could only be realised by a long historical development.
Christ certainly came again as the greatest power on earth, and His power,
along with His word, is constantly judging the world. He faced the
sufferings which lay immediately before Him with His eyes fixed upon this
great future.”
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The chief excellence of Beyschlag’s Life of Jesus consists in its
arrangement.(145) He first, in the volume of preliminary investigations,
discusses the problems, so that the narrative is disencumbered of all
explanations, and by virtue of the author’s admirable style becomes a pure
work of art, which rivets the interest of the reader and almost causes the
want of a consistent historical conception to be overlooked. The fact is,
however, that in regard to the two decisive questions Beyschlag is
deliberately inconsistent. Although he recognises that the Gospel of John
has not the character of an essentially historical source, “being, rather,
a brilliant subjective portrait,” “a didactic, quite as much as an
historical work,” he produces his Life of Jesus by “combining and
mortising together Synoptic and Johannine elements.” The same uncertainty
prevails in regard to the recognition of the definitely eschatological
character of Jesus’ system of ideas. Beyschlag gives a very large place to
eschatology, so that in order to combine the spiritual with the
eschatological view his Jesus has to pass through three stages of
development. In the first He preaches the Kingdom as something future, a
supernatural event which was to be looked forward to, much as the Baptist
preached it. Then the response which was called forth on all hands by His
preaching led Him to believe that the Kingdom was in some sense already
present, “that the Father, while He delays the outward manifestation of
the Kingdom, is causing it to come even now in quiet and unnoticed ways by
a humble gradual growth, and the great thought of His parables, which
dominates the whole middle period of His public life, the resemblance of
the Kingdom to mustard seed or leaven, comes to birth in His mind.” As His
failure becomes more and more certain, “the centre of gravity of His
thought is shifted to the world beyond the grave, and the picture of a
glorious return to conquer and to judge the world rises before Him.”
The peculiar interweaving of Synoptic and Johannine ideas leads to the
result that, between the two, Beyschlag in the end forms no clear
conception of the eschatology, and makes Jesus think in a half‐Johannine,
half‐Synoptic fashion. “It is a consequence of Jesus’ profound conception
of the Kingdom of God as something essentially growing that He regards its
final perfection not as a state of rest, but rather as a living movement,
as a process of becoming, and since He regards this process as a cosmic
and supernatural process in which history finds its consummation, and yet
as arising entirely out of the ethical and historical process, He combines
elements from each into the same prophetic conception.” An eschatology of
this kind is not matter for history.
In the acceptance of the “miracles” Beyschlag goes to the utmost limits
allowed by criticism; in considering the possibility of one or another of
the recorded raisings from the dead he even finds himself within the
borders of rationalist territory.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Whether Bernhard Weiss’s(146) is to be numbered with the liberal Lives of
Jesus is a question to which we may answer “Yes; but along with the faults
of these it has some others in addition.” Weiss shares with the authors of
the liberal “Lives” the assumption that Mark designed to set forth a
definite “view of the course of development of the public ministry of
Jesus,” and on the strength of that believes himself justified in giving a
very far‐reaching significance to the details offered by this Evangelist.
The arbitrariness with which he carries out this theory is quite as
unbounded as Schenkel’s, and in his fondness for the “argument from
silence” he even surpasses him. Although Mark never allows a single word
to escape him about the motives of the northern journeys, Weiss is so
clever at reading between the lines that the motives are “quite
sufficiently” clear to him. The object of these journeys was, according to
his explanation, “that the people might have an opportunity, undistracted
by the immediate impression of His words and actions, to make up their
minds in regard to the questions which they had put to Him so pressingly
and inescapably in the last days of His public ministry; they must
themselves draw their own conclusions alike from the declarations and from
the conduct of Jesus. Only by Jesus’ removing Himself for a time from
their midst could they come to a clear decision as to their attitude to
Jesus.” This modern psychologising, however, is closely combined with a
dialectic which seeks to show that there is no irreconcilable opposition
between the belief in the Son of God and Son of Man which the Church of
Christ has always confessed, and a critical investigation of the question
how far the details of His life have been accurately preserved by
tradition, and how they are to be historically interpreted. That means
that Weiss is going to cover up the difficulties and stumbling‐blocks with
the mantle of Christian charity which he has woven out of the most
plausible of the traditional sophistries. As a dialectical performance on
these lines his Life of Jesus rivals in importance any except
Schleiermacher’s. On points of detail there are many interesting
historical observations. When all is said, one can only regret that so
much knowledge and so much ability have been expended in the service of so
hopeless a cause.
What was the net result of these liberal Lives of Jesus? In the first
place the clearing up of the relation between John and the Synoptics. That
seems surprising, since the chief representatives of this school,
Holtzmann, Schenkel, Weizsäcker, and Hase, took up a mediating position on
this question, not to speak of Beyschlag and Weiss, for whom the
possibility of reconciliation between the two lines of tradition is an
accepted datum for ecclesiastical and apologetic reasons. But the very
attempt to hold the position made clear its inherent untenability. The
defence of the combination of the two traditions exhausted itself in the
efforts of these its critical champions, just as the acceptance of the
supernatural in history exhausted itself in the—to judge from the approval
of the many—victorious struggle against Strauss. In the course of time
Weizsäcker, like Holtzmann,(147) advanced to the rejection of any
possibility of reconciliation, and gave up the Fourth Gospel as an
historical source. The second demand of Strauss’s first Life of Jesus was
now—at last—conceded by scientific criticism.
That does not mean, of course, that no further attempts at reconciliation
appeared thenceforward. Was ever a street so closed by a cordon that one
or two isolated individuals did not get through? And to dodge through
needs, after all, no special intelligence, or special courage. Must we
never speak of a victory so long as a single enemy remains alive?
Individual attempts to combine John with the Synoptics which appeared
after this decisive point are in some cases deserving of special
attention, as for example, Wendt’s(148) acute study of the “Teaching of
Jesus,” which has all the importance of a full treatment of the “Life.”
But the very way in which Wendt grapples with his task shows that the main
issue is already decided. All he can do is to fight a skilful and
determined rearguard action. It is not the Fourth Gospel as it stands, but
only a “ground‐document” on which it is based, which he, in common with
Weiss, Alexander Schweizer, and Renan, would have to be recognised
“alongside of the Gospel of Mark and the Logia of Matthew as an
historically trustworthy tradition regarding the teaching of Jesus,” and
which may be used along with those two writings in forming a picture of
the Life of Jesus. For Wendt there is no longer any question of an
interweaving and working up together of the individual sections of John
and the Synoptists. He takes up much the same standpoint as Holtzmann
occupied in 1863, but he provides a much more comprehensive and well‐
tested basis for it.
In the end there is no such very great difference between Wendt and the
writers who had advanced to the conviction of the irreconcilability of the
two traditions. Wendt refuses to give up the Fourth Gospel altogether;
they, on their part, won only a half victory because they did not as a
matter of fact escape from the Johannine interpretation of the Synoptics.
By means of their psychological interpretation of the first three Gospels
they make for themselves an ideal Fourth Gospel, in the interests of which
they reject the existing Fourth Gospel. They will hear nothing of the
spiritualised Johannine Christ, and refuse to acknowledge even to
themselves that they have only deposed Him in order to put in His place a
spiritualised Synoptic Jesus Christ, that is, a man who claimed to be the
Messiah, but in a spiritual sense. All the development which they discover
in Jesus is in the last analysis only an evidence of the tension between
the Synoptics, in their natural literal sense, and the “Fourth Gospel”
which is extracted from them by an artificial interpretation.
The fact is, the separation between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel is
only the first step to a larger result which necessarily follows from
it—the complete recognition of the fundamentally eschatological character
of the teaching and influence of the Marcan and Matthaean Jesus. Inasmuch
as they suppressed this consequence, Holtzmann, Schenkel, Hase, and
Weizsäcker, even after their critical conversion, still lay under the
spell of the Fourth Gospel, of a modern, ideal Fourth Gospel. It is only
when the eschatological question is decided that the problem of the
relation of John to the Synoptics is finally laid to rest. The liberal
Lives of Jesus grasped their incompatibility only from a literary point of
view, not in its full historical significance.
There is another result in the acceptance of which the critical school had
stopped half‐way. If the Marcan plan be accepted, it follows that, setting
aside the references to the Son of Man in Mark ii. 10 and 28, Jesus had
never, previous to the incident at Caesarea Philippi, given Himself out to
be the Messiah or been recognised as such. The perception of this fact
marks one of the greatest advances in the study of the subject. This
result, once accepted, ought necessarily to have suggested two questions:
in the first place, why Jesus down to that moment had made a secret of His
Messiahship even to His disciples; in the second place, whether at any
time, and, if so, when and how, the people were made acquainted with His
Messianic claims. As a fact, however, by the application of that ill‐
starred psychologising both questions were smothered; that is to say, a
sham answer was given to them. It was regarded as self‐evident that Jesus
had concealed His Messiahship from His disciples for so long in order in
the meantime to bring them, without their being aware of it, to a higher
spiritual conception of the Messiah; it was regarded as equally self‐
evident that in the last weeks the Messianic claims of Jesus could no
longer be hidden from the people, but that He did not openly avow them,
but merely allowed them to be divined, in order to lead up the multitude
to the recognition of the higher spiritual character of the office which
He claimed for Himself. These ingenious psychologists never seemed to
perceive that there is not a word of all this in Mark; but that they had
read it all into some of the most contradictory and inexplicable facts in
the Gospels, and had thus created a Messiah who both wished to be Messiah
and did not wish it, and who in the end, so far as the people were
concerned, both was and was not the Messiah. Thus these writers had only
recognised the importance of the scene at Caesarea Philippi, they had not
ventured to attack the general problem of Jesus’ attitude in regard to the
Messiahship, and had not reflected further on the mutually contradictory
facts that Jesus purposed to be the Messiah and yet did not come forward
publicly in that character.
Thus they had side‐tracked the study of the subject, and based all their
hopes of progress on an intensive exegesis of the detail of Mark. They
thought they had nothing to do but to occupy a conquered territory, and
never suspected that along the whole line they had only won a half
victory, never having thought out to the end either the eschatological
question or the fundamental historical question of the attitude of Jesus
to the Messiahship.
They were not disquieted by the obstinate persistence of the discussion on
the eschatological question. They thought it was merely a skirmish with a
few unorganised guerrillas; in reality it was the advance‐guard of the
army with which Reimarus was threatening their flank, and which under the
leadership of Johannes Weiss was to bring them to so dangerous a pass. And
while they were endeavouring to avoid this turning movement they fell into
the ambush which Bruno Bauer had laid in their rear: Wrede held up the
Marcan hypothesis and demanded the pass‐word for the theory of the
Messianic consciousness and claims of Jesus to which it was acting as
convoy.
The eschatological and the literary school, finding themselves thus
opposed to a common enemy, naturally formed an alliance. The object of
their combined attack was not the Marcan outline of the life of Jesus,
which, in fact, they both accept, but the modern “psychological” method of
reading between the lines of the Marcan narrative. Under the cross fire of
these allies that idea of development which had been the strongest
entrenchment of the liberal critical Lives of Jesus, and which they had
been desperately endeavouring to strengthen down to the very last, was
finally blown to atoms.
But the striking thing about these liberal critical Lives of Jesus was
that they unconsciously prepared the way for a deeper historical view
which could not have been reached apart from them. A deeper understanding
of a subject is only brought to pass when a theory is carried to its
utmost limit and finally proves its own inadequacy.
There is this in common between rationalism and the liberal critical
method, that each had followed out a theory to its ultimate consequences.
The liberal critical school had carried to its limit the explanation of
the connexion of the actions of Jesus, and of the events of His life, by a
“natural” psychology; and the conclusions to which they had been driven
had prepared the way for the recognition that the natural psychology is
not here the historical psychology, but that the latter must be deduced
from certain historical data. Thus through the meritorious and
magnificently sincere work of the liberal critical school the a priori
“natural” psychology gave way to the eschatological. That is the net
result, from the historical point of view, of the study of the life of
Jesus in the post‐Straussian period.
XV. THE ESCHATOLOGICAL QUESTION
_Timothée Colani._ Jésus‐Christ et les croyances messianiques de
son temps. Strassburg, 1864. 255 pp.
_Gustav Volkmar._ Jesus Nazarenus und die erste christliche Zeit,
mit den beiden ersten Erzählern. (Jesus the Nazarene and the
Beginnings of Christianity, with the two earliest narrators of His
life.) Zurich, 1882. 403 pp.
_Wilhelm Weiffenbach._ Der Wiederkunftsgedanke Jesu. (Jesus’
Conception of His Second Coming.) 1873. 424 pp.
_W. Baldensperger._ Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der
messianischen Hoffnungen seiner Zeit. (The Self‐consciousness of
Jesus in the Light of the Messianic Hopes of His time.)
Strassburg, 1888. 2nd ed., 1892, 282 pp.; 3rd ed. pt. i. 240 pp.
_Johannes Weiss._ Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes. (The
Preaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God.) 1892.
Göttingen. 67 pp. Second revised and enlarged edition, 1900, 210
pp.
So long as it was merely a question of establishing the distinctive
character of the thought of Jesus as compared with the ancient prophetic
and Danielic conceptions, and so long as the only available storehouse of
Rabbinic and Late‐Jewish ideas was Lightfoot’s _Horae Hebraicae et
Talmudicae in quatuor Evangelistas_,(149) it was still possible to cherish
the belief that the preaching of Jesus could be conceived as something
which was, in the last analysis, independent of all contemporary ideas.
But after the studies of Hilgenfeld and Dillmann(150) had made known the
Jewish apocalyptic in its fundamental characteristics, and the Jewish
pseudepigrapha were no longer looked on as “forgeries,” but as
representative documents of the last stage of Jewish thought, the
necessity of taking account of them in interpreting the thought of Jesus
became more and more emphatic. Almost two decades were to pass, however,
before the full significance of this material was realised.
It might almost have seemed as if it was to meet this attack by
anticipation that Colani wrote in 1864 his work, _Jésus‐Christ et les
croyances messianiques de son temps_.
Timothée Colani was born in 1824 at Lemé (Aisne), studied in Strassburg
and became pastor there in 1851. In the year 1864 he was appointed
Professor of Pastoral Theology in Strassburg in spite of some attempted
opposition to the appointment on the part of the orthodox party in Paris,
which was then growing in strength. The events of the year 1870 left him
without a post. As he had no prospect of being called to a pastorate in
France, he became a merchant. In consequence of some unfortunate business
operations he lost all his property. In 1875 he obtained a post as
librarian at the Sorbonne. He died in 1888.
How far was Jesus a Jew? That was the starting‐point of Colani’s study.
According to him there was a complete lack of homogeneity in the Messianic
hopes cherished by the Jewish people in the time of Jesus, since the
prophetic conception, according to which the Kingdom of the Messiah
belonged to the present world‐order, and the apocalyptic, which
transferred it to the future age, had not yet been brought into any kind
of unity. The general expectation was focused rather upon the Forerunner
than upon the Messiah. Jesus Himself in the first period of His public
ministry, up to Mark viii., had never designated Himself as the Messiah,
for the expression Son of Man carried no Messianic associations for the
multitude. His fundamental thought was that of perfect communion with God;
only little by little, as the success of the preaching of the Kingdom more
and more impressed His mind, did His consciousness take on a Messianic
colouring. In face of the undisciplined expectations of the people He
constantly repeats in His parables of the growth of the Kingdom, the word
“patience.” By revealing Himself as the Lord of this spiritual kingdom He
makes an end of the oscillation between the sensuous and the spiritual in
the current expectations of the future blessedness. He points to mankind
as a whole, not merely to the chosen people, as the people of the Kingdom,
and substitutes for the apocalyptic catastrophe an organic development. By
His interpretation of Psalm cx., in Mark xii. 35‐37, He makes known that
the Messiah has nothing whatever to do with the Davidic kingship. It was
only with difficulty that He came to resolve to accept the title of
Messiah; He knew what a weight of national prejudices and national hopes
hung upon it.
But He is “Messiah the Son of Man”; He created this expression in order
thereby to make known His lowliness. In the moment in which He accepted
the office He registered the resolve to suffer. His purpose is, to be the
suffering, not the triumphant, Messiah. It is to the influence which His
Passion exercises upon the souls of men that He looks for the firm
establishment of His Kingdom.
This spiritual conception of the Kingdom cannot possibly be combined with
the thought of a glorious Second Coming, for if Jesus had held this latter
view He must necessarily have thought of the present life as only a kind
of prologue to that second existence. Neither the Jewish, nor the Jewish‐
Christian eschatology as represented in the eschatological discourses in
the Gospels, can, therefore, in Colani’s opinion, belong to the preaching
of Jesus. That He should sometimes have made use of the imagery associated
with the Jewish expectations of the future is, of course, only natural.
But the eschatology occupies far too important a place in the tradition of
the preaching of Jesus to be explained as a mere symbolical mode of
expression. It forms a substantial element of that preaching. A
spiritualisation of it will not meet the case. Therefore, if the
conviction has been arrived at on other grounds that Jesus’ preaching did
not follow the lines of Jewish eschatology, there is only one possible way
of dealing with it, and that is by excising it from the text on critical
grounds.
The only element in the preaching of Jesus which can, in Colani’s opinion,
be called in any sense “eschatological” was the conviction that there
would be a wide extension of the Gospel even within the existing
generation, that Gentiles should be admitted to the Kingdom, and that in
consequence of the general want of receptivity towards the message of
salvation, judgment should come upon the nations.
These views of Colani furnish him with a basis upon which to decide on the
genuineness or otherwise of the eschatological discourses. Among the
sayings put into the mouth of Jesus which must be rejected as impossible
are: the promise, in the discourse at the sending forth of the Twelve, of
the imminent coming of the Son of Man, Matt. x. 23; the promise to the
disciples that they should sit upon twelve thrones judging the tribes of
Israel, Matt. xix. 28; the saying about His return in Matt. xxiii. 39; the
final eschatological saying at the Last Supper, Matt. xxvi. 29, “the
Papias‐like Chiliasm of which is unworthy of Jesus”; and the prediction of
His coming on the clouds of heaven with which He closes His Messianic
confession before the Council. The apocalyptic discourses in Mark xiii.,
Matt. xxiv., and Luke xxi. are interpolated. A Jewish‐Christian apocalypse
of the first century, probably composed before the destruction of
Jerusalem, has been interwoven with a short exhortation which Jesus gave
on the occasion when He predicted the destruction of the temple.
According to Colani, therefore, Jesus did not expect to come again from
Heaven to complete His work. It was completed by His death, and the
purpose of the coming of the Spirit was to make manifest its completion.
Strauss and Renan had entered upon the path of explaining Jesus’ preaching
from the history of the time by the assumption of an intermixture in it of
Jewish ideas, but it was now recognised “that this path is a cul‐de‐sac,
and that criticism must turn round and get out of it as quickly as
possible.”
The new feature of Colani’s view was not so much the uncompromising
rejection of eschatology as the clear recognition that its rejection was
not a matter to be disposed of in a phrase or two, but necessitated a
critical analysis of the text.
The systematic investigation of the Synoptic apocalypse was a contribution
to criticism of the utmost importance.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
In the year 1882 Volkmar took up this attempt afresh, at least in its main
features.(151) His construction rests upon two main points of support;
upon his view of the sources and his conception of the eschatology of the
time of Jesus. In his view the sole source for the Life of Jesus is the
Gospel of Mark, which was “probably written exactly in the year 73,” five
years after the Johannine apocalypse.
The other two of the first three Gospels belong to the second century, and
can only be used by way of supplement. Luke dates from the beginning of
the first decade of the century; while Matthew is regarded by Volkmar, as
by Wilke, as being a combination of Mark and Luke, and is relegated to the
end of this first decade. The work is in his opinion a revision of the
Gospel tradition “in the spirit of that primitive Christianity which,
while constantly opposing the tendency of the apostle of the Gentiles to
make light of the Law, was nevertheless so far universalistic that,
starting from the old legal ground, it made the first steps towards a
catholic unity.” Once Matthew has been set aside in this way, the literary
elimination of the eschatology follows as a matter of course; the much
smaller element of discourse in Mark can offer no serious resistance.
As regards the Messianic expectations of the time, they were, in Volkmar’s
opinion, such that Jesus could not possibly have come forward with
Messianic claims. The Messianic Son of Man, whose aim was to found a
super‐earthly Kingdom, only arose in Judaism under the influence of
Christian dogma. The contemporaries of Jesus knew only the political ideal
of the Messianic King. And woe to any one who conjured up these hopes! The
Baptist had done so by his too fervent preaching about repentance and the
Kingdom, and had been promptly put out of the way by the Tetrarch. The
version found even in Mark, which represents that it was on Herodias’
account, and at her daughter’s petition, that John was beheaded, is a
later interpretation which, according to Volkmar, is evidently false on
chronological grounds, since the Baptist was dead before Herod took
Herodias as his wife. Had Jesus desired the Messiahship, He could only
have claimed it in this political sense. The alternative is to suppose
that He did not desire it.
Volkmar’s contribution to the subject consists in the formulating of this
clean‐cut alternative. Colani had indeed recognised the alternative, but
had not taken up a consistent attitude in regard to it. Here, that way of
escape from the difficulty is barred, which suggests that Jesus set
Himself up as Messiah, but in another than the popular sense. What may be
called Jesus’ Messianic consciousness consisted solely “in knowing Himself
to be first‐born among many brethren, the Son of God after the Spirit, and
consequently feeling Himself enabled and impelled to bring about that
regeneration of His people which alone could make it worthy of
deliverance.” It is in any case clearly evident from Paul, from the
Apocalypse, and from Mark, “the three documentary witnesses emanating from
the circle of the followers of Jesus during the first century, that it was
only after His crucifixion that Jesus was hailed as the Christ; never
during His earthly life.” The elimination of the eschatology thus leads
also to the elimination of the Messiahship of Jesus.
If we are told in Mark viii. 29 that Simon Peter was the first among men
to hail Jesus as the Messiah, it is to be noticed, Volkmar points out,
that the Evangelist places this confession at a time when Jesus’ work was
over and the thought of His Passion first appears; and if we desire fully
to understand the author’s purpose we must fix our attention on the Lord’s
command not to make known His Messiahship until after His resurrection
(Mark viii. 30, ix. 9 and 10), which is a hint that we are to date Jesus’
Messiahship from His death. For Mark is no mere naïve chronicler, but a
conscious artist interpreting the history; sometimes, indeed, a powerful
epic writer in whose work the historical and the poetic are intermingled.
Thus the conclusion is that Mark, in agreement with Paul, represents Jesus
as becoming the Messiah only as a consequence of His resurrection. He
really appeared, and His first appearance was to Peter. When Peter on that
night of terror fled from Jerusalem to take refuge in Galilee, Jesus,
according to the mystic prediction of Mark xiv. 28 and xvi. 7, went before
him. “He was constantly present to his spirit, until on the third day He
manifested Himself before his eyes, in the heavenly appearance which was
also vouchsafed to the last of the apostles ’as he was in the way’—and
Peter, enraptured, gave expression to the clear conviction with which the
whole life of Jesus had inspired him in the cry ’Thou art the Christ.’”
The historical Jesus therefore founded a community of followers without
advancing any claims to the Messiahship. He desired only to be a reformer,
the spiritual deliverer of the people of God, to realise upon earth the
Kingdom of God which they were all seeking in the beyond, and to extend
the reign of God over all nations. “The Kingdom of God is doubtless to win
its final and decisive victory by the almighty aid of God; our duty is to
see to its beginnings”—that is, according to Volkmar, the lesson which
Jesus teaches us in the parable of the Sower. The ethic of this Kingdom
was not yet confused by any eschatological ideas. It was only when, as the
years went on, the expectation of the Parousia rose to a high pitch of
intensity that “marriage and the bringing up of children came to be
regarded as superfluous, and were consequently thought of as signs of an
absorption in earthly interests which was out of harmony with the near
approach to the goal of these hopes.” Jesus had renewed the foundations on
which “the family” was based and had made it, in turn, a corner stone of
the Kingdom of God, even as He had consecrated the common meal by making
it a love feast.
In most things Jesus was conservative. The ritual worship of the God of
Israel remained for Him always a sacred thing. But in spite of that He
withdrew more and more from the synagogue, the scene of His earliest
preaching, and taught in the houses of His disciples. “He had learned to
fulfil the law as implicit in one highest commandment and supreme
principle, therefore ’in spirit and in truth’; but He never, as appears
from all the evidence, declared it to be abolished.” “We may be equally
certain, however, that Jesus, while He asserted the abiding validity of
the Ten Commandments, never explicitly declared that of the Mosaic Law as
a whole. The absence of any such saying from the tradition regarding Jesus
made it possible for Paul to take his decisive step forward.”
As regards the Gospel discourses about the Parousia, it is easy to
recognise that, even in Mark, these “are one and all the work of the
narrator, whose purpose is edification. He connects his work as closely as
possible with the Apocalypse, which had appeared some five years earlier,
in order to emphasise, in contrast to it, the higher truth.” Jesus’ own
hope, in all its clearness and complete originality, is recorded in the
parables of the seed growing secretly and the grain of mustard seed, and
in the saying about the immortality of His words. Nothing beyond this is
in any way certain, however remarkable the saying in Mark ix. 1 may be,
that the looked‐for consummation is to take place during the lifetime of
the existing generation.
“It is only the fact that Mark is preceded by ’the book of the Birth (and
History) of Christ according to Matthew’—not only in the Scriptures, but
also in men’s minds, which were dominated by it as the ‘first
Gospel’—which has caused it to be taken as self‐evident that Jesus,
knowing Himself from the first to be the Messiah, expected His Parousia
solely from heaven, and therefore with, or in, the clouds of heaven....
But since He who was thought of as by birth the Son of God, is now thought
of as the Son of Man, born an Israelite, and becoming the Son of God after
the spirit only at His baptism, the hope that looks to the clouds of
heaven cannot be, or at least ought not to be, any longer explained
otherwise than as an enthusiastic dream.”
If, even at the beginning of the ’eighties, a so extreme theory on the
other side could, without opposition, occupy all the points of vantage, it
is evident that the theory which gave eschatology its due place was making
but slow progress. It was not that any one had been disputing the ground
with it, but that all its operations were characterised by a nervous
timidity. And these hesitations are not to be laid to the account of those
who did not perceive the approach of the decisive conflict, or refused to
accept battle, like the followers of Reuss, for instance, who were
satisfied with the hypothesis that thoughts about the Last Judgment had
forced their way into the authentic discourses of Jesus about the
destruction of the city;(152) even those who like Weiffenbach are fully
convinced that “the eschatological question, and in particular the
question of the Second Coming, which in many quarters has up to the
present been treated as a _noli me tangere_, must sooner or later become
the battle‐ground of the greatest and most decisive of theological
controversies”—even those who shared this conviction stopped half‐way on
the road on which they had entered.
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Weiffenbach’s(153) work, “Jesus’ Conception of His Second Coming,”
published in 1873, sums up the results of the previous discussions of the
subject. He names as among those who ascribe the expectation of the
Parousia, in the sensuous form in which it meets us in the documents, to a
misunderstanding of the teaching of Jesus on the part of the disciples and
the writers who were dependent upon them—Schleiermacher, Bleek, Holtzmann,
Schenkel, Colani, Baur, Hase, and Meyer. Among those who maintained that
the Parousia formed an integral part of Jesus’ teaching, he cites Keim,
Weizsäcker, Strauss, and Renan. He considers that the readiest way to
advance the discussion will be by undertaking a critical review of the
attempt to analyse the great Synoptic discourse about the future in which
Colani had led the way.
The question of the Parousia is like, Weiffenbach suggests, a vessel which
has become firmly wedged between rocks. Any attempt to get it afloat again
will be useless until a new channel is found for it. His detailed
discussions are devoted to endeavouring to discover the relation between
the declarations regarding the Second Coming and the predictions of the
Passion. In the course of his analysis of the great prophetic discourse he
rejects the suggestion made by Weisse in his _Evangelienfrage_ of 1856,
that the eschatological character of the discourse results from the way in
which it is put together; that while the sayings in their present mosaic‐
like combination certainly have a reference to the last things, each of
them individually in its original context might well bear a natural sense.
In Colani’s hypothesis of conflation the suggestion was to be rejected
that it was not “Ur‐Markus,” but the author of the Synoptic apocalypse who
was responsible for the working in of the “Little Apocalypse.”(154) It was
an unsatisfactory feature of Weizsäcker’s position(155) that he insisted
on regarding the “Little Apocalypse” as Jewish, not Jewish‐Christian;
Pfleiderer had distinguished sharply what belongs to the Evangelist from
the “Little Apocalypse,” and had sought to prove that the purpose of the
Evangelist in thus breaking up the latter and working it into a discourse
of Jesus was to tone down the eschatological hopes expressed in the
discourse, because they had remained unfulfilled even at the fall of
Jerusalem, and to retard the rapid development of the apocalyptic process
by inserting between its successive phases passages from a different
discourse.(156) Weiffenbach carries this series of tentative suggestions
to its logical conclusion, advancing the view that the link of connexion
between the Jewish‐Christian Apocalypse and the Gospel material in which
it is embedded is the thought of the Second Coming. This was the thought
which gave the impulse from without towards the transmutation of Jewish
into Jewish‐Christian eschatology. Jesus must have given expression to the
thought of His near return; and Jewish‐Christianity subsequently painted
it over with the colours of Jewish eschatology.
In developing this theory, Weiffenbach thought that he had succeeded in
solving the problem which had been first critically formulated by Keim,
who is constantly emphasising the idea that the eschatological hopes of
the disciples could not be explained merely from their Judaic pre‐
suppositions, but that some incentive to the formation of these hopes must
be sought in the preaching of Jesus; otherwise primitive Christianity and
the life of Jesus would stand side by side unconnected and unexplained,
and in that case we must give up all hope “of distinguishing the sure word
of the Lord from Israel’s restless speculations about the future.”
When the Jewish‐Christian Apocalypse has been eliminated, we arrive at a
discourse, spoken on the Mount of Olives, in which Jesus exhorted His
disciples to watchfulness, in view of the near, but nevertheless
undefined, hour of the return of “the Master of the House.”
In this discourse, therefore, we have a standard by which criticism may
test all the eschatological sayings and discourses. Weiffenbach has the
merit of having gathered together all the eschatological material of the
Synoptics and examined it in the light of a definite principle. In Colani
the material was incomplete, and instead of a critical principle he
offered only an arbitrary exegesis which permitted him, for example, to
conceive the watchfulness on which the eschatological parables constantly
insist as only a vivid expression for the sense of responsibility “which
weighs upon the life of man.”
And yet the outcome of this attempt of Weiffenbach’s, which begins with so
much real promise, is in the end wholly unsatisfactory. The “authentic
thought of the return” which he takes as his standard has for its sole
content the expectation of a visible personal return in the near future
“free from all more or less fantastic apocalyptic and Jewish‐Christian
speculations about the future.” That is to say, the whole of the
eschatological discourses of Jesus are to be judged by the standard of a
colourless, unreal figment of theology. Whatever cannot be squared with
that is to be declared spurious and cut away! Accordingly the
eschatological closing saying at the Last Supper is stigmatised as a
“Chiliastic‐Capernaitic”(157) distortion of a “normal” promise of the
Second Coming; the idea of the παλιγγενεσία, Matt. xix. 28, is said to be
wholly foreign to Jesus’ world of thought; it is impossible, too, that
Jesus can have thought of Himself as the Judge of the world, for the
Jewish and Jewish‐Christian eschatology does not ascribe the conduct of
the Last Judgment to the Messiah; that is first done by Gentile
Christians, and especially by Paul. It was, therefore, the later
eschatology which set the Son of Man on the throne of His glory and
prepared “the twelve thrones of judgment for the disciples.” The historian
ought only to admit such of the sayings about bearing rule in the
Messianic Kingdom as can be interpreted in a spiritual, non‐sensuous
fashion.
In the end Weiffenbach’s critical principle proves to be merely a bludgeon
with which he goes seal‐hunting and clubs the defenceless Synoptic sayings
right and left. When his work is done you see before you a desert island
strewn with quivering corpses. Nevertheless the slaughter was not aimless,
or at least it was not without result.
In the first place, it did really appear, as a by‐product of the critical
processes, that Jesus’ discourses about the future had nothing to do with
an historical prevision of the destruction of Jerusalem, whereas the
supposition that they had, had hitherto been taken as self‐evident, the
prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem being regarded as the historic
nucleus of Jesus’ discourses regarding the future, to which the idea of
the Last Judgment had subsequently attached itself.
Here, then, we have the introduction of the converse opinion, which was
subsequently established as correct; namely, that Jesus foresaw, indeed,
the Last Judgment, but not the historical destruction of Jerusalem.
In the next place, in the course of his critical examination of the
eschatological material, Weiffenbach stumbles upon the discourse at the
sending forth of the Twelve in Matt. x., and finds himself face to face
with the fact that the discourse which he was expected to regard as a
discourse of instruction was really nothing of the kind, but a collection
of eschatological sayings. As he had taken over along with the Marcan
hypothesis the closely connected view of the composite character of the
Synoptic discourses, he does not allow himself to be misled, but regards
this inappropriate charge to the Twelve as nothing else than an impossible
anticipation and a bold anachronism. He knows that he is at one in this
with Holtzmann, Colani, Bleek, Scholten, Meyer, and Keim, who also made
the discourse of instruction end at the point beyond which they find it
impossible to explain it, and regard the predictions of persecution as
only possible in the later period of the life of Jesus. “For these
predictions,” to express Weiffenbach’s view in the words of Keim, “are too
much at variance with the essentially gracious and happy mood which
suggested the sending forth of the disciples, and reflect instead the
lurid gloom of the fierce conflicts of the later period and the sadness of
the farewell discourses.”
It was a good thing that Bruno Bauer did not hear this chorus. If he had,
he would have asked Weiffenbach and his allies whether the poor fragment
that remained after the critical dissection of the “charge to the Twelve”
was “a discourse of instruction,” and if in view of these difficulties
they could not realise why he had refused, thirty years before, to believe
in the “discourse of instruction.” But Bruno Bauer heard nothing: and so
their blissful unconsciousness lasted for nearly a generation longer.
The expectation of His Second Coming, repeatedly expressed by Jesus
towards the close of His life, is on this hypothesis authentic; it was
painted over by the primitive Christian community with the colours of its
own eschatology, in consequence of the delay of the Parousia; and in view
of the mission to the Gentiles a more cautious conception of the nearness
of the time commended itself; nay, when Jerusalem had fallen and the
“signs of the end” which had been supposed to be discovered in the horrors
of the years 68 and 69 had passed without result, the return of Jesus was
relegated to a distant future by the aid of the doctrine that the Gospel
must first be preached to all the heathen. Thus the Parousia, which
according to the Jewish‐Christian eschatology belonged to the present age,
was transferred to the future. “With this combination and making
coincident—they were not so at the first—of the Second Coming, the end of
the world, and the final Judgment, the idea of the Second Coming reached
the last and highest stage of its development.”
Weiffenbach’s view, as we have seen, empties Jesus’ expectation of His
return of almost all its content, and to that is due the fact that his
investigation did not prove so useful as it might have done. His purpose
is, following suggestions thrown out by Schleiermacher and Weisse, to
prove the identity of the predictions of the Second Coming and of the
Resurrection, and he takes as his starting‐point the observation that the
conduct of the disciples after the death of Jesus forbids us to suppose
that the Resurrection had been predicted in clear and unambiguous sayings,
and that, on the other hand, the announcement of the Second Coming
coincides in point of time with the predictions of the Resurrection, and
the predictions both of the Second Coming and of the Resurrection stand in
organic connexion with the announcement of His approaching death. The two
are therefore identical.
It was only after the death of their Master that the disciples
differentiated the thought of the Resurrection from that of the Second
Coming. The Resurrection did not bring them that which the Second Coming
had promised; but it produced the result that the eschatological hopes,
which Jesus had with difficulty succeeded in damping, flamed up again in
the hearts of His disciples. The spiritual presence of the Deliverer who
had manifested Himself to them did not seem to them to be the fulfilment
of the promise of the Second Coming; but the expectation of the latter,
being brought into contact with the flame of eschatological hope with
which their hearts were a‐fire, was fused, and cast into a form quite
different from that in which it had been derived from the words of Jesus.
That is all finely observed. For the first time it had dawned upon
historical criticism that the great question is that concerning the
identity or difference of the Parousia and the Resurrection. But the man
who had been the first to grasp that thought, and who had undertaken his
whole study with the special purpose of working it out, was too much under
the influence of the spiritualised eschatology of Schleiermacher and
Weisse to be able to assign the right values in the solution of his
equation. And, withal, he is too much inclined to play the apologist as a
subsidiary rôle. He is not content merely to render the history
intelligible; he is, by his own confession, urged on by the hope that
perhaps a way may be found of causing that “error” of Jesus to disappear
and proving it to be an illusion due to the want of a sufficiently close
study of His discourses. But the historian simply must not be an
apologist; he must leave that to those who come after him and he may do so
with a quiet mind, for the apologists, as we learn from the history of the
Lives of Jesus, can get the better of any historical result whatever. It
is, therefore, quite unnecessary that the historian should allow himself
to be led astray by following an apologetic will‐o’‐the‐wisp.
Technically regarded, the mistake on which Weiffenbach’s investigation
made shipwreck was the failure to bring the Jewish apocalyptic material
into relation with the Synoptic data. If he had done this, it would have
been impossible for him to extract an absolutely unreal and unhistorical
conception of the Second Coming out of the discourses of Jesus.
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The task which Weiffenbach had neglected remained undone—to the detriment
of theology—until Baldensperger(158) repaired the omission. His book, “The
Self‐consciousness of Jesus in the Light of the Messianic Hopes of His
Time,”(159) published in 1888, made its impression by reason of the
fullness of its material. Whereas Colani and Volkmar had still been able
to deny the existence of a fully formed Messianic expectation in the time
of Jesus, the genesis of the expectation was now fully traced out, and it
was shown that the world of thought which meets us in Daniel had won the
victory, that the “Son of Man” Messiah of the Similitudes of Enoch was the
last product of the Messianic hope prior to the time of Jesus; and that
therefore the fully developed Danielic scheme with its unbridgeable chasm
between the present and the future world furnished the outline within
which all further and more detailed traits were inserted. The honour of
having effectively pioneered the way for this discovery belongs to
Schürer.(160) Baldensperger adopts his ideas, but sets them forth in a
much more direct way, because he, in contrast with Schürer, gives no
_system_ of Messianic expectation—and there never in reality was a
system—but is content to picture its many‐sided growth.
He does not, it is true, escape some minor inconsistencies. For example,
the idea of a “political Messiahship,” which is really set aside by his
historical treatment, crops up here and there, as though the author had
not entirely got rid of it himself. But the impression made by the book as
a whole was overpowering.
Nevertheless this book does not exactly fulfil the promise of its title,
any more than Weiffenbach’s. The reader expects that now at last Jesus’
sayings about Himself will be consistently explained in the light of the
Jewish Messianic ideas, but that is not done. For Baldensperger, instead
of tracing down and working out the conception of the Kingdom of God held
by Jesus as a product of the Jewish eschatology, at least by way of trying
whether that method would suffice, takes it over direct from modern
historical theology. He assumes as self‐evident that Jesus’ conception of
the Kingdom of God had a double character, that the eschatological and
spiritual elements were equally represented in it and mutually conditioned
one another, and that Jesus therefore began, in pursuance of this
conception, to found a spiritual invisible Kingdom, although He expected
its fulfilment to be effected by supernatural means. Consequently there
must also have been a duality in His religious consciousness, in which
these two conceptions had to be combined. Jesus’ Messianic consciousness
sprang, according to Baldensperger, “from a religious root”; that is to
say, the Messianic consciousness was a special modification of a self‐
consciousness in which a pure, spiritual, unique relation to God was the
fundamental element; and from this arises the possibility of a spiritual
transformation of the Jewish‐Messianic self‐consciousness. In making these
assumptions, Baldensperger does not ask himself whether it is not possible
that for Jesus the purely Jewish consciousness of a transcendental
Messiahship may itself have been religious, nay even spiritual, just as
well as the Messiahship resting on a vague, indefinite, colourless sense
of union with God which modern theologians arbitrarily attribute to Him.
Again, instead of arriving at the two conceptions, Kingdom of God and
Messianic consciousness, purely empirically, by an unbiased comparison of
the Synoptic passages with the Late‐Jewish conceptions, Baldensperger, in
this following Holtzmann, brings them into his theory in the dual form in
which contemporary theology, now becoming faintly tinged with eschatology,
offered them to him. Consequently, everything has to be adapted to this
duality. Jesus, for example, in applying to Himself the title Son of Man,
thinks not only of the transcendental significance which it has in the
Jewish apocalyptic, but gives it at the same time an ethico‐religious
colouring.
Finally, the duality is explained by an application of the genetic method,
in which the “course of the development of the self‐consciousness of
Jesus” is traced out. The historical psychology of the Marcan hypothesis
here shows its power of adapting itself to eschatology. From the first, to
follow the course of Baldensperger’s exposition, the eschatological view
influenced Jesus’ expectation of the Kingdom and His Messianic
consciousness. In the wilderness, after the dawn of His Messianic
consciousness at His baptism, He had rejected the ideal of the Messianic
king of David’s line and put away all warlike thoughts. Then He began to
found the Kingdom of God by preaching. For a time the spiritualised idea
of the Kingdom was dominant in His mind, the Messianic eschatological idea
falling rather into the background.
But His silence regarding His Messianic office was partly due to
paedagogic reasons, “since He desired to lead His hearers to a more
spiritual conception of the Kingdom and so to obviate a possible political
movement on their part and the consequent intervention of the Roman
government.” In addition to this He had also personal reasons for not
revealing Himself which only disappeared in the moment when His death and
Second Coming became part of His plan; previous to that He did not know
how and when the Kingdom was to come. Prior to the confession at Caesarea
Philippi, the disciples “had only a faint and vague suspicion of the
Messianic dignity of their Master.”
This was “rather the preparatory stage of His Messianic work.”
Objectively, it may be described “as the period of growing emphasis upon
the spiritual characteristics of the Kingdom, and of resigned waiting and
watching for its outward manifestation in glory; subjectively, from the
point of view of the self‐consciousness of Jesus, it may be characterised
as the period of the struggle between His religious conviction of His
Messiahship and the traditional rationalistic Messianic belief.”
This first period opens out into a second in which He had attained to
perfect clearness of vision and complete inner harmony. By the acceptance
of the idea of suffering, Jesus’ inner peace is enhanced to the highest
degree conceivable. “By throwing Himself upon the thought of death He
escaped the lingering uncertainty as to when and how God would fulfil His
promise....” “The coming of the Kingdom was fixed down to the Second
Coming of the Messiah. Now He ventured to regard Himself as the Son of Man
who was to be the future Judge of the world, for the suffering and dying
Son of Man was closely associated with the Son of Man surrounded by the
host of heaven. Would the people accept Him as Messiah? He now, in
Jerusalem, put the question to them in all its sharpness and burning
actuality; and the people were moved to enthusiasm. But so soon as they
saw that He whom they had hailed with such acclamation was neither able
nor willing to fulfil their ambitious dreams, a reaction set in.”
Thus, according to Baldensperger, there was an interaction between the
historical and the psychological events. And that is right!—if only the
machinery were not so complicated, and a “development” had not to be
ground out of it at whatever cost. But this, and the whole manner of
treatment in the second part, encumbered as it is with parenthetic
qualifications, was rendered inevitable by the adoption of the two
aforesaid not purely historical conceptions. Sometimes, too, one gets the
impression that the author felt that he owed it to the school to which he
belonged to advance no assertion without adding the limitations which
scientifically secure it against attack. Thus on every page he digs
himself into an entrenched position, with palisades of footnotes—in fact
the book actually ends with a footnote. But the conception which underlay
the whole was so full of vigour that in spite of the thoughts not being
always completely worked out, it produced a powerful impression.
Baldensperger had persuaded theology at least to admit the
hypothesis—whether it took up a positive or negative position in regard to
it—that Jesus possessed a fully‐developed eschatology. He thus provided a
new basis for discussion and gave an impulse to the study of the subject
such as it had not received since the ’sixties, at least not in the same
degree of energy. Perhaps the very limitations of the work, due as they
were to its introduction of modern ideas, rendered it better adapted to
the spirit of the age, and consequently more influential, than if it had
been characterised by that rigorous maintenance of a single point of view
which was abstractly requisite for the proper treatment of the subject. It
was precisely the rejection of this rigorous consistency which enabled it
to gain ground for the cause of eschatology.
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But the consistent treatment from a single point of view was bound to
come; and it came four years later. In passing from Weiffenbach and
Baldensperger to Johannes Weiss(161) the reader feels like an explorer who
after weary wanderings through billowy seas of reed‐grass at length
reaches a wooded tract, and instead of swamp feels firm ground beneath his
feet, instead of yielding rushes sees around him the steadfast trees. At
last there is an end of “qualifying clause” theology, of the “and yet,”
the “on the other hand,” the “notwithstanding”! The reader had to follow
the others step by step, making his way over every footbridge and gang‐
plank which they laid down, following all the meanderings in which they
indulged, and must never let go their hands if he wished to come safely
through the labyrinth of spiritual and eschatological ideas which they
supposed to be found in the thought of Jesus.
In Weiss there are none of these devious paths: “behold the land lies
before thee.”
His “Preaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God,”(162) published in
1892, has, on its own lines, an importance equal to that of Strauss’s
first Life of Jesus. He lays down the third great alternative which the
study of the life of Jesus had to meet. The first was laid down by
Strauss: _either_ purely historical _or_ purely supernatural. The second
had been worked out by the Tübingen school and Holtzmann: _either_
Synoptic _or_ Johannine. Now came the third: _either_ eschatological _or_
non‐eschatological!
Progress always consists in taking one or other of two alternatives, in
abandoning the attempt to combine them. The pioneers of progress have
therefore always to reckon with the law of mental inertia which manifests
itself in the majority—who always go on believing that it is possible to
combine that which can no longer be combined, and in fact claim it as a
special merit that they, in contrast with the “one‐sided” writers, can do
justice to the other side of the question. One must just let them be, till
their time is over, and resign oneself not to see the end of it, since it
is found by experience that the complete victory of one of two historical
alternatives is a matter of two full theological generations.
This remark is made in order to explain why the work of Johannes Weiss did
not immediately make an end of the mediating views. Another reason perhaps
was that, according to the usual canons of theological authorship, the
book was much too short—only sixty‐seven pages—and too simple to allow its
full significance to be realised. And yet it is precisely this simplicity
which makes it one of the most important works in historical theology. It
seems to break a spell. It closes one epoch and begins another.
Weiffenbach had failed to solve the problem of the Second Coming,
Baldensperger that of the Messianic consciousness of Jesus, because both
of them allowed a false conception of the Kingdom of God to keep its place
among the data. The general conception of the Kingdom was first rightly
grasped by Johannes Weiss. All modern ideas, he insists, even in their
subtlest forms, must be eliminated from it; when this is done, we arrive
at a Kingdom of God which is wholly future; as is indeed implied by the
petition in the Lord’s prayer, “Thy Kingdom come.” Being still to come, it
is at present purely supra‐mundane. It is present only as a cloud may be
said to be present which throws its shadow upon the earth; its nearness,
that is to say, is recognised by the paralysis of the Kingdom of Satan. In
the fact that Jesus casts out the demons, the Pharisees are bidden to
recognise, according to Matt. xii. 25‐28, that the Kingdom of God is
already come upon them.
This is the only sense in which Jesus thinks of the Kingdom as present. He
does not “establish it,” He only proclaims its coming. He exercises no
“Messianic functions,” but waits, like others, for God to bring about the
coming of the Kingdom by supernatural means. He does not even know the day
and hour when this shall come to pass. The missionary journey of the
disciples was not designed for the extension of the Kingdom of God, but
only as a means of rapidly and widely making known its nearness. But it
was not so near as Jesus thought. The impenitence and hardness of heart of
a great part of the people, and the implacable enmity of His opponents, at
length convinced Him that the establishment of the Kingdom of God could
not yet take place, that such penitence as had been shown hitherto was not
sufficient, and that a mighty obstacle, the guilt of the people, must
first be put away. It becomes clear to Him that His own death must be the
ransom‐price. He dies, not for the community of His followers only, but
for the nation; that is why He always speaks of His atoning death as “for
many,” not “for you.” After His death He would come again in all the
splendour and glory with which, since the days of Daniel, men’s
imaginations had surrounded the Messiah, and He was to come, moreover,
within the lifetime of the generation to which He had proclaimed the
nearness of the Kingdom of God.
The setting up of the Kingdom was to be preceded by the Day of Judgment.
In describing the Messianic glory Jesus makes use of the traditional
picture, but He does so with modesty, restraint, and sobriety. Therein
consists His greatness.
With political expectations this Kingdom has nothing whatever to do. “To
hope for the Kingdom of God in the transcendental sense which Jesus
attaches to it, and to raise a revolution, are two things as different as
fire and water.” The transcendental character of the expectation consists
precisely in this, that the State and all earthly institutions,
conditions, and benefits, as belonging to the present age, shall either
not exist at all in the coming Kingdom, or shall exist only in a
sublimated form. Hence Jesus cannot preach to men a special ethic of the
Kingdom of God, but only an ethic which in this world makes men free from
the world and prepared to enter unimpeded into the Kingdom. That is why
His ethic is of so completely negative a character; it is, in fact, not so
much an ethic as a penitential discipline.
The ministry of Jesus is therefore not in principle different from that of
John the Baptist: there can be no question of a founding and development
of the Kingdom within the hearts of men. What distinguishes the work of
Jesus from that of the Baptist is only His consciousness of being the
Messiah. He awoke to this consciousness at His baptism. But the
Messiahship which He claims is not a present office; its exercise belongs
to the future. On earth He is only a man, a prophet, as in the view
implied in the speeches in the Acts of the Apostles. “Son of Man” is
therefore, in the passages where it is authentic, a purely eschatological
designation of the Messiah, though we cannot tell whether His hearers
understood Him as speaking of Himself in His future rank and dignity, or
whether they thought of the Son of Man as a being quite distinct from
Himself, whose coming He was only proclaiming in advance.
“The sole object of this argument is to prove that the Messianic self‐
consciousness of Jesus, as expressed in the title ‘Son of Man,’ shares in
the transcendental apocalyptic character of Jesus’ idea of the Kingdom of
God, and cannot be separated from that idea.” The only partially correct
evaluation of the factors in the problem of the Life of Jesus which
Baldensperger had taken over from contemporary theology, and which had
hitherto prevented historical science from obtaining a solution of that
problem, had now been corrected from the history itself, and it was now
only necessary to insert the corrected data into the calculation.
Here is the point at which it is fitting to recall Reimarus. He was the
first, and indeed, before Johannes Weiss, the only writer who recognised
and pointed out that the preaching of Jesus was purely eschatological. It
is true that his conception of the eschatology was primitive, and that he
applied it not as a constructive, but as a destructive principle of
criticism. But read his statement of the problem “with the signs changed,”
and with the necessary deduction for the primitive character of the
eschatology, and you have the view of Weiss.
Ghillany, too, has a claim to be remembered. When Weiss asserts that the
part played by Jesus was not the active rôle of establishing the Kingdom,
but the passive rôle of waiting for the coming of the Kingdom; and that it
was, in a sense, only by the acceptance of His sufferings that He emerged
from that passivity; he is only asserting what Ghillany had maintained
thirty years before with the same arguments and with the same
decisiveness. But Weiss places the assertion on a scientifically
unassailable basis.
XVI. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ESCHATOLOGY
_Wilhelm Bousset._ Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judentum.
Ein religionsgeschichtlicher Vergleich. (The Antithesis between
Jesus’ Preaching and Judaism. A Religious‐Historical Comparison.)
Göttingen, 1892. 130 pp.
_Erich Haupt._ Die eschatologischen Aussagen Jesu in den
synoptischen Evangelien. (The Eschatological Sayings of Jesus in
the Synoptic Gospels.) 1895. 167 pp.
_Paul Wernle._ Die Anfänge unserer Religion. Tübingen‐Leipzig,
1901; 2nd ed., 1904, 410 pp.
_Emil Schürer._ Das messianische Selbstbewusstsein Jesu‐Christi.
1903. Akademische Festrede. (The Messianic Self‐consciousness of
Jesus Christ.) 24 pp.
_Wilhelm Brandt._ Die evangelische Geschichte und der Ursprung des
Christentums auf Grund einer Kritik der Berichte über das Leiden
und die Auferstehung Jesu. (The Gospel History and the Origin of
Christianity. Based upon a Critical Study of the Narratives of the
Sufferings and Resurrection of Jesus.) Leipzig, 1893. 591 pp.
_Adolf Jülicher._ Die Gleichnisreden Jesu. (The Parables of
Jesus.) Vol. i., 1888, 291 pp.; vol. ii., 1899, 643 pp.
In this period the important books are short. The sixty‐seven pages of
Johannes Weiss are answered by Bousset(163) in a bare hundred and thirty.
People began to see that the elaborate Lives of Jesus which had hitherto
held the field, and enjoyed an immortality of revised editions, only
masked the fact that the study of the subject was at a standstill; and
that the tedious re‐handling of problems which had been solved so far as
they were capable of solution only served as an excuse for not grappling
with those which still remained unsolved.
This conviction is expressed by Bousset at the beginning of his work. The
criticism of the sources, he says, is finished, and its results may be
regarded, so far as the Life of Jesus is concerned, as provisionally
complete. The separation between John and the Synoptists has been secured.
For the Synoptists, the two‐document hypothesis has been established,
according to which the sources are a primitive form of Mark, and a
collection of “logia.” A certain interest might still attach to the
attempt to arrive at the primitive kernel of Mark; but the attempt has a
priori so little prospect of success that it was almost a waste of time to
continue to work at it. It would be a much more important thing to get rid
of the feeling of uncertainty and artificiality in the Lives of Jesus.
What is now chiefly wanted, Bousset thinks, is “a firmly‐drawn and life‐
like portrait which, with a few bold strokes, should bring out clearly the
originality, the force, the personality of Jesus.”
It is evident that the centre of the problem has now been reached. That is
why the writing becomes so terse. The masses of thought can only be
manœuvred here in a close formation such as Weiss gives them. The loose
order of discursive exegetical discussions of separate passages is now no
longer in place. The first step towards further progress was the simple
one of marshalling the passages in such a way as to gain a single
consistent impression from them.
In the first instance Bousset is as ready as Johannes Weiss to admit the
importance for the mind of Jesus of the eschatological “then” and “now.”
The realistic school, he thinks, are perfectly right in endeavouring to
relate Jesus, without apologetic or theological inconsistencies, to the
background of contemporary ideas. Later, in 1901, he was to make it a
reproach against Harnack’s “What is Christianity?” (_Das Wesen des
Christentums_) that it did not give sufficient importance to the
background of contemporary thought in its account of the preaching of
Jesus.(164)
He goes on to ask, however, whether the first enthusiasm over the
discovery of this genuinely historical way of looking at things should not
be followed by some “second thoughts” of a deeper character. Accepting the
position laid down by Johannes Weiss, we must ask, he thinks, whether this
purely historical criticism, by the exclusive emphasis which it has laid
upon eschatology, has not allowed the “essential originality and power of
the personality of Jesus to slip through its fingers,” and closed its
grasp instead upon contemporary conceptions and imaginations which are
often of a quite special character.
The Late‐Jewish eschatology was, according to Bousset, by no means a
homogeneous system of thought. Realistic and transcendental elements stand
side by side in it, unreconciled. The genuine popular belief of Late
Judaism still clung quite naively to the earthly realistic hopes of former
times, and had never been able to rise to the purely transcendental
regions which are the characteristic habitat of apocalyptic. The rejection
of the world is never carried out consistently; something of the Jewish
national ideal always remains. And for this reason Late Judaism made no
progress towards the overcoming of particularism.
Probably, Bousset holds, this Apocalyptic thought is not even genuinely
Jewish; as he ably argued in another work, there was a considerable strain
of Persian influence in it.(165) The dualism, the transference to the
transcendental region of the future hope, the conception of the world
which appears in Jewish apocalyptic, are of Iranian rather than Jewish
origin.
Two thoughts are especially characteristic of Bousset’s position; first,
that this transcendentalising of the future implied a spiritualisation of
it; secondly, that in post‐exilic Judaism there was always an undercurrent
of a purer and more spontaneous piety, the presence of which is especially
to be traced in the Psalms.
Into a dead world, where a kind of incubus seems to stifle all naturalness
and spontaneity, there comes a living Man. According to the formulae of
His preaching and the designations which He applies to Himself, He seems
at first sight to identify Himself with this world rather than to oppose
it. But these conceptions and titles, especially the Kingdom of God and
the Son of Man, must be provisionally left in the background, since they,
as being conceptions taken over from the past, conceal rather than reveal
what is most essential in His personality. The primary need is to
discover, behind the phenomenal, the real character of the personality and
preaching of Jesus. The starting‐point must therefore be the simple fact
that Jesus came as a living Man into a dead world. He is living, because
in contrast with His contemporaries He has a living idea of God. His faith
in the Fatherhood of God is Jesus’ most essential act. It signifies a
breach with the transcendental Jewish idea of God, and an unconscious
inner negation of the Jewish eschatology. Jesus, therefore, walks through
a world which denies His own eschatology like a man who has firm ground
under his feet.
That which on a superficial view appears to be eschatological preaching
turns out to be essentially a renewal of the old prophetic preaching with
its positive ethical emphasis. Jesus is a manifestation of that ancient
spontaneous piety of which Bousset had shown the existence in Late
Judaism.
The most characteristic thing in the character of Jesus, according to
Bousset, is His joy in life. It is true that if, in endeavouring to
understand Him, we take primitive Christianity as our starting‐point, we
might conceive of this joy in life as the complement of the eschatological
mood, as the extreme expression of indifference to the world, which can as
well enjoy the world as flee it. But the purely eschatological attitude,
though it reappears in early Christianity, does not give the right clue
for the interpretation of the character of Jesus as a whole. His joy in
the world was real, a genuine outcome of His new type of piety. It
prevented the eudaemonistic eschatological idea of reward, which some
think they find in Jesus’ preaching, from ever really becoming an element
in it.
Jesus is best understood by contrasting Him with the Baptist. John was a
preacher of repentance whose eyes were fixed upon the future. Jesus did
not allow the thought of the nearness of the end to rob Him of His
simplicity and spontaneity, and was not crippled by the reflection that
everything was transitory, preparatory, a mere means to an end. His
preaching of repentance was not gloomy and forbidding; it was the
proclamation of a new righteousness, of which the watchword was, “Ye shall
be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” He desires to communicate
this personal piety by personal influence. In contrast with the Baptist He
never aims at influencing masses of men, but rather avoids it. His work
was accomplished mainly among little groups and individuals. He left the
task of carrying the Gospel far and wide as a legacy to the community of
His followers. The mission of the Twelve, conceived as a mission for the
rapid and widespread extension of the Gospel, is not to be used to explain
Jesus’ methods of teaching; the narrative of it rests on an “obscure and
unintelligible tradition.”
This genuine joy in life was not unnoticed by the contemporaries of Jesus
who contrasted Him as “a gluttonous man and a wine‐bibber,” with the
Baptist. They were vaguely conscious that the whole life of Jesus was
“sustained by the feeling of an absolute antithesis between Himself and
His times.” He lived not in anxious expectation, but in cheerful gladness,
because by the native strength of His piety He had brought present and
future into one. Free from all extravagant Jewish delusions about the
future, He was not paralysed by the conditions which must be fulfilled to
make this future present. He has a peculiar conviction of its coming which
gives Him courage to “marry” the present with the future. The present as
contrasted with the beyond is for Him no mere shadow, but truth and
reality; life is not for Him a mere illusion, but is charged with a real
and valuable meaning. His own time is the Messianic time, as His answer to
the Baptist’s question shows. “And it is among the most certain things in
the Gospel that Jesus in His earthly life acknowledged Himself as Messiah
both to His disciples and to the High‐Priest, and made His entry into
Jerusalem as such.”
He can, therefore, fully recognise the worth of the present. It is not
true that He taught that this world’s goods were in themselves bad; what
He said was only that they must not be put first. Indeed He gives a new
value to life by teaching that man cannot be righteous in isolation, but
only in the fellowship of love. And as, moreover, the righteousness which
He preaches is one of the goods of the Kingdom of God, He cannot have
thought of the Kingdom as wholly transcendental. The Reign of God begins
for Him in the present era. His consciousness of being able to cast out
demons in the spirit of God because Satan’s kingdom on earth is at an end
is only the supernaturalistic expression for something of which He also
possesses an ethical consciousness, namely, that in the new social
righteousness the Kingdom of God is already present.
This presence of the Kingdom was not, however, clearly explained by Jesus,
but was set forth in paradoxes and parables, especially in the parables of
Mark iv. When we find the Evangelist, in immediate connexion with these
parables, asserting that the aim of the parables was to mystify and
conceal, we may conclude that the basis of this theory is the fact that
these parables concerning the presence of the Kingdom of God were not
understood.
In effecting this tacit transformation Jesus is acting in accordance with
a tendency of the time. Apocalyptic is itself a spiritualisation of the
ancient Israelitish hopes of the future, and Jesus only carries this
process to its completion. He raises Late Judaism above the limitations in
which it was involved, separates out the remnant of national, political,
and sensuous ideas which still clung to the expectation of the future in
spite of its having been spiritualised by apocalyptic, and breaks with the
Jewish particularism, though without providing a theoretical basis for
this step.
Thus, in spite of, nay even because of, His opposition to it, Jesus was
the fulfiller of Judaism. In Him were united the ancient and vigorous
prophetic religion and the impulse which Judaism itself had begun to feel
towards the spiritualisation of the future hope. The transcendental and
the actual meet in a unity which is full of life and strength, creative
not reflective, and therefore not needing to set aside the ancient
traditional ideas by didactic explanations, but overcoming them almost
unconsciously by the truth which lies in this paradoxical union. The
historical formula embodied in Bousset’s closing sentence runs thus: “The
Gospel develops some of the deeper‐lying _motifs_ of the Old Testament,
but it protests against the prevailing tendency of Judaism.”
Such of the underlying assumptions of this construction as invite
challenge lie open to inspection, and do not need to be painfully
disentangled from a web of exegesis; that is one of the merits of the
book. The chief points to be queried are as follows:—
Is it the case that the apocalypses mark the introduction of a process of
spiritualisation applied to the ancient Israelitish hopes? A picture of
the future is not spiritualised simply by being projected upon the clouds.
This elevation to the transcendental region signifies, on the contrary,
the transference to a place of safety of the eudaemonistic aspirations
which have not been fulfilled in the present, and which are expected, by
way of compensation, from the other world. The apocalyptic conception is
so far from being a spiritualisation of the future expectations, that it
represents on the contrary the last desperate effort of a strongly
eudaemonistic popular religion to raise to heaven the earthly goods from
which it cannot make up its mind to part.
Next we must ask: Is it really necessary to assume the existence of so
wide reaching a Persian influence in Jewish eschatology? The Jewish
dualism and the sublimation of its hope have become historical just
because, owing to the fate of the nation, the religious life of the
present and the fair future which was logically bound up with it became
more and more widely separated, temporally and locally, until at last only
its dualism and the sublimation of its hope enabled the nation to survive
its disappointment.
Again, is it historically permissible to treat the leading ideas of the
preaching of Jesus, which bear so clearly the marks of the contemporary
mould of thought, as of secondary importance for the investigation, and to
endeavour to trace Jesus’ thoughts from within outwards and not from
without inwards?
Further, is there really in Judaism no tendency towards the overcoming of
particularism? Has not its eschatology, as shaped by the deutero‐prophetic
literature, a universalistic outlook? Did Jesus overcome particularism in
principle otherwise than it is overcome in Jewish eschatology, that is to
say, with reference to the future?
What is there to prove that Jesus’ distinctive faith in the Fatherhood of
God ever existed independently, and not as an alternative form of the
historically‐conditioned Messianic consciousness? In other words, what is
there to show that the “religious attitude” of Jesus and His Messianic
consciousness are anything else than identical, temporally and
conceptually, so that the first must always be understood as conditioned
by the second?
Again, is the saying about the gluttonous man and wine‐bibber a sufficient
basis for the contrast between Jesus and the Baptist? Is not Jesus’
preaching of repentance gloomy as well as the Baptist’s? Where do we read
that He, in contrast with the Baptist, avoided dealing with masses of men?
Where did He give “the community of His disciples” marching orders to go
far and wide in the sense required by Bousset’s argument? Where is there a
word to tell us that He thought of His work among individuals and little
groups of men as the most important feature of His ministry? Are we not
told the exact contrary, that He “taught” His disciples as little as He
did the people? Is there any justification for characterising the
missionary journey of the Twelve, just because it directly contradicts
this view, as “an obscure and unintelligible tradition?”
Is it so certain that Jesus made a Messianic entry into Jerusalem, and
that, accordingly, He declared Himself to the disciples and to the High
Priest as Messiah in the present, and not in a purely future sense?
What are the sayings which justify us in making the attitude of opposition
which He took up towards the Rabbinic legalism into a “sense of the
absolute opposition between Himself and His people”? The very “absolute,”
with its ring of Schleiermacher, is suspicious.
All these, however, are subsidiary positions. The decisive point is: Can
Bousset make good the assertion that Jesus’ joy in life was a more or less
unconscious inner protest against the purely eschatological world‐
renouncing religious attitude, the primal expression of that “absolute”
antithesis to Judaism? Is it not the case that His attitude towards
earthly goods was wholly conditioned by eschatology? That is to say, were
not earthly goods emptied of any essential value in such a way that joy in
the world and indifference to the world were simply the final expression
of an ironic attitude which had been sublimated into pure serenity. That
is the question upon the answer to which depends the decision whether
Bousset’s position is tenable or not.
It is not in fact tenable, for the opposite view has at its disposal
inexhaustible reserves of world‐renouncing, world‐contemning sayings, and
the few utterances which might possibly be interpreted as expressing a
purely positive joy in the world, desert and go over to the enemy, because
they textually and logically belong to the other set of sayings. Finally,
the promise of earthly happiness as a reward, to which Bousset had denied
a position in the teaching of Jesus, also falls upon his rear, and that in
the very moment when he is seeking to prove from the saying, “Seek ye
first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall
be added unto you,” that for Jesus this world’s goods are not in
themselves evil, but are only to be given a secondary place. Here the
eudaemonism is written on the forehead of the saying, since the receiving
of these things—we must remember, too, the “hundredfold” in another
passage—is future, not present, and will only “come” at the same time as
the Kingdom of God. All present goods, on the other hand, serve only to
support life and render possible an undistracted attitude of waiting in
pious hope for that future, and therefore are not thought of as gains, but
purely as a gift of God, to be cheerfully and freely enjoyed as a
foretaste of those blessings which the elect are to enjoy in the future
Divine dispensation.
The loss of this position decides the further point that if there is any
suggestion in the teaching of Jesus that the future Kingdom of God is in
some sense present, it is not to be understood as implying an anti‐
eschatological acceptance of the world, but merely as a phenomenon
indicative of the extreme tension of the eschatological consciousness,
just in the same way as His joy in the world. Bousset has a kind of
indirect recognition of this in his remark that the presence of the
Kingdom of God is only asserted by Jesus as a kind of paradox. If the
assertion of its presence indicated that acceptance of the world formed
part of Jesus’ system of thought, it would be at variance with His
eschatology. But the paradoxical character of the assertion is due
precisely to the fact that His acceptance of the world is but the last
expression of the completeness with which He rejects it.
But what do critical cavils matter in the case of a book of which the
force, the influence, the greatness, depends upon its spirit? It is great
because it recognises—what is so rarely recognised in theological
works—the point where the main issue really lies; in the question, namely,
whether Jesus preached and worked as Messiah, or whether, as follows if a
prominent place is given to eschatology, as Colani had long ago
recognised, His career, historically regarded, was only the career of a
prophet with an undercurrent of Messianic consciousness.
As a consequence of grasping the question in its full significance,
Bousset rejects all the little devices by which previous writers had
endeavoured to relate Jesus’ ministry to His times, each one prescribing
at what point He was to connect Himself with it, and of course proceeding
in his book to represent Him as connecting Himself with it in precisely
that way. Bousset recognises that the supreme importance of eschatology in
the teaching of Jesus is not to be got rid of by whittling away a little
point here and there, and rubbing it smooth with critical sandpaper until
it is capable of reflecting a different thought, but only by fully
admitting it, while at the same time counteracting it by asserting a
mysterious element of world‐acceptance in the thought of Jesus, and
conceiving His whole teaching as a kind of alternating current between
positive and negative poles.
This is the last possible sincere attempt to limit the exclusive
importance of eschatology in the preaching of Jesus, an attempt so
gallant, so brilliant, that its failure is almost tragic; one could have
wished success to the book, to which Carlyle might have stood sponsor.
That it is inspired by the spirit of Carlyle, that it vindicates the
original force of a great Personality against the attempt to dissolve it
into a congeries of contemporary conceptions, therein lies at once its
greatness and its weakness. Bousset vindicates Jesus, not for history, but
for Protestantism, by making Him the heroic representative of a deeply
religious acceptance of the goods of life amid an apocalyptic world. His
study is not unhistorical, but supra‐historical. The spirit of Jesus was
in fact world‐accepting in the sense that through the experience of
centuries it advanced historically to the acceptance of the world, since
nothing can appear phenomenally which is not in some sense ideally present
from the first. But the teaching of the historical Jesus was purely and
exclusively world‐renouncing. If, therefore, the problem which Bousset has
put on the blackboard for the eschatological school to solve is to be
successfully solved, the solution is to be sought on other, more
objectively historical, lines.
That the decision of the question whether Jesus’ preaching of the Kingdom
of God is wholly eschatological or only partly eschatological, is
primarily to be sought in His ethical teaching, is recognised by all the
critics of Baldensperger and Weiss. They differ only in the importance
which they assign to eschatology. But no other writer has grasped the
problem as clearly as Bousset.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The Parisian Ehrhardt emphasises eschatology very strongly in his work
“The Fundamental Character of the Preaching of Jesus in Relation to the
Messianic Hopes of His People and His own Messianic Consciousness.”(166)
Nevertheless he asserts the presence of a twofold ethic in Jesus’
teaching: eschatology did not attempt to evacuate everything else of all
value, but allowed the natural and ethical goods of this world to hold
their place, as belonging to a world of thought which resisted its
encroachments.
A much more negative attitude is taken up by Albert Réville in his _Jésus
de Nazareth_.(167) According to him both Apocalyptic and Messianism are
foreign bodies in the teaching of Jesus which have been forced into it by
the pressure of contemporary thought. Jesus would never of His own motion
have taken up the rôle of Messiah.
Wendt, too, in the second edition of his _Lehre Jesu_, which appeared in
1903, held in the main to the fundamental idea of the first, the 1890,
edition; namely, that Jesus in view of His purely religious relation to
God could not do otherwise than transform, from within outwards, the
traditional conceptions, even though they seem to be traceable in their
actual contemporary form on the surface of His teaching. He had already,
in 1893, in the _Christliche Welt_ clearly expounded, and defended against
Weiss, his view of the Kingdom of God as already present for the thought
of Jesus.
The effect which Baldensperger and Weiss had upon Weiffenbach(168) was to
cause him to bring out in full strength the apologetic aspect which had
been somewhat held in check in his work of 1873 by the thoroughness of his
exegesis. The apocalyptic of this younger school, which was no longer
willing to believe that in the mouth of Jesus the Parousia meant nothing
more than an issuing from death clothed with power, is on all grounds to
be rejected. It assumes, since this expectation was not fulfilled, an
error on the part of Jesus. It is better to rest content with not being
able to see quite clearly.
Protected by a similar armour, the successive editions of Bernhard Weiss’s
Life of Jesus went their way unmolested down to 1902.
Not with an apologetic purpose, but on the basis of an original religious
view, Titius, in his work on the New Testament doctrine of blessedness,
develops the teaching of Jesus concerning the Kingdom of God as a present
good.(169)
In the same year, 1895, appeared E. Haupt’s work on “The Eschatological
Sayings of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels.”(170) In contradistinction to
Bousset he takes as his starting‐point the eschatological passages,
examining each separately and modulating them back to the Johannine key.
It is so delicately and ingeniously done that the reading of the book is
an aesthetic pleasure which makes one in the end quite forget the
apologetic _motif_ in order to surrender oneself completely to the
author’s mystical system of religious thought.
It is, indeed, not the least service of the eschatological school that it
compels modern theology, which is so much preoccupied with history, to
reveal what is its own as its own. Eschatology makes it impossible to
attribute modern ideas to Jesus and then by way of “New Testament
Theology” take them back from Him as a loan, as even Ritschl not so long
ago did with such _naïveté_. Johannes Weiss, in cutting himself loose, as
an historian, from Ritschl, and recognising that “the real roots of
Ritschl’s ideas are to be found in Kant and the illuminist theology,”(171)
introduced the last decisive phase of the process of separation between
historical and “modern” theology. Before the advent of eschatology,
critical theology was, in the last resort, without a principle of
discrimination, since it possessed no reagent capable of infallibly
separating out modern ideas on the one hand and genuinely ancient New
Testament ideas on the other. The application of the criterion has now
begun. What will be the issue, the future alone can show.
But even now we can recognise that the separation was not only of
advantage to historical theology; for modern theology, the manifestation
of the modern spirit as it really is, was still more important. Only when
it became conscious of its own inmost essence and of its right to exist,
only when it freed itself from its illegitimate historical justification,
which, leaping over the centuries, appealed directly to an historical
exposition of the New Testament, only then could it unfold its full wealth
of ideas, which had been hitherto root‐bound by a false historicity. It
was not by chance that in Bousset’s reply a certain affirmation of life,
something expressive of the genius of Protestantism, cries aloud as never
before in any theological work of this generation, or that in Haupt’s work
German mysticism interweaves its mysterious harmonies with the Johannine
_motif_. The contribution of Protestantism to the interpretation of the
world had never been made so manifest in any work prior to Weiss’s. The
modern spirit is here breaking in wreaths of foam upon the sharp cliffs of
the rock‐bound eschatological world‐view of Jesus. To put it more
prosaically, modern theology is at last about to become sincere. But this
is so far only a prophecy of the future.
If we are to speak of the present it must be fully admitted that even
historical science, when it desires to continue the history of
Christianity beyond the life of Jesus, cannot help protesting against the
one‐sidedness of the eschatological world of thought of the “Founder.” It
finds itself obliged to distinguish in the thought of Jesus “permanent
elements and transitory elements” which, being interpreted, means
eschatological and not essentially eschatological materials; otherwise it
can get no farther. For if Jesus’ world of thought was wholly and
exclusively eschatological, there can only have arisen out of it, as
Reimarus long ago maintained, an exclusively eschatological primitive
Christianity. But how a community of that kind could give birth to the
Greek non‐eschatological theology no Church history and no history of
dogma has so far shown. Instead of that they all—Harnack, with the most
consummate historical ability—lay down from the very first, alongside of
the main line intended for “contemporary views” traffic, a relief line for
the accommodation of through trains of “non‐temporally limited ideas”; and
at the point where primitive Christian eschatology becomes of less
importance they switch off the train to the relief line, after slipping
the carriages which are not intended to go beyond that station.
This procedure has now been rendered impossible for them by Weiss, who
leaves no place in the teaching of Jesus for anything but the single‐line
traffic of eschatology. If, during the last fifteen years, any one had
attempted to carry out in a work on a large scale the plan of Strauss and
Renan, linking up the history of the life of Jesus with the history of
early Christianity, and New Testament theology with the early history of
dogma, the immense difficulties which Weiss had raised without suspecting
it, in the course of his sixty‐seven pages, would have become clearly
apparent. The problem of the Hellenisation of Christianity took on quite a
new aspect when the trestle bridge of modern ideas connecting the
eschatological early Christianity with Greek theology broke down under the
weight of the newly‐discovered material, and it became necessary to seek
within the history itself an explanation of the way in which an
exclusively eschatological system of ideas came to admit Greek influences,
and—what is much more difficult to explain—how Hellenism, on its part,
found any point of contact with an eschatological sect.
The new problem is as yet hardly recognised, much less grappled with. The
few who since Weiss’s time have sought to pass over from the life of Jesus
to early Christianity, have acted like men who find themselves on an ice‐
floe which is slowly dividing into two pieces, and who leap from one to
the other before the cleft grows too wide. Harnack, in his “What is
Christianity?” almost entirely ignores the contemporary limitations of
Jesus’ teaching, and starts out with a Gospel which carries him down
without difficulty to the year 1899. The anti‐historical violence of this
procedure is, if possible, still more pronounced in Wernle. The
“Beginnings of our Religion”(172) begins by putting the Jewish eschatology
in a convenient posture for the coming operation by urging that the idea
of the Messiah, since there was no appropriate place for it in connexion
with the Kingdom of God or the new Earth, had become obsolete for the Jews
themselves.
The inadequateness of the Messianic idea for the purposes of Jesus is
therefore self‐evident. “His whole life long”—as if we knew any more of it
than the few months of His public ministry!—“He laboured to give a new and
higher content to the Messianic title which He had adopted.” In the course
of this endeavour He discarded “the Messiah of the Zealots”—by that is
meant the political non‐transcendent Messianic ideal. As if we had any
knowledge of the existence of such an ideal in the time of Jesus! The
statements of Josephus suggest, and the conduct of Pilate at the trial of
Jesus confirms the conclusion, that in none of the risings did a claimant
of the Messiahship come forward, and this should be proof enough that
there did not exist at that time a political eschatology alongside of the
transcendental, and indeed it could not on inner grounds subsist alongside
of it. That was, after all, the thing which Weiss had shown most clearly!
Jesus, therefore, had dismissed the Messiah of the Zealots; He had now to
turn Himself into the “waiting” Messiah of the Rabbis. Yet He does not
altogether accept this rôle, for He works actively as Messiah. His
struggle with the Messianic conception could not but end in transforming
it. This transformed conception is introduced by Jesus to the people at
His entry into Jerusalem, since His choice of the ass to bear Him
inscribed as a motto, so to speak, over the demonstration the prophecy of
the Messiah who should be a bringer of peace. A few days later He gives
the Scribes to understand by His enigmatic words with reference to Mark
xii. 37, that His Messiahship has nothing to do with Davidic descent and
all that that implied.
The Kingdom of God was not, of course, for Him, according to Wernle, a
purely eschatological entity; He saw in many events evidence that it had
already dawned. Wernle’s only real concession to the eschatological school
is the admission that the Kingdom always remained for Jesus a supernatural
entity.
The belief in the presence of the Kingdom was, it seems, only a phase in
the development of Jesus. When confronted with growing opposition He
abandoned this belief again, and the super‐earthly future character of the
Kingdom was all that remained. At the end of His career Jesus establishes
a connexion between the Messianic conception, in its final transformation,
and the Kingdom, which had retained its eschatological character; He goes
to His death for the Messiahship in its new significance, but He goes on
believing in His speedy return as the Son of Man. This expectation of His
Parousia as Son of Man, which only emerges immediately before His exit
from the world—when it can no longer embarrass the author in his account
of the preaching of Jesus—is the only point in which Jesus does not
overcome the inadequacy of the Messianic idea with which He had to deal.
“At this point the fantastic conception of Late Judaism, the magically
transformed world of the ancient popular belief, thrusts itself
incongruously into Jesus’ great and simple consciousness of His vocation.”
Thus Wernle takes with him only so much of Apocalyptic as he can safely
carry over into early Christianity. Once he has got safely across, he
drags the rest over after him. He shows that in and with the titles and
expressions borrowed from apocalyptic thought, Messiah, Son of God, Son of
Man, which were all at bottom so inappropriate to Jesus, early
Christianity slipped in again “either the old ideas or new ones
misunderstood.” In pointing this out he cannot refrain from the customary
sigh of regret—these apocalyptic titles and expressions “were from the
first a misfortune for the new religion.” One may well ask how Wernle has
discovered in the preaching of Jesus anything that can be called,
historically, a new religion, and what would have become of this new
religion apart from its apocalyptic hopes and its apocalyptic dogma? We
answer: without its intense eschatological hope the Gospel would have
perished from the earth, crushed by the weight of historic catastrophes.
But, as it was, by the mighty power of evoking faith which lay in it,
eschatology made good in the darkest times Jesus’ sayings about the
imperishability of His words, and died as soon as these sayings had
brought forth new life upon a new soil. Why then make such a complaint
against it?
The tragedy does not consist in the modification of primitive Christianity
by eschatology, but in the fate of eschatology itself, which has preserved
for us all that is most precious in Jesus, but must itself wither, because
He died upon the cross with a loud cry, despairing of bringing in the new
heaven and the new earth—that is the real tragedy. And not a tragedy to be
dismissed with a theologian’s sigh, but a liberating and life‐giving
influence, like every great tragedy. For in its death‐pangs eschatology
bore to the Greek genius a wonder‐child, the mystic, sensuous, Early‐
Christian doctrine of immortality, and consecrated Christianity as the
religion of immortality to take the place of the slowly dying civilisation
of the ancient world.
But it is not only those who want to find a way from the preaching of
Jesus to early Christianity who are conscious of the peculiar difficulties
raised by the recognition of its purely Jewish eschatological character,
but also those who wish to reconstruct the connexion backwards from Jesus
to Judaism. For example, Wellhausen and Schürer repudiate the results
arrived at by the eschatological school, which, on its part, bases itself
upon their researches into Late Judaism. Wellhausen, in his “Israelitish
and Jewish History,”(173) gives a picture of Jesus which lifts Him out of
the Jewish frame altogether. The Kingdom which He desires to found becomes
a present spiritual entity. To the Jewish eschatology His preaching stands
in a quite external relation, for what was in His mind was rather a
fellowship of spiritual men engaged in seeking a higher righteousness. He
did not really desire to be the Messiah, and in His inmost heart had
renounced the hopes of His people. If He called Himself Messiah, it was in
view of a higher Messianic ideal. For the people His acceptance of the
Messiahship denoted the supersession of their own very differently
coloured expectation. The transcendental events become immanent. In regard
to the apocalyptic Judgment of the World, he retains only the sermon
preserved by John about the inward and constant process of separation.
Although not to the same extent, Schürer also, in his view of the teaching
of Jesus, is strongly influenced by the Fourth Gospel. In an inaugural
discourse of 1903(174) he declares that in his opinion there is a certain
opposition between Judaism and the preaching of Jesus, since the latter
contains something absolutely new. His Messiahship is only the temporally
limited expression of a unique, generally ethical, consciousness of being
a child of God, which has a certain analogy with the relation of all God’s
children to their Heavenly Father. The reason for His reserve in regard to
His Messiahship was, according to Schürer, Jesus’ fear of kindling
“political enthusiasm”; from the same motive He repudiates in Mark xii. 37
all claim to be the Messiah of David’s line. The ideas of the Messiah and
the Kingdom of God at least underwent a transformation in His use of them.
If in His earlier preaching He only announces the Kingdom as something
future, in His later preaching He emphasises the thought that in its
beginnings it is already present.
That it is precisely the representatives of the study of Late Judaism who
lift Jesus out of the Late‐Jewish world of thought, is not in itself a
surprising phenomenon. It is only an expression of the fact that here
something new and creative enters into an uncreative age, and of the clear
consciousness that this Personality cannot be resolved into a complex of
contemporary ideas. The problem of which they are conscious is the same as
Bousset’s. But the question cannot be avoided whether the violent
separation of Jesus from Late Judaism is a real solution, or whether the
very essence of Jesus’ creative power does not consist, not in taking out
one or other of the parts of the eschatological machinery, but in doing
what no one had previously done, namely, in setting the whole machinery in
motion by the application of an ethico‐religious motive power. To perceive
the unsatisfactoriness of the transformation hypothesis it is only
necessary to think of all the conditions which would have to be realised
in order to make it possible to trace, even in general outline, the
evidence of such a transformation in the Gospel narrative.
All these solutions of the eschatological question start from the teaching
of Jesus, and it was, indeed, from this point of view that Johannes Weiss
had stated the problem. The final decision of the question is not,
however, to be found here, but in the examination of the whole course of
Jesus’ life. On which of the two presuppositions, the assumption that His
life was completely dominated by eschatology, or the assumption that He
repudiated it, do we find it easiest to understand the connexion of events
in the life of Jesus, His fate, and the emergence of the expectation of
the Parousia in the community of His disciples?
The works which in the examination of the connexion of events follow a
critical procedure are few and far between. The average “Life of Jesus”
shows in this respect an inconceivable stupidity. The first, after Bruno
Bauer, to apply critical methods to this point was Volkmar; between
Volkmar and Wrede the only writer who here showed himself critical, that
is sceptical, was W. Brandt. His work on the “Gospel History”(175)
appeared in 1893, a year after Johannes Weiss’s work and in the same year
as Bousset’s reply. In this book the question of the absolute, or only
partial, dominance of eschatology is answered on the ground of the general
course of Jesus’ life.
Brandt goes to work with a truly Cartesian scepticism. He first examines
all the possibilities that the reported event did not happen in the way in
which it is reported before he is satisfied that it really did happen in
that way. Before he can accept the statement that Jesus died with a loud
outcry, he has to satisfy his critical conscience by the following
consideration: “The statement regarding this cry, is, so far as I can see,
to be best explained by supposing that it was really uttered.” The burial
of Jesus owes its acceptance as history to the following reflection. “We
hold Joseph of Arimathea to be an historical person; but the only reason
which the narrative has for preserving his name is that he buried Jesus.
Therefore the name guarantees the fact.”
But the moment the slightest possibility presents itself that the event
happened in a different way, Brandt declines to be held by any seductions
of the text, and makes his own “probably” into an historical fact. For
instance, he thinks it unlikely that Peter was the only one to smite with
the sword; so the history is immediately rectified by the phrase “that
sword‐stroke was doubtless not the only one, other disciples also must
have pressed to the front.” That Jesus was first condemned by the
Sanhedrin at a night‐sitting, and that Pilate in the morning confirmed the
sentence, seems to him on various grounds impossible. It is therefore
decided that we have here to do only with a combination devised by “a
Christian from among the Gentiles.” In this way the “must have been’s” and
“may have been’s” exercise a veritable reign of terror throughout the
book.
Yet that does not prevent the general contribution of the book to
criticism from being a very remarkable one. Especially in regard to the
trial of Jesus, it brings to light a whole series of previously
unsuspected problems. Brandt is the first writer since Bauer who dares to
assert that it is an historical absurdity to suppose that Pilate, when the
people demanded from him the _condemnation_ of Jesus, answered: “No, but I
will _release_ you another instead of Him.”
As his starting‐point he takes the complete contrast between the Johannine
and Synoptic traditions, and the inherent impossibility of the former is
proved in detail. The Synoptic tradition goes back to Mark alone. His
Gospel is, as was also held by Bruno Bauer, and afterwards by Wrede, a
sufficient basis for the whole tradition. But this Gospel is not a purely
historical source, it is also, and in a very much larger degree, poetic
invention. Of the real history of Jesus but little is preserved in the
Gospels. Many of the so‐called sayings of the Lord are certainly to be
pronounced spurious, a few are probably to be recognised as genuine. But
the theory of the “poetic invention” of the earliest Evangelist is not
consistently carried out, because Brandt does not take as his criterion,
as Wrede did later, a definite principle on which Mark is supposed to have
constructed his Gospel, but decides each case separately. Consequently the
most important feature of the work lies in the examination of detail.
Jesus died and was believed to have risen again: this is the only
absolutely certain information that we have regarding His “Life.” And
accordingly this is the crucial instance for testing the worth of the
Gospel tradition. It is only on the basis of an elaborate criticism of the
accounts of the suffering and resurrection of Jesus that Brandt undertakes
to give a sketch of the life of Jesus as it really was.
What was, then, so far as appears from His life, Jesus’ attitude towards
eschatology? It was, according to Brandt, a self‐contradictory attitude.
“He believed in the near approach of the Kingdom of God, and yet, as
though its time were still far distant, He undertakes the training of
disciples. He was a teacher and yet is said to have held Himself to be the
Messiah.” The duality lies not so much in the teaching itself; it is
rather a cleavage between His conviction and consciousness on the one
hand, and His public attitude on the other.
To this observation we have to add a second, namely, that Jesus cannot
possibly during the last few days at Jerusalem have come forward as
Messiah. Critics, with the exception, of course, of Bruno Bauer, had only
cursorily touched on this question. The course of events in the last few
days in Jerusalem does not at all suggest a Messianic claim on the part of
Jesus, indeed it directly contradicts it. Only imagine what would have
happened if Jesus had come before the people with such claims, or even if
such thoughts had been so much as attributed to Him! On the other side, of
course, we have the report of the Messianic entry, in which Jesus not only
accepted the homage offered to Him as Messiah, but went out of His way to
invite it; and the people must therefore from that point onwards have
regarded him as Messiah. In consequence of this contradiction in the
narrative, all Lives of Jesus slur over the passage, and seem to represent
that the people sometimes suspected Jesus’ Messiahship, sometimes did not
suspect it, or they adopt some other similar expedient. Brandt, however,
rigorously drew the logical inference. Since Jesus did not stand and
preach in the temple as Messiah, He cannot have entered Jerusalem as
Messiah. Therefore “the well‐known Messianic entry is not historical.”
That is also implied by the manner of His arrest. If Jesus had come
forward as a Messianic claimant, He would not simply have been arrested by
the civil police; Pilate would have had to suppress a revolt by military
force.
This admission implies the surrender of one of the most cherished
prejudices of the anti‐eschatological school, namely, that Jesus raised
the thoughts of the people to a higher conception of His Messiahship, and
consequently to a spiritual view of the Kingdom of God, or at least tried
so to raise them. But we cannot assume this to have been His intention,
since He does not allow the multitude to suspect His Messiahship. Thus the
conception of a “transformation” becomes untenable as a means of
reconciling eschatological and non‐eschatological elements. And as a
matter of fact—that is the stroke of critical genius in the book—Brandt
lets the two go forward side by side without any attempt at
reconciliation; for the reconciliation which would be possible if one had
only to deal with the teaching of Jesus becomes impossible when one has to
take in His life as well. For Brandt the life of Jesus is the life of a
Galilaean teacher who, in consequence of the eschatology with which the
period was so fully charged, was for a time and to a certain extent set at
variance with Himself and who met His fate for that reason. This
conception is at bottom identical with Renan’s. But the stroke of genius
in leaving the gap between eschatological and non‐eschatological elements
unbridged sets this work, as regards its critical foundation and
historical presentment, high above the smooth romance of the latter.
The course of Jesus’ life, according to Brandt, was therefore as follows:
Jesus was a teacher; not only so, but He took disciples in order to train
them to be teachers. “This is in itself sufficient to show there was a
period in His life in which His work was not determined by the thought of
the immediate nearness of the decisive moment. He sought men, therefore,
who might become His fellow‐workers. He began to train disciples who, if
He did not Himself live to see the Day of the Lord, would be able after
His death to carry on the work of educating the people along the lines
which He had laid down.” “Then there occurred in Judaea an event of which
the rumour spread like wildfire throughout Palestine. A prophet arose—a
thing which had not happened for centuries—a man who came forward as an
envoy of God; and this prophet proclaimed the immediate coming of the
reign of God: ‘Repent that ye may escape the wrath of God.’ ” The
Baptist’s great sermon on repentance falls, according to Brandt, in the
last period of the life of Jesus. We must assume, he thinks, that before
John came forward in this dramatic fashion he had been a teacher, and at
that period of his life had numbered Jesus among his pupils. Nevertheless
his life previous to his public appearance must have been a rather obscure
one. When he suddenly launched out into this eschatological preaching of
repentance “he seemed like an Elijah who had long ago been rapt away from
the earth and now appeared once more.”
From this point onwards Jesus had to concentrate His activity, for the
time was short. If He desired to effect anything and so far as possible to
make the people, before the coming of the end, obedient to the will of
God, He must make Jerusalem the starting‐point of His work. “Only from
this central position, and only with the help of an authority which had at
its disposal the whole synagogal system, could He effect within a short
time much, perhaps all, of what was needful. So He determined on
journeying to Jerusalem with this end in view, and with the fixed resolve
there to carry into effect the will of God.”
The journey to Jerusalem was not therefore a pilgrimage of death. “So long
as we are obliged to take the Gospels as a true reflection of the history
of Jesus we must recognise with Weizsäcker that Jesus did not go to
Jerusalem in order to be put to death there, nor did He go to keep the
Feast. Both suppositions are excluded by the vigour of his action in
Jerusalem, and the bright colours of hope with which the picture of that
period was painted in the recollection of those who had witnessed it.” We
cannot therefore regard the predictions of the Passion as historical, or
“at most we might perhaps suppose that Jesus in the consciousness of His
innocence may have said to His disciples: ’If I should die, may God for
the sake of My blood be merciful to you and to the people.’”
He went to Jerusalem, then, to fulfil the will of God. “It was God’s will
that the preaching by which alone the people could be inwardly renewed and
made into a real people of God should be recognised and organised by the
national and religious authorities. To effect this through the existing
authorities, or to realise it in some other way, such was the task which
Jesus felt Himself called on to perform.” With his eyes upon this goal,
behind which lay the near approach of the Kingdom of God, He set His face
towards Jerusalem.
“But nothing could be more natural than that out of the belief that He was
engaged in a work which God had willed, there should arise an ever
stronger belief in His personal vocation.” It was thus that the Messianic
consciousness entered into Jesus’ thoughts. His conviction of His vocation
had nothing to do with a political Messiahship, it was only gradually from
the development of events that He was able to draw the inference that He
was destined to the Messianic sovereignty, “it may have become more and
more clear to Him, but it did not become a matter of absolute certainty.”
It was only amid opposition, in deep dejection, in consequence of a
powerful inner reaction against circumstances, that He came to recognise
Himself with full conviction as the anointed of God.
When it began to be bruited about that He was the Messiah, the rulers had
Him arrested and handed Him over to the Procurator. Judas the traitor “had
only been a short time among His followers, and only in those unquiet days
at Jerusalem when the Master had scarcely any opportunity for private
intercourse with him and for learning really to know him. He had not been
with Jesus during the Galilaean days, and Jesus was consequently nothing
more to him than the future ruler of the Kingdom of God.”
After His death the disciples “could not, unless something occurred to
restore their faith, continue to believe in His Messiahship.” Jesus had
taken away with Him in His death the hopes which they had set upon Him,
especially as He had not foretold His death, much less His resurrection.
“At first, therefore, it would be all in favour of His memory if the
disciples remembered that He Himself had never openly and definitely
declared Himself to be the Messiah.” They returned to Galilee. “Simon
Peter, and perhaps the son of Zebedee, who afterwards ranked along with
him as a pillar of the Church, resolved to continue that preparation for
their work which had been interrupted by their journey to Jerusalem. It
seemed to them that if they were once more on Galilaean soil the days
which they had spent in the inhospitable Jerusalem would cease to oppress
their spirits with the leaden weight of sorrowful recollection.... One
might almost say that they had to make up their minds to give up Jesus the
author of the attempt to take Jerusalem by storm; but for Jesus the
gracious gentle Galilaean teacher they kept a warm place in their hearts.”
So love watched over the dead until hope was rekindled by the Old
Testament promises and came to reawaken Him. “The first who, in an
enthusiastic vision, saw this wish fulfilled was Simon Peter.” This
“resurrection” has nothing to do with the empty grave, which, like the
whole narrative of the Jerusalem appearances, only came into the tradition
later. The first appearances took place in Galilee. It was there that the
Church was founded.
This attempt to grasp the connexion of events in the life of Jesus from a
purely historical point of view is one of the most important that have
ever been made in this department of study. If it had been put in a purely
constructive form, this criticism would have made an impression unequalled
by any other Life of Jesus since Renan’s. But in that case it would have
lost that free play of ideas which the critical recognition of the
unbridged gap admits. The eschatological question is not, it is true,
decided by this investigation. It shows the impossibility of the previous
attempts to establish a present Messiahship of Jesus, but it shows, too,
that the questions, which are really historical questions, concerning the
public attitude of Jesus, are far from being solved by asserting the
exclusively eschatological character of His preaching, but that new
difficulties are always presenting themselves.
It was perhaps not so much through these general ethico‐religious
historical discussions as in consequence of certain exegetical problems
which unexpectedly came to light that theologians became conscious that
the old conception of the teaching of Jesus was not tenable, or was only
tenable by violent means. On the assumption of the modified eschatological
character of His teaching, Jesus is still a teacher; that is to say, He
speaks in order to be understood, in order to explain, and has no secrets.
But if His teaching is throughout eschatological, then He is a prophet,
who points in mysterious speech to a coming age, whose words conceal
secrets and offer enigmas, and are not intended to be understood always
and by everybody. Attention was now turned to a number of passages in
which the question arises whether Jesus had any secrets to keep or not.
This question presents itself in connexion with the very earliest of the
parables. In Mark iv. 11, 12 it is distinctly stated that the parables
spoken in the immediate context embody the mystery of the Kingdom of God
in an obscure and unintelligible form, in order that those for whom it is
not intended may hear without understanding. But this is not borne out by
the character of the parables themselves, since _we_ at least find in them
the thought of the constant and victorious development of the Kingdom from
small beginnings to its perfect development. After the passage had had to
suffer many things from constantly renewed attempts to weaken down or
explain away the statement, Jülicher, in his work upon the Parables,(176)
released it from these tortures, left Jesus the parables in their natural
meaning, and put down this unintelligible saying about the purpose of the
parabolic form of discourse to the account of the Evangelist. He would
rather, to use his own expression, remove a little stone from the masonry
of tradition than a diamond from the imperishable crown of honour which
belongs to Jesus. Yes, but, for all that, it is an arbitrary assumption
which damages the Marcan hypothesis more than will be readily admitted.
What was the reason, or what was the mistake which led the earliest
Evangelist to form so repellent a theory regarding the purpose of the
parables? Is the progressive exaggeration of the contrast between veiled
and open speech, to which Jülicher often appeals, sufficient to account
for it? How can the Evangelist have invented such a theory, when he
immediately proceeds to invalidate it by the rationalising, rather
commonplace explanation of the parable of the Sower?
Bernhard Weiss, not being so much under the influence of modern theology
as to feel bound to recognise the paedagogic purpose in Jesus, gives the
text its due, and admits that Jesus intended to use the parabolic form of
discourse as a means of separating receptive from unreceptive hearers. He
does not say, however, what kind of secret, intelligible only to the
predestined, was concealed in these parables which seem clear as daylight.
That was before Johannes Weiss had stated the eschatological question.
Bousset, in his criticism of the eschatological theory,(177) is obliged to
fall back upon Jülicher’s method in order to justify the rationalising
modern way of explaining these parables as pointing to a Kingdom of God
actually present. It is true Jülicher’s explanation of the way in which
the theory arose does not satisfy him; he prefers to assume that the basis
of this false theory of Mark’s is to be found in the fact that the
parables concerning the presence of the Kingdom remained unintelligible to
the contemporaries of Jesus. But we may fairly ask that he should point
out the connecting link between that failure to understand and the
invention of a saying like this, which implies so very much more!
If there are no better grounds than that for calling in question Mark’s
theory of the parables, then the parables of Mark iv., the only ones from
which it is possible to extract the admission of a present Kingdom of God,
remain what they were before, namely, mysteries.
The second volume of Jülicher’s “Parables”(178) found the eschatological
question already in possession of the field. And, as a matter of fact,
Jülicher does abandon “the heretofore current method of modernising the
parables,” which finds in one after another of them only its own favourite
conception of the slow and gradual development of the Kingdom of God. The
Kingdom of Heaven is for Jülicher a completely supernatural idea; it is to
be realised without human help and independently of the attitude of men,
by the sole power of God. The parables of the mustard seed and the leaven
are not intended to teach the disciples the necessity and wisdom of a
development occupying a considerable time, but are designed to make clear
and vivid to them the idea that the period of perfecting and fulfilment
will follow with super‐earthly necessity upon that of imperfection.
But in general the new problem plays no very special part in Jülicher’s
exposition. He takes up, it might almost be said, in relation to the
parables, too independent a position as a religious thinker to care to
understand them against the background of a wholly different world‐view,
and does not hesitate to exclude from the authentic discourses of Jesus
whatever does not suit him. This is the fate, for instance, of the parable
of the wicked husbandmen in Mark xii. He finds in it traits which read
like _vaticinia ex eventu_, and sees therefore in the whole thing only a
prophetically expressed “view of the history as it presented itself to an
average man who had been present at the crucifixion of Jesus and
nevertheless believed in Him as the Son of God.”
But this absolute method of explanation, independent of any traditional
order of time or events, makes it impossible for the author to draw from
the parables any general system of teaching. He makes no distinction
between the Galilaean mystical parables and the polemical, menacing
Jerusalem parables. For instance, he supposes the parable of the Sower,
which according to Mark was the very first of Jesus’ parabolic discourses,
to have been spoken as the result of a melancholy review of a preceding
period of work, and as expressing the conviction, stamped upon His mind by
the facts, “that it was in accordance with higher laws that the word of
God should have to reckon with defeats as well as victories.” Accordingly
he adopts in the main the explanation which the Evangelist gives in Mark
iv. 13‐20. The parable of the seed growing secretly is turned to account
in favour of the “present” Kingdom of God.
Jülicher has an incomparable power of striking fire out of every one of
the parables, but the flame is of a different colour from that which it
showed when Jesus pronounced the parables before the enchanted multitude.
The problem posed by Johannes Weiss in connexion with the teaching of
Jesus is treated by Jülicher only so far as it has a direct interest for
the creative independence of his own religious thought.
Alongside of the parabolic discourses of Mark iv. we have now to place, as
a newly discovered problem, the discourse at the sending out of the Twelve
in Matt. x. Up to the time of Johannes Weiss it had been possible to rest
content with transplanting the gloomy sayings regarding persecutions to
the last period of Jesus’ life; but now there was the further difficulty
to be met that while so hasty a proclamation of the Kingdom of God is
quite reconcilable with an exclusively eschatological character of the
preaching of the Kingdom, the moment this is at all minimised it becomes
unintelligible, not to mention the fact that in this case nothing can be
made of the saying about the immediate coming of the Son of Man in Matt.
x. 23. As though he felt the stern eye of old Reimarus upon him, Bousset
hastens in a footnote to throw overboard the whole report of the mission
of the Twelve as an “obscure and unintelligible tradition.” Not content
with that, he adds: “Perhaps the whole narrative is merely an expansion of
some direction about missionising given by Jesus to the disciples in view
of a later time.” Before, it was only the discourse which was
unhistorical; now it is the whole account of the mission—at least if we
may assume that here, as is usual with theologians of all times, the
author’s real opinion is expressed in the footnote, and his most cherished
opinion of all introduced with “perhaps.” But how much historical material
will remain to modern theologians in the Gospels if they are forced to
abandon it wholesale from their objection to pure eschatology? If all the
pronouncements of this kind to which the representatives of the Marcan
hypothesis have committed themselves were collected together, they would
make a book which would be much more damaging even than that book of
Wrede’s which dropped a bomb into their midst.
A third problem is offered by the saying in Matt. xi. 12, about “the
violent” who, since the time of John the Baptist, “take the Kingdom of
Heaven by force,” which raises fresh difficulties for the exegetical art.
It is true that if art sufficed, we should not have long to wait for the
solution in this case. We should be asked to content ourselves with one or
other of the artificial solutions with which exegetes have been accustomed
from of old to find a way round this difficulty. Usually the saying is
claimed as supporting the “presence” of the Kingdom. This is the line
taken by Wendt, Wernle, and Arnold Meyer.(179) According to the last named
it means: “From the days of John the Baptist it has been possible to get
possession of the Kingdom of God; yea, the righteous are every day earning
it for their own.” But no explanation has heretofore succeeded in making
it in any degree intelligible how Jesus could date the presence of the
Kingdom from the Baptist, whom in the same breath He places outside of the
Kingdom, or why, in order to express so simple an idea, He uses such
entirely unnatural and inappropriate expressions as “rape” and “wrest to
themselves.”
The full difficulties of the passage are first exhibited by Johannes
Weiss.(180) He restores it to its natural sense, according to which it
means that since that time the Kingdom suffers, or is subjected to,
violence, and in order to be able to understand it literally he has to
take it in a condemnatory sense. Following Alexander Schweizer,(181) he
sums up his interpretation in the following sentence: Jesus describes, and
in the form of the description shows His condemnation of, a violent
Zealotistic Messianic movement which has been in progress since the days
of the Baptist.(182) But this explanation again makes Jesus express a very
simple meaning in a very obscure phrase. And what indication is there that
the sense is condemnatory? Where do we hear anything more about a Zealotic
Messianic movement, of which the Baptist formed the starting‐point? His
preaching certainly offered no incentive to such a movement, and Jesus’
attitude towards the Baptist is elsewhere, even in Jerusalem, entirely one
of approval. Moreover, a condemnatory saying of this kind would not have
been closed with the distinctive formula: “He that hath ears to hear let
him hear” (Matt. xi. 15), which elsewhere, cf. Mark iv. 9, indicates a
mystery.
We must, therefore, accept the conclusion that we really do not understand
the saying, that we “have not ears to hear it,” that we do not know
sufficiently well the essential character of the Kingdom of God, to
understand why Jesus describes the coming of the Kingdom as a doing‐
violence‐to‐it, which has been in progress since the days of the Baptist,
especially as the hearers themselves do not seem to have cared, or been
able, to understand what was the connexion of the coming with the
violence; nor do we know why He expects them to understand how the Baptist
is identical with Elias.
But the problem which became most prominent of all the new problems raised
by eschatology, was the question concerning the Son of Man. It had become
a dogma of theology that Jesus used the term Son of Man to veil His
Messiahship; that is to say, every theologian found in this term whatever
meaning he attached to the Messiahship of Jesus, the human, humble,
ethical, unpolitical, unapocalyptic, or whatever other character was held
to be appropriate to the orthodox “transformed” Messiahship. The Danielic
Son of Man entered into the conception only so far as it could do so
without endangering the other characteristics. Confronted with the
Similitudes of Enoch, theologians fell back upon the expedient of assuming
them to be spurious, or at least worked‐over in a Christian sense in the
Son of Man passages, just as the older history of dogma got rid of the
Ignatian letters, of which it could make nothing, by denying their
genuineness. But once the Jewish eschatology was seriously applied to the
explanation of the Son of Man conception, all was changed. A new dilemma
presented itself; either Jesus used the expression, and used it in a
purely Jewish apocalyptic sense, or He did not use it at all.
Although Baldensperger did not state the dilemma in its full trenchancy,
Hilgenfeld thought it necessary to defend Jesus against the suspicion of
having borrowed His system of thought and His self‐designation from Jewish
Apocalypses.(183) Orello Cone, too, will not admit that the expression Son
of Man has only apocalyptic suggestion in the mouth of Jesus, but will
have it interpreted according to Mark ii. 10 and 28, where His pure
humanity is the idea which is emphasised.(184) Oort holds, more logically,
that Jesus did not use it, but that the disciples took the expression from
“the Gospel” and put it into the mouth of Jesus.(185)
Johannes Weiss formulated the problem clearly, and proposed that, with the
exception of the two passages where Son of Man means man in general, only
those should be recognised in which the significance attached to the term
in Daniel and the Apocalypses is demanded by the context. By so doing he
set theology a problem calculated to keep it occupied for many years. Not
many indeed at first recognised the problem. Charles, however, meets it in
a bold fashion, proposing to regard the Son of Man, in Jesus’ usage of the
title, as a conception in which the Messiah of the Book of Enoch and the
Servant of the Lord in Isaiah are united into one.(186) Most writers,
however, did not free themselves from inconsistencies. They wanted at one
and the same time to make the apocalyptic element dominant in the
expression, and to hold that Jesus could not have taken the conception
over unaltered, but must have transformed it in some way. These
inconsistencies necessarily result from the assumption of Weiss’s
opponents that Jesus intended to designate Himself as Messiah in the
actual present. For since the expression Son of Man has in itself only an
apocalyptic sense referring to the future, they had to invent another
sense applicable to the present, which Jesus might have inserted into it.
In all these learned discussions of the title Son of Man this operation is
assumed to have been performed.
According to Bousset, Jesus created, and embodied in this term, a new form
of the Messianic ideal which united the super‐earthly with the human and
lowly. In any case, he thinks, the term has a meaning applicable in this
present world. Jesus uses it at once to conceal and to suggest His
Messianic dignity. How conscious Bousset, nevertheless, is of the
difficulty is evident from the fact that in discussing the meaning of the
title he remarks that the Messianic significance must have been of
subordinate importance in the estimation of Jesus, and cannot have formed
the basis of His actions, otherwise He would have laid more stress upon it
in His preaching. As if the term Son of Man had not meant for His
contemporaries all He needed to say!
Bousset’s essay on Jewish Apocalyptic,(187) published in 1903, seeks the
solution in a rather different direction, by postponing, namely, to the
very last possible moment the adoption of this self‐designation. “In all
probability Jesus in a few isolated sayings towards the close of His life
hit upon this title Son of Man as a means of expressing, in the face of
the thought of defeat and death, which forced itself upon Him, His
confidence in the abiding victory of His person and His cause.” If this is
so, the emphasis must be principally on the triumphant apocalyptic aspects
of the title.
Even this belated adoption of the title Son of Man is more than Brandt is
willing to admit, and he holds it to be improbable that Jesus used the
expression at all. It would be more natural, he thinks, to suppose that
the Evangelist Mark introduced this self‐designation, as he introduced so
much else, into the Gospel on the ground of the figurative apocalyptic
discourses in the Gospel.
Just when ingenuity appeared to have exhausted itself in attempts to solve
the most difficult of the problems raised by the eschatological school,
the historical discussion suddenly seemed about to be rendered objectless.
Philology entered a _caveat_. In 1896 appeared Lietzmann’s essay upon “The
Son of Man,” which consisted of an investigation of the linguistic basis
of the enigmatic self‐designation.
XVII. QUESTIONS REGARDING THE ARAMAIC LANGUAGE, RABBINIC PARALLELS, AND
BUDDHISTIC INFLUENCE
_Arnold Meyer._ Jesu Muttersprache. (The Mother Tongue of Jesus.)
Leipzig, 1896. 166 pp.
_Hans Lietzmann._ Der Menschensohn. Ein Beitrag zur
neutestamentlichen Theologie. (The Son of Man. A Contribution to
New Testament Theology.) Freiburg, 1896. 95 pp.
_J. Wellhausen._ Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte. (History
of Israel and the Jews.) 3rd ed., 1897; 4th ed., 1901. 394 pp.
_Gustaf Dalman._ Grammatik des jüdisch‐palästinensischen
Aramäisch. (Grammar of Jewish‐Palestinian Aramaic.) Leipzig, 1894.
Die Worte Jesu. Mit Berücksichtigung des nachkanonischen jüdischen
Schrifttums und der aramäischen Sprache. (The Sayings of Jesus
considered in connexion with the post‐canonical Jewish writings
and the Aramaic Language.) I. Introduction and certain leading
conceptions: with an appendix on Messianic texts. Leipzig, 1898.
309 pp.
_A. Wünsche._ Neue Beiträge zur Erläuterung der Evangelien aus
Talmud und Midrasch. (New Contributions to the Explanation of the
Gospels, from Talmud and Midrash.) Göttingen, 1878. 566 pp.
_Ferdinand Weber._ System der altsynagogalen palästinensischen
Theologie. (System of Theology of the Ancient Palestinian
Synagogue.) Leipzig, 1880. 399 pp. 2nd ed., 1897.
_Rudolf Seydel._ Das Evangelium Jesu in seinen Verhältnissen zur
Buddha‐Sage und Buddha‐Lehre. (The Gospel of Jesus in its
relations to the Buddha‐Legend and the Teaching of Buddha.)
Leipzig, 1882. 337 pp. Die Buddha‐Legende und das Leben Jesu nach
den Evangelien. Erneute Prüfung ihres gegenseitigen Verhältnisses.
(The Buddha‐Legend and the Life of Jesus in the Gospels. A New
Examination of their Mutual Relations.) 2nd ed., 1897. 129 pp.
Only since the appearance of Dalman’s Grammar of Jewish Palestinian
Aramaic in 1894 have we really known what was the dialect in which the
Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount were spoken. This work closes a
discussion which had been proceeding for centuries on a line parallel to
that of theology proper, and which, according to the clear description of
Arnold Meyer, ran its course somewhat as follows.(188)
The question regarding the language spoken by Jesus had been vigorously
discussed in the sixteenth century. Up till that time no one had known
what to make of the tradition recorded by Eusebius that the speech of the
apostles had been “Syrian” since the distinction between Syrian, Hebrew,
and “Chaldee” was not understood and all three designations were used
indiscriminately. Light was first thrown upon the question by Joseph
Justus Scaliger († 1609). In the year 1555, Joh. Alb. Widmanstadt,
Chancellor of Ferdinand I., had published the Syriac translation of the
Bible in fulfilment of the wishes of an old scholar of Bologna, Theseus
Ambrosius, who had left him the manuscript as a sacred legacy. He himself
and his contemporaries believed that in this they had the Gospel in the
mother‐tongue of Jesus, until Scaliger, in one of his letters, gave a
clear sketch of the Syrian dialects, distinguished Syriac from Chaldee,
and further drew a distinction between the Babylonian Chaldee and Jewish
Chaldee of the Targums, and in the language of the Targums itself
distinguished an earlier from a later stratum. The apostles spoke,
according to Scaliger, a Galilaean dialect of Chaldaic, or according to
the more correct nomenclature introduced later, following a suggestion of
Scaliger’s, a dialect of Aramaic, and, in addition to that, the Syriac of
Antioch. Next, Hugo Grotius put in a strong plea for a distinction between
Jewish and Antiochian Syriac. Into the confusion caused at that time by
the use of the term “Hebrew” some order was introduced by the Leyden
Calvinistic professor Claude Saumaise, who, writing in French, emphasised
the point that the New Testament, and the Early Fathers, when they speak
of Hebrew, mean Syriac, since Hebrew had become completely unknown to the
Jews of that period. Brian Walton, the editor of the London polyglot,
which was completed in 1657, supposed that the dialect of Onkelos and
Jonathan was the language of Jesus, being under the impression that both
these Targums were written in the time of Jesus.
The growing knowledge of the distinction between Hebrew and Aramaic did
not prevent the Vienna Jesuit Inchofer († 1648) from maintaining that
Jesus spoke—Latin! The Lord cannot have used any other language upon
earth, since this is the language of the saints in heaven. On the
Protestant side, Vossius, opposing Richard Simon, endeavoured to establish
the thesis that Greek was the language of Jesus, being partly inspired by
the apologetic purpose of preventing the authenticity of the discourses
and sayings of Jesus from being weakened by supposing them to have been
translated from Aramaic into Greek, but also rightly recognising the
importance which the Greek language must have assumed at that time in
northern Palestine, through which there passed such important trade
routes.
This view was brought up again by the Neapolitan legal scholar, Dominicus
Diodati, in his book _De Christo Graece loquente_, 1767, who added some
interesting material concerning the importance of the Greek language at
the period and in the native district of Jesus. But five years later, in
1772, this view was thoroughly refuted by Giambernardo de Rossi,(189) who
argued convincingly that among a people so separate and so conservative as
the Jews the native language cannot possibly have been wholly driven out.
The apostles wrote Greek for the sake of foreign readers. In the year
1792, Johann Adrian Bolten, “first collegiate pastor at the principal
church in Altona” († 1807), made the first attempt to re‐translate the
sayings of Jesus into the original tongue.(190)
The certainly original Greek of the Epistles and the Johannine literature
was a strong argument against the attempt to recognise no language save
Aramaic as known to Jesus and His disciples. Paulus the rationalist,
therefore, sought a middle path, and explained that while the Aramaic
dialect was indeed the native language of Jesus, Greek had become so
generally current among the population of Galilee, and still more of
Jerusalem, that the founders of Christianity could use this language when
they found it needful to do so. His Catholic contemporary, Hug, came to a
similar conclusion.
In the course of the nineteenth century Aramaic—known down to the time of
Michaelis as “Chaldee”(191)—was more thoroughly studied. The various
branches of this language and the history of its progress became more or
less clearly recognisable. Kautzsch’s grammar of Biblical Aramaic(192)
(1884) and Dalman’s(193) work embody the result of these studies. “The
Aramaic language,” explains Meyer, “is a branch of the North Semitic, the
linguistic stock to which also belong the Assyrio‐Babylonian language in
the East, and the Canaanitish languages, including Hebrew, in the West,
while the South Semitic languages—the Arabic and Aethiopic—form a group by
themselves.” The users of these languages, the Aramaeans, were seated in
historic times between the Babylonians and Canaanites, the area of their
distribution extending from the foot of Lebanon and Hermon in a north‐
easterly direction as far as Mesopotamia, where “Aram of the two rivers”
forms their easternmost province. Their immigration into these regions
forms the third epoch of the Semitic migrations, which probably lasted
from 1600 B.C. down to 600.
The Aramaic states had no great stability. The most important of them was
the kingdom of Damascus, which at a certain period was so dangerous an
enemy to northern Israel. In the end, however, the Aramaean dynasties were
crushed, like the two Israelitish kingdoms, between the upper and nether
millstones of Babylon and Egypt. In the time of the successors of
Alexander, there arose in these regions the Syrian kingdom; which in turn
gave place to the Roman power.
But linguistically the Aramaeans conquered the whole of Western Asia. In
the course of the first millennium B.C. Aramaic became the language of
commerce and diplomacy, as Babylonian had been during the second. It was
only the rise of Greek as a universal language which put a term to these
conquests of the Aramaic.
In the year 701 B.C. Aramaic had not yet penetrated to Judaea. When the
_rabshakeh_ (officer) sent by Sennacherib addressed the envoys of Hezekiah
in Hebrew, they begged him to speak Aramaic in order that the men upon the
wall might not understand.(194) For the post‐exilic period the Aramaic
edicts in the Book of Ezra and inscriptions on Persian coins show that
throughout wide districts of the new empire Aramaic had made good its
position as the language of common intercourse. Its domain extended from
the Euxine southwards as far as Egypt, and even into Egypt itself. Samaria
and the Hauran adopted it. Only the Greek towns and Phoenicia resisted.
The influence of Aramaic upon Jewish literature begins to be noticeable
about the year 600. Jeremiah and Ezekiel, writing in a foreign land in an
Aramaic environment, are the first witnesses to its supremacy. In the
northern part of the country, owing to the immigration of foreign
colonists after the destruction of the northern kingdom, it had already
gained a hold upon the common people. In the Book of Daniel, written in
the year 167 B.C., the Hebrew and Aramaic languages alternate. Perhaps,
indeed, we ought to assume an Aramaic ground‐document as the basis of this
work.
At what time Aramaic became the common popular speech in the post‐exilic
community we cannot exactly discover. Under Nehemiah “Judaean,” that is to
say, Hebrew, was still spoken in Jerusalem; in the time of the Maccabees
Aramaic seems to have wholly driven out the ancient national language.
Evidence for this is to be found in the occurrence of Aramaic passages in
the Talmud, from which it is evident that the Rabbis used this language in
the religious instruction of the people. The provision that the text,
after being read in Hebrew, should be interpreted to the people, may quite
well reach back into the time of Jesus. The first evidence for the
practice is in the Mishna, about A.D. 150.
In the time of Jesus three languages met in Galilee—Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Greek. In what relation they stood to each other we do not know, since
Josephus, the only writer who could have told us, fails us in this point,
as he so often does elsewhere. He informs us that when acting as an envoy
of Titus he spoke to the people of Jerusalem in the ancestral language,
and the word he uses is ἑβραΐζων. But the very thing we should like to
know—whether, namely, this language was Aramaic or Hebrew, he does not
tell us. We are left in the same uncertainty by the passage in Acts (xxii.
2) which says that Paul spoke to the people Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ, thereby
gaining their attention, for there is no indication whether the language
was Aramaic or Hebrew. For the writers of that period “Hebrew” simply
means Jewish.
We cannot, therefore, be sure in what relation the ancient Hebrew sacred
language and the Aramaic of ordinary intercourse stood to one another as
regards religious writings and religious instruction. Did the ordinary man
merely learn by heart a few verses, prayers, and psalms? Or was Hebrew, as
the language of the cultus, also current in wider circles?
Dalman gives a number of examples of works written in Hebrew in the
century which witnessed the birth of Christ: “A Hebrew original,” he says,
“must be assumed in the case of the main part of the Aethiopic book of
Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, the Apocalypse of Baruch, Fourth Ezra, the
Book of Jubilees, and for the Jewish ground‐document of the Testament of
the Twelve Patriarchs, of which M. Gaster has discovered a Hebrew
manuscript.” The first Book of Maccabees, too, seems to him to go back to
a Hebrew original. Nevertheless, he holds it to be impossible that
synagogue discourses intended for the people can have been delivered in
Hebrew, or that Jesus taught otherwise than in Aramaic.
Franz Delitzsch’s view, on the other hand, is that Jesus and the disciples
taught in Hebrew; and that is the opinion of Resch also. Adolf
Neubauer,(195) Reader in Rabbinical Hebrew at Oxford, attempted a
compromise. It was certainly the case, he thought, that in the time of
Jesus Aramaic was spoken throughout Palestine; but whereas in Galilee this
language had an exclusive dominance, and the knowledge of Hebrew was
confined to texts learned by heart, in Jerusalem Hebrew had renewed itself
by the adoption of Aramaic elements, and a kind of Neo‐Hebraic language
had arisen. This solution at least testifies to the difficulty of the
question. The fact is that from the language of the New Testament it is
often difficult to make out whether the underlying words are Hebrew or
Aramaic. Thus, for instance, Dalman remarks—with reference to the question
whether the statement of Papias refers to a Hebrew or an Aramaic
“primitive Matthew”—that it is difficult “to produce proof of an Aramaic
as distinct from a Hebrew source, because it is often the case in Biblical
Hebrew, and still more often in the idiom of the Mishna, that the same
expressions and forms of phrase are possible as in Aramaic.”
Delitzsch’s(196) “retranslation” of the New Testament into Hebrew is
therefore historically justified.
But the question about the language of Jesus must not be confused with the
problem of the original language of the primitive form of Matthew’s
Gospel. In reference to the latter, Dalman thinks that the tradition of
the Early Church regarding an earlier Aramaic form of the Gospel must be
considered as lacking confirmation. “It is only in the case of Jesus’ own
words that an Aramaic original form is undeniable, and it is only for
these that Early Church tradition asserted the existence of a Semitic
documentary source. It is, therefore, the right and duty of Biblical
scholarship to investigate the form which the sayings of Jesus must have
taken in the original and the sense which in this form they must have
conveyed to Jewish hearers.”
That Jesus spoke Aramaic, Meyer has shown by collecting all the Aramaic
expressions which occur in His preaching.(197) He considers the “Abba” in
Gethsemane decisive, for this means that Jesus prayed in Aramaic in His
hour of bitterest need. Again the cry from the cross was, according to
Mark xv. 34, also Aramaic: Ἑλωΐ, ἑλωΐ, λαμὰ σαβαχθανεὶ. The Old Testament
was therefore most familiar to Him in an Aramaic translation, otherwise
this form of the Psalm passage would not have come to His lips at the
moment of death.
It is a quite independent question whether Jesus could speak, or at least
understand, Greek. According to Josephus the knowledge of Greek in
Palestine at that time, even among educated Jews, can only have been of a
quite elementary character. He himself had to learn it laboriously in
order to be able to write in it. His “Jewish War” was first written in
Aramaic for his fellow‐countrymen; the Greek edition was, by his own
avowal, not intended for them. In another passage, it is true, he seems to
imply a knowledge of, and interest in, foreign languages even among people
in humble life.(198)
An analogy, which is in many respects very close, to the linguistic
conditions in Palestine was offered by Alsace under French rule in the
’sixties of the nineteenth century. Here, too, three languages met in the
same district. The High‐German of Luther’s translation of the Bible was
the language of the Church, the Alemannic dialect was the usual speech of
the people, while French was the language of culture and of government
administration. This remarkable analogy would be rather in favour—if
analogy can be admitted to have any weight in the question—of Delitzsch
and Resch, since the Biblical High‐German, although never spoken in social
intercourse, strongly influenced the Alemannic dialect—although this was,
on the other hand, quite uninfluenced by Modern High‐German—but did not
allow it to penetrate into Church or school, there maintaining for itself
an undivided sway. French made some progress, but only in certain circles,
and remained entirely excluded from the religious sphere. The Alsatians of
the poorer classes who could at that time have repeated the Lord’s Prayer
or the Beatitudes in French would not have been difficult to count. The
Lutheran translation still holds its own to some extent against the French
translation with the older generation of the Alsatian community in Paris,
which has in other respects become completely French—so strong is the
influence of a former ecclesiastical language even among those who have
left their native home. There is one factor, however, which is not
represented in the analogy; the influence of the Greek‐speaking Jews of
the Diaspora, who gathered to the Feasts at Jerusalem, upon the extension
of the Greek language in the mother‐country.
Jesus, then, spoke Galilaean Aramaic, which is known to us as a separate
dialect from writings of the fourth to the seventh century. For the
Judaean dialect we have more and earlier evidence. We have literary
monuments in it from the first to the third century. “It is very
probable,” Dalman thinks, “that the popular dialect of Northern Palestine,
after the final fall of the Judaean centre of the Aramaic‐Jewish culture,
which followed on the Bar‐Cochba rising, spread over almost the whole of
Palestine.”
The retranslations into Aramaic are therefore justified. After J. A.
Bolten’s attempt had remained for nearly a hundred years the only one of
its kind, the experiment has been renewed in our own time by J. T.
Marshall, E. Nestle, J. Wellhausen, Arnold Meyer, and Gustaf Dalman; in
the case of Marshall and Nestle with the subsidiary purpose of
endeavouring to prove the existence of an Aramaic documentary source.
These retranslations first attracted their due meed of attention from
theologians in connexion with the Son‐of‐Man question. Rarely, if ever,
have theologians experienced such a surprise as was sprung upon them by
Hans Lietzmann’s essay in 1896.(199) Jesus had never, so ran the thesis of
the Bonn candidate in theology, applied to Himself the title Son of Man,
because in the Aramaic the title did not exist, and on linguistic grounds
could not have existed. In the language which He used, בן אנש was merely a
periphrasis for “a man.” That Jesus meant Himself when He spoke of the Son
of Man, none of His hearers could have suspected.
Lietzmann had not been without predecessors.(200) Gilbert Génébrard, who
died Archbishop of Aix as long ago as 1597, had emphasised the point that
the term Son of Man should not be interpreted with reference solely to
Christ, but to the race of mankind. Hugo Grotius maintained the same
position even more emphatically. With a quite modern one‐sidedness, Paulus
the rationalist maintained in his commentaries and in his Life of Jesus
that according to Ezek. ii. 1 “Barnash” meant man in general. Jesus, he
thought, whenever He used the expression the Son of Man, pointed to
Himself and thus gave it the sense of “this man.” In taking this line he
gives up the general reference to mankind as a whole for which Mark ii. 28
is generally cited as the classical passage. The suggestion that the term
Son of Man in its apocalyptic signification was first attributed to Jesus
at a later time and that the passages where it occurs in this sense are
therefore suspicious, was first put forward by Fr. Aug. Fritzsche. He
hoped in this way to get rid of Matt. x. 23. De Lagarde, like Paulus,
emphatically asserted that Son of Man only meant man. But instead of the
clumsy explanation of the rationalist he gave another and a more pleasing
one, namely, that Jesus by choosing this title designed to ennoble
mankind. Wellhausen, in his “History of Israel and of the Jews” (1894),
remarked on it as strange that Jesus should have called Himself “the Man.”
B. D. Eerdmans, taking the apocalyptic significance of the term as his
starting‐point, attempted to carry out consistently the theory of the
later interpolation of this title into the sayings of Jesus.(201)
Thus Lietzmann had predecessors; but they were not so in any real sense.
They had either started out from the Marcan passage where the Son of Man
is described as the Lord of the Sabbath, and endeavoured arbitrarily to
interpret all the Son‐of‐Man passages in the same sense; or they assumed
without sufficient grounds that the title Son of Man was a later
interpolation. The new idea consisted in combining the two attempts, and
declaring the passages about the Son of Man to be linguistically and
historically impossible, seeing that, on linguistic grounds, “son of man”
means “man.”
Arnold Meyer and Wellhausen expressed themselves in the same sense as
Lietzmann. The passages where Jesus uses the expression in an unmistakably
Messianic sense are, according to them, to be put down to the account of
Early Christian theology. The only passages which in their opinion are
historically tenable are the two or three in which the expression denotes
man in general, or is equivalent to the simple “I.” These latter were felt
to be a difficulty by the Church when it came to think in Greek, since
this way of speaking of oneself was strange to them; consequently the
expression appeared to them deliberately enigmatic and only capable of
being interpreted in the sense which it bears in Daniel. The Son‐of‐Man
conception, argued Lietzmann, when he again approached the question two
years later, had arisen in a Hellenistic environment,(202) on the basis of
Dan. vii. 13; N. Schmidt,(203) too, saw in the apocalyptic Bar‐Nasha
passages which follow the revelation of the Messiahship at Caesarea
Philippi an interpolation from the later apocalyptic theology. On the
other hand, P. Schmiedel still wished to make it a Messianic designation,
and to take it as being historical in this sense even in passages in which
the term man “gave a possible sense.”(204) H. Gunkel thought that it was
possible to translate Bar‐Nasha simply by “man,” and nevertheless hold to
the historicity of the expression as a self‐designation of Jesus. Jesus,
he suggests, had borrowed this enigmatic term, which goes back to Dan.
vii. 13, from the mystical apocalyptic literature, meaning thereby to
indicate that He was the Man of God in contrast to the Man of Sin.(205)
Holtzmann felt a kind of relief in handing over to the philologists the
obstinate problem which since the time of Baldensperger and Weiss had
caused so much trouble to theologians, and wanted to postpone the
historical discussion until the Aramaic experts had settled the linguistic
question. That happened sooner than was expected. In 1898 Dalman declared
in his epoch‐making work (_Die Worte Jesu_) that he could not admit the
linguistic objections to the use of the expression Son of Man by Jesus.
“Biblical Aramaic,” he says, “does not differ in this respect from Hebrew.
The simple אנש and not בן אנש is the term for man.”... It was only later
that the Jewish‐Galilaean dialect, like the Palestinian‐Christian dialect,
used בן אנש for man, though in both idioms the simple אנש occurs in the
sense of “some one.” “In view of the whole facts of the case,” he
continues, “what has to be said is that Jewish‐Palestinian Aramaic of the
earlier period used אנש for ‘man,’ and occasionally to designate a
plurality of men makes use of the expression בני אנשא. The singular בן אנש
was not current, and was only used in imitation of the Hebrew text of the
Bible, where בן אדם belongs to the poetic diction, and is, moreover, not
of very frequent occurrence.” “It is,” he says elsewhere, “by no means a
sign of a sound historical method, instead of working patiently at the
solution of the problem, to hasten like Oort and Lietzmann to the
conclusion that the absence of the expression in the New Testament
Epistles is a proof that Jesus did not use it either, but that there was
somewhere or other a Hellenistic community in the Early Church which had a
predilection for this name, and often made Jesus speak of Himself in the
Gospel narrative in the third person, in order to find an opportunity of
bringing it in.”
So the oxen turned back with the ark into the land of the Philistines. It
was a case of returning to the starting‐point and deciding on historical
grounds in what sense Jesus had used the expression.(206) But the
possibilities were reduced by the way in which Lietzmann had posed the
problem, since the interpretations according to which Jesus had used it in
a veiled ethical Messianic sense, to indicate the ethical and spiritual
transformation of all the eschatological conceptions, were now manifestly
incapable of offering any convincing argument against the radical denial
of the use of the expression. Baldensperger rightly remarked in a review
of the whole discussion that the question which was ultimately at stake in
the combat over the title Son of Man was the question whether Jesus was
the Messiah or no, and that Dalman, by his proof of its linguistic
possibility, had saved the Messiahship of Jesus.(207)
But what kind of Messiahship? Is it any other kind than the future
Messiahship of the apocalyptic Son of Man which Johannes Weiss had
asserted? Did Jesus mean anything different by the Son of Man from that
which was meant by the apocalyptic writers? To put it otherwise: behind
the Son‐of‐Man problem there lies the general question whether Jesus can
have described Himself as a present Messiah; for the fundamental
difficulty is that He, a man upon earth, should give Himself out to be the
Son of Man, and at the same time apparently give to that title a quite
different sense from that which it previously possessed.
The champion of the linguistic possibility of this self‐designation made
the last serious attempt to render the transformation of the conception
historically conceivable. He argues that Jesus cannot have used it as a
mere meaningless expression, a periphrasis for the simple I.(208) On the
other hand, the term cannot have been understood by the disciples as an
exalted title, or at least only in the sense that the title indicative of
exaltation is paradoxically connected with the title indicative of
humility. “We shall be justified in saying, that, for the Synoptic
Evangelists, ‘Man’s Son’ was no title of honour for the Messiah, but—as it
must necessarily appear to a Hellenist—a veiling of His Messiahship under
a name which emphasises the humanity of its bearer.” For them it was not
the references to the sufferings of “Man’s Son” that were paradoxical, but
the references to His exaltation: that “Man’s Son” should be put to death
is not wonderful; what is wonderful is His “coming again upon the clouds
of heaven.”
If Jesus called Himself the Son of Man, the only conclusion which could be
drawn by those that heard Him was, “that for some reason or other He
desired to describe Himself as a Man _par excellence_.” There is no reason
to think of the Heavenly Son of Man of the Similitudes of Enoch and Fourth
Ezra; that conception could hardly be present to the minds of His
auditors.
“How was one who was now walking upon earth, to come from heaven? He would
have needed first to be translated thither. One who had died or been rapt
away from earth might be brought back to earth again in this way, or a
being who had never before been upon earth, might be conceived as
descending thither.”
But if, on the one hand, the title Son of Man was not to be understood
apart from the reference to the passage in Daniel, while on the other
Jesus so designated Himself as a man actually present upon earth, “what
was really implied was that He was the man in whom Daniel’s vision of ‘one
like unto a Son of Man’ was being fulfilled.” He could not certainly
expect from His hearers a complete understanding of the self‐designation.
“We are doubtless justified in saying that in using it, He intentionally
offered them an enigma which challenged further reflection upon His
Person.”
According to Peter’s confession the name was intelligible to the disciples
as coming from Dan. vii. 13, and obviously indicating Him who was destined
to the sovereignty of the world. Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man, “not
as meaning the lowly one, but as a scion of the human race with its human
weakness, whom nevertheless God will make Lord of the world; and it is
very probable that Jesus found the Son of Man of Dan. vii. in Ps. viii. 5
ff. also.” Sayings regarding humiliation and suffering could be attached
to the title just as well as references to exaltation. For since the
“Child of Man” has placed Himself upon the throne of God, He is in reality
no longer a mere man, but ruler over heaven and earth, “the Lord.”
This attempt of Dalman’s has the same significance in regard to the
question of the Messiahship as Bousset’s had for the ethical question.
Just as in Bousset’s view the Kingdom of God was, in a paradoxical way,
after all proclaimed as present, so here the self‐designation “Son of Man”
is retained by a paradox as conveying the sense of a present Messiahship.
But the documents do not give any support to this assumption; on the
contrary they contradict it at every point. According to Dalman it was not
the predictions of the passion of the Son of Man which sounded paradoxical
to the disciples, but the predictions of His exaltation. But we are
distinctly told that when He spoke of His passion they did not understand
the saying. The predictions of His exaltation, however, they understood so
well that without troubling themselves further about the predictions of
the sufferings, they began to dispute who should be greatest in the
Kingdom of Heaven, and who should have his throne closest to the Son of
Man. And if it is once admitted that Jesus took the designation from
Daniel, what ground is there for asserting that the purely eschatological
transcendental significance which the term had taken on in the Similitudes
of Enoch and retains in Fourth Ezra had no existence for Jesus? Thus, by a
long round‐about, criticism has come back to Johannes Weiss.(209) His
eschatological solution of the Son‐of‐Man question—the elements of which
are to be found in Strauss’s first Life of Jesus—is the only possible one.
Dalman expresses the same idea in the form of a question. “How could one
who was actually walking the earth come down from heaven? He would have
needed first to be translated thither. One who had died or been rapt away
from earth might possibly be brought back to earth in this way.” Having
reached this point we have only to observe further that Jesus, from the
“confession of Peter” onwards, always speaks of the Son of Man in
connexion with death and resurrection. That is to say, that once the
disciples know in what relation He stands to the Son of Man, He uses this
title to suggest the manner of His return: as the sequel to His death and
resurrection He will return to the world again as a superhuman
Personality. Thus the purely transcendental use of the term suggested by
Dalman as a possibility turns out to be the historical reality.
Broadly speaking, therefore, the Son‐of‐Man problem is both historically
solvable and has been solved. The authentic passages are those in which
the expression is used in that apocalyptic sense which goes back to
Daniel. But we have to distinguish two different uses of the term
according to the degree of knowledge assumed in the hearers. If the secret
of Jesus is unknown to them, then in that case they understand simply that
Jesus is speaking of the “Son of Man” and His coming without having any
suspicion that He and the Son of Man have any connexion. It would be thus,
for instance, when in sending out the disciples in Matt. x. 23, He
announced the imminence of the appearing of the Son of Man; or when He
pictured the judgment which the Son of Man would hold (Matt. xxv. 31‐46),
if we may imagine it to have been spoken to the people at Jerusalem. Or,
on the other hand, the secret is known to the hearers. In that case they
understand that the term Son of Man points to the position to which He
Himself is to be exalted when the present era passes into the age to come.
It was thus, no doubt, in the case of the disciples at Caesarea Philippi,
and of the High Priest to whom Jesus, after answering his demand with the
simple “Yea” (Mark xiv. 62), goes on immediately to speak of the
exaltation of the Son of Man to the right hand of God, and of His coming
upon the clouds of heaven.
Jesus did not, therefore, veil His Messiahship by using the expression Son
of Man, much less did He transform it, but He used the expression to
refer, in the only possible way, to His Messianic office as destined to be
realised at His “coming,” and did so in such a manner that only the
initiated understood that He was speaking of His own coming, while others
understood Him as referring to the coming of a Son of Man who was other
than Himself.
The passages where the title has not this apocalyptic reference, or where,
previous to the incident at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus in speaking to the
disciples equates the Son of Man with His own “ego,” are to be explained
as of literary origin. This set of secondary occurrences of the title has
nothing to do with “Early Church theology”; it is merely a question of
phenomena of translation and tradition. In the saying about the Sabbath in
Mark ii. 28, and perhaps also in the saying about the right to forgive
sins in Mark ii. 10, Son of Man doubtless stood in the original in the
general sense of “man,” but was later, certainly by our Evangelists,
understood as referring to Jesus as the Son of Man. In other passages
tradition, following the analogy of those passages in which the title is
authentic, put in place of the simple I—expressed in the Aramaic by “the
man”—the self‐designation “Son of Man,” as we can clearly show by
comparing Matt. xvi. 13, “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” with
Mark viii. 27, “Who do men say that I am?”
Three passages call for special discussion. In the statement that a man
may be forgiven for blasphemy against the Son of Man, but not for
blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, in Matt. xii. 32, the “Son of Man” may
be authentic. But of course it would not, even in that case, give any hint
that “Son of Man designates the Messiah in His humiliation” as Dalman
wished to infer from the passage, but would mean that Jesus was speaking
of the Son of Man, here as elsewhere, in the third person without
reference to Himself, and was thinking of a contemptuous denial of the
Parousia such as might have been uttered by a Sadducee. But if we take
into account the parallel in Mark iii. 28 and 29, where blasphemy against
the Holy Ghost is spoken of without any mention of blasphemy against the
Son of Man, it seems more natural to take the mention of the Son of Man as
a secondary interpolation, derived from the same line of tradition,
perhaps from the same hand, as the “Son of Man” in the question to the
disciples at Caesarea Philippi.
The two other sayings, the one about the Son of Man “who hath not where to
lay His head,” Matt. viii. 20, and that about the Son of Man who must
submit to the reproach of being a glutton and a wine‐bibber, Matt. xi. 19,
belong together. If we assume it to be possible, in conformity with the
saying about the purpose of the parables in Mark iv. 11 and 12, that Jesus
sometimes spoke words which He did not intend to be understood, we may—if
we are unwilling to accept the supposition of a later periphrasis for the
ego, which would certainly be the most natural explanation—recognise in
these sayings two obscure declarations regarding the Son of Man. They
would then be supposed to have meant in the original form, which is no
longer clearly recognisable, that the Son of Man would in some way justify
the conduct of Jesus of Nazareth. But the way in which this idea is
expressed was not such as to make it easy for His hearers to identify Him
with the Son of Man. Moreover, it was for them a conception impossible to
realise, since Jesus was a natural, and the Son of Man a supernatural,
being; and the eschatological scheme of things had not provided for a man
who at the end of the existing era should hint to others that at the great
transformation of all things He would be manifested as the Son of Man.
This case presented itself only in the course of history, and it created a
preparatory stage of eschatology which does not answer to any traditional
scheme.
That act of the self‐consciousness of Jesus by which He recognised Himself
in His earthly existence as the future Messiah is the act in which
eschatology supremely affirms itself. At the same time, since it brings,
spiritually, that which is to come, into the unaltered present, into the
existing era, it is the end of eschatology. For it is its
“spiritualisation,” a spiritualisation of which the ultimate consequence
was to be that all its “supersensuous” elements were to be realised only
spiritually in the present earthly conditions, and all that is affirmed as
supersensuous in the transcendental sense was to be regarded as only the
ruined remains of an eschatological world‐view. The Messianic secret of
Jesus is the basis of Christianity, since it involves the de‐nationalising
and the spiritualisation of Jewish eschatology.
Yet more. It is the primal fact, the starting‐point, of a process which
manifests itself, indeed, in Christianity, but cannot fully work itself
out even here, of a movement in the direction of inwardness which brings
all religious magnitudes into the one indivisible spiritual present, and
which Christian dogmatic has not ventured to carry to its completion. The
Messianic consciousness of the uniquely great Man of Nazareth sets up a
struggle between the present and the beyond, and introduces that resolute
absorption of the beyond by the present, which in looking back we
recognise as the history of Christianity, and of which we are conscious in
ourselves as the essence of religious progress and experience—a process of
which the end is not yet in sight.
In this sense Jesus did “accept the world” and did stand in conflict with
Judaism. Protestantism was a step—a step on which hung weighty
consequences—in the progress of that “acceptance of the world” which was
constantly developing itself from within. By a mighty revolution which was
in harmony with the spirit of that great primal act of the consciousness
of Jesus, though in opposition to some of the most certain of His sayings,
ethics became world‐accepting. But it will be a mightier revolution still
when the last remaining ruins of the supersensuous other‐worldly system of
thought are swept away in order to clear the site for a new spiritual,
purely real and present world. All the inconsistent compromises and
constructions of modern theology are merely an attempt to stave off the
final expulsion of eschatology from religion, an inevitable but a hopeless
attempt. That proleptic Messianic consciousness of Jesus, which was in
reality the only possible actualisation of the Messianic idea, carries
these consequences with it inexorably and unfailingly. At that last cry
upon the cross the whole eschatological supersensuous world fell in upon
itself in ruins, and there remained as a spiritual reality only that
present spiritual world, bound as it is to sense, which Jesus by His all‐
powerful word had called into being within the world which He contemned.
That last cry, with its despairing abandonment of the eschatological
future, is His real acceptance of the world. The “Son of Man” was buried
in the ruins of the falling eschatological world; there remained alive
only Jesus “the Man.” Thus these two Aramaic synonyms include in
themselves, as in a symbol of reality, all that was to come.
If theology has found it so hard a task to arrive at an historical
comprehension of the secret of this self‐designation, this is due to the
fact that the question is not a purely historical one. In this word there
lies the transformation of a whole system of thought, the inexorable
consequence of the elimination of eschatology from religion. It was only
in this future form, not as actual, that Jesus spoke of His Messiahship.
Modern theology keeps on endeavouring to discover in the title of Son of
Man, which is bound up with the future, a humanised present Messiahship.
It does so in the conviction that the recognition of a purely future
reference in the Messianic consciousness of Jesus would lead in the last
result to a modification of the historic basis of our faith, which has
itself become historical, and therefore true and self‐justifying. The
recognition of the claims of eschatology signifies for our dogmatic a
burning of the boats by which it felt itself able to return at any moment
from the time of Jesus direct to the present.
One point that is worthy of notice in this connexion is the
trustworthiness of the tradition. The Evangelists, writing in Greek, and
the Greek‐speaking Early Church, can hardly have retained an understanding
of the purely eschatological character of that self‐designation of Jesus.
It had become for them merely an indirect method of self‐designation. And
nevertheless the Evangelists, especially Mark, record the sayings of Jesus
in such a way that the original significance and application of the
designation in His mouth is still clearly recognisable, and we are able to
determine with certainty the isolated cases in which this self‐designation
in His discourses is of a secondary origin.
Thus the use of the term Son of Man—which, if we admitted the sweeping
proposal of Lietzmann and Wellhausen to cancel it everywhere as an
interpolation of Greek Early Church theology, would throw doubt on the
whole of the Gospel tradition—becomes a proof of the certainty and
trustworthiness of that tradition. We may, in fact, say that the
progressive recognition of the eschatological character of the teaching
and action of Jesus carries with it a progressive justification of the
Gospel tradition. A series of passages and discourses which had been
endangered because from the modern theological point of view which had
been made the criterion of the tradition they appeared to be without
meaning, are now secured. The stone which the critics rejected has become
the corner‐stone of the tradition.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
If Aramaic scholarship appears in regard to the Son‐of‐Man question among
the opponents of the thorough‐going eschatological view, it takes no other
position in connexion with the retranslations and in the application of
illustrative parallels from the Rabbinic literature.
In looking at the earlier works in this department, one is struck with the
smallness of the result in proportion to the labour expended. The names
that call for mention here are those of John Lightfoot, Christian
Schöttgen, Joh. Gerh. Meuschen, J. Jak. Wettstein, F. Nork, Franz
Delitzsch, Carl Siegfried, and A. Wünsche.(210) But even a work like F.
Weber’s _System der altsynagogalen __ palästinensischen Theologie_,(211)
which does not confine itself to single sayings and thoughts, but aims at
exhibiting the Rabbinic system of thought as a whole, throws, in the main,
but little light on the thoughts of Jesus. The Rabbinic parables supply,
according to Jülicher, but little of value for the explanation of the
parables of Jesus.(212) In this method of discourse, Jesus is so pre‐
eminently original, that any other productions of the Jewish parabolic
literature are like stunted undergrowth beside a great tree; though that
has not prevented His originality from being challenged in this very
department, both in earlier times and at the present. As early as 1648,
Robert Sheringham, of Cambridge,(213) suggested that the parables in Matt.
xx. 1 ff., xxv. 1 ff., and Luke xvi., were derived from Talmudic sources,
an opinion against which J. B. Carpzov, the younger, raised a protest; in
1839, F. Nork asserted, in his work on “Rabbinic Sources and Parallels for
the New Testament Writings,” that the best thoughts in the discourses of
Jesus are to be attributed to His Jewish teachers; in 1880 the Dutch
Rabbi, T. Tal, maintained the thesis that the parables of the New
Testament are all borrowed from the Talmud.(214) Theories of this kind
cannot be refuted, because they lack the foundation necessary to any
theory which is to be capable of being rationally discussed—that of plain
common sense.(215)
We possess, however, really scientific attempts to define more closely the
thoughts of Jesus by the aid of the Rabbinic language and Rabbinic ideas
in the works of Arnold Meyer and Dalman. It cannot indeed be said that the
obscure sayings which form the problem of present‐day exegesis are in all
cases made clearer by them, much as we may admire the comprehensive
knowledge of these scholars. Sometimes, indeed, they become more obscure
than before. According to Meyer, for instance, the question of Jesus
whether His disciples can drink of His cup, and be baptized with His
baptism means, if put back into Aramaic, “Can you drink as bitter a drink
as I; can you eat as sharply salted meat as I?”(216) Nor does Dalman’s
Aramaic retranslation help us much with the saying about the violent who
take the Kingdom of Heaven by force. According to him, it is not spoken of
the faithful, but of the rulers of this world, and refers to the epoch of
the Divine rule which has been introduced by the imprisonment of the
Baptist. No one can violently possess himself of the Divine reign, and
Jesus can therefore only mean that violence is done to it in the person of
its subjects.
On this it must be remarked, that if the saying really means this, it is
about as appropriate to its setting as a rock in the sky. Jesus is not
speaking of the imprisonment of the Baptist. By the days of John the
Baptist He means the time of his public ministry.
It is equally open to question whether in putting that crucial question
regarding the Messiah in Mark xii. 37 He really intended to show, as
Dalman thinks, “that physical descent from David was not of decisive
importance—it did not belong to the essence of the Messiahship.”
But a point in regard to which Dalman’s remarks are of great value for the
reconstruction of the life of Jesus is the entry into Jerusalem. Dalman
thinks that the simple “Hosanna, blessed be he that cometh in the name of
the Lord” (Mark xi. 9) was what the people really shouted in acclamation,
and that the additional words in Mark and Matthew are simply an
interpretative expansion. This acclamation did not itself contain any
Messianic reference. This explains “why the entry into Jerusalem was not
made a count in the charge urged against Him before Pilate.” The events of
“Palm Sunday” only received their distinctively Messianic colour later. It
was not the Messiah, but the prophet and wonder‐worker of Galilee whom the
people hailed with rejoicing and accompanied with invocations of
blessing.(217)
Generally speaking, the value of Dalman’s work lies less in the solutions
which it offers than in the problems which it raises. By its very thorough
discussions it challenges historical theology to test its most cherished
assumptions regarding the teaching of Jesus, and make sure whether they
are really so certain and self‐evident. Thus, in opposition to Schürer, he
denies that the thought of the pre‐existence in heaven of all the good
things belonging to the Kingdom of God was at all generally current in the
Late‐Jewish world of ideas, and thinks that the occasional references(218)
to a pre‐existing Jerusalem, which shall finally be brought down to the
earth, do not suffice to establish the theory. Similarly, he thinks it
doubtful whether Jesus used the terms “this world (age),” “the world (age)
to come” in the eschatological sense which is generally attached to them,
and doubts, on linguistic grounds, whether they can have been used at all.
Even the use of עלם or עולם for “world” cannot be proved. In the pre‐
Christian period there is much reason to doubt its occurrence, though in
later Jewish literature it is frequent. The expression ἐν τῇ παλιγγενεσίᾳ
in Matt. xix. 28, is specifically Greek and cannot be reproduced in either
Hebrew or Aramaic. It is very strange that the use which Jesus makes of
_Amen_ is unknown in the whole of Jewish literature. According to the
proper idiom of the language “אמן is never used to emphasise one’s own
speech, but always with reference to the speech, prayer, benediction,
oath, or curse of another.” Jesus, therefore, if He used the expression in
this sense, must have given it a new meaning as a formula of asseveration,
in place of the oath which He forbade.
All these acute observations are marked by the general tendency which was
observable in the interpretation of the term Son of Man, that is, by the
endeavour so to weaken down the eschatological conceptions of the Kingdom
and the Messiah, that the hypothesis of a making‐present and
spiritualising of these conceptions in the teaching of Jesus might appear
inherently and linguistically possible and natural. The polemic against
the pre‐existent realities of the Kingdom of God is intended to show that
for Jesus the Reign of God is a present benefit, which can be sought
after, given, possessed, and taken. Even before the time of Jesus,
according to Dalman, a tendency had shown itself to lay less emphasis, in
connexion with the hope of the future, upon the national Jewish element.
Jesus forced this element still farther into the background, and gave a
more decided prominence to the purely religious element. “For Him the
reign of God was the Divine power, which from this time onward was
steadily to carry forward the renewal of the world, and also the renewed
world, into which men shall one day enter, which even now offers itself,
and therefore can be grasped and received as a present good.” The
supernatural coming of the Kingdom is only the final stage of the coming
which is now being inwardly spiritually brought about by the preaching of
Jesus. Though He may perhaps have spoken of “this” world and the “world to
come,” these expressions had in His use of them no very special
importance. It is for Him less a question of an antithesis between “then”
and “now,” than of establishing a connexion between them by which the
transition from one to the other is to be effected.
It is the same in regard to Jesus’ consciousness of His Messiahship. “In
Jesus’ view,” says Dalman, “the period before the commencement of the
Reign of God was organically connected with the actual period of His
Reign.” He was the Messiah because He knew Himself to stand in a unique
ethico‐religious relation to God. His Messiahship was not something wholly
incomprehensible to those about Him. If redemption was regarded as being
close at hand, the Messiah must be assumed to be in some sense already
present. Therefore Jesus is both directly and indirectly spoken of as
Messiah.
Thus the most important work in the department of Aramaic scholarship
shows clearly the anti‐eschatological tendency which characterised it from
the beginning. The work of Lietzmann, Meyer, Wellhausen, and Dalman, forms
a distinct episode in the general resistance to eschatology. That Aramaic
scholarship should have taken up a hostile attitude towards the
eschatological system of thought of Jesus lies in the nature of things.
The thoughts which it takes as its standard of comparison were only
reduced to writing long after the period of Jesus, and, moreover, in a
lifeless and distorted form, at a time when the apocalyptic temper no
longer existed as the living counterpoise to the legal righteousness, and
this legal righteousness had allowed only so much of Apocalyptic to
survive as could be brought into direct connexion with it. In fact, the
distance between Jesus’ world of thought and this form of Judaism is as
great as that which separates it from modern ideas. Thus in Dalman
modernising tendencies and Aramaic scholarship were able to combine in
conducting a criticism of the eschatology in the teaching of Jesus in
which the modern man thought the thoughts and the expert in Aramaic
formulated and supported them, yet without being able in the end to make
any impression upon the well‐rounded whole formed by Jesus’ eschatological
preaching of the Kingdom.
Whether Aramaic scholarship will contribute to the investigation of the
life and teaching of Jesus along other lines and in a direct and positive
fashion, only the future can show. But certainly if theologians will give
heed to the question‐marks so acutely placed by Dalman, and recognise it
as one of their first duties to test carefully whether a thought or a
connexion of thought is linguistically or inherently Greek, and only
Greek, in character, they will derive a notable advantage from what has
already been done in the department of Aramaic study.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
But if the service rendered by Aramaic studies has been hitherto mainly
indirect, no success whatever has attended, or seems likely to attend, the
attempt to apply Buddhist ideas to the explanation of the thoughts of
Jesus. It could only indeed appear to have some prospect of success if we
could make up our minds to follow the example of the author of one of the
most recent of fictitious lives of Christ in putting Jesus to school to
the Buddhist priests; in which case the six years which Monsieur Nicolas
Notowitsch allots to this purpose, would certainly be none too much for
the completion of the course.(219) If imagination boggles at this, there
remains no possibility of showing that Buddhist ideas exercised any direct
influence upon Jesus. That Buddhism may have had some kind of influence
upon Late Judaism and thus indirectly upon Jesus is not inherently
impossible, if we are prepared to recognise Buddhistic influence on the
Babylonian and Persian civilisations. But it is unproved, unprovable, and
unthinkable, that Jesus derived the suggestion of the new and creative
ideas which emerge in His teaching from Buddhism. The most that can be
done in this direction is to point to certain analogies. For the parables
of Jesus, Buddhist parallels were suggested by Renan and Havet.(220)
How little these analogies mean in the eyes of a cautious observer is
evident from the attitude which Max Müller took up towards the question.
“That there are startling coincidences between Buddhism and Christianity,”
he remarks in one passage,(221) “cannot be denied; and it must likewise be
admitted that Buddhism existed at least four hundred years before
Christianity. I go even further and say that I should be extremely
grateful if anybody would point out to me the historical channels through
which Buddhism had influenced early Christianity. I have been looking for
such channels all my life, but hitherto I have found none. What I have
found is that for some of the most startling coincidences there are
historical antecedents on both sides; and if we once know these
antecedents the coincidences become far less startling.”
A year before Max Müller formulated his impression in these terms, Rudolf
Seydel(222) had endeavoured to explain the analogies which had been
noticed by supposing Christianity to have been influenced by Buddhism. He
distinguishes three distinct classes of analogies:
1. Those of which the points of resemblance can without difficulty be
explained as due to the influence of similar sources and motives in the
two cases.
2. Those which show a so special and unexpected agreement that it appears
artificial to explain it from the action of similar causes, and the
dependence of one upon the other commends itself as the most natural
explanation.
3. Those in which there exists a reason for the occurrence of the idea
only within the sphere of one of the two religions, or in which at least
it can very much more easily be conceived as originating within the one
than within the other, so that the inexplicability of the phenomenon
within the one domain gives ground for seeking its source within the
other.
This last class demands a literary explanation of the analogy. Seydel
therefore postulates, alongside of primitive forms of Matthew and Luke, a
third source, “a poetic‐apocalyptic Gospel of very early date which fitted
its Christian material into the frame of a Buddhist type of Gospel,
transforming, purifying, and ennobling the material taken from the foreign
but related literature by a kind of rebirth inspired by the Christian
Spirit.” Matthew and Luke, especially Luke, follow this poetic Gospel up
to the point where historic sources become more abundant, and the
primitive form of Mark begins to dominate their narrative. But even in
later parts the influence of this poetical source, which as an independent
document was subsequently lost, continued to make itself felt.
The strongest point of support for this hypothesis, if a mere conjecture
can be described as such, is found by Seydel in the introductory
narratives in Luke. Now it is not inherently impossible that Buddhist
legends, which in one form or another were widely current in the East, may
have contributed more or less to the formation of the mythical preliminary
history. Who knows the laws of the formation of legend? Who can follow the
course of the wind which carries the seed over land and sea? But in
general it may be said that Seydel actually refutes the hypothesis which
he is defending. If the material which he brings forward is all that there
is to suggest a relation between Buddhism and Christianity, we are
justified in waiting until new discoveries are made in that quarter before
asserting the necessity of a Buddhist primitive Gospel. That will not
prevent a succession of theosophic Lives of Jesus from finding their
account in Seydel’s classical work. Seydel indeed delivered himself into
their hands, because he did not entirely avoid the rash assumption of
theosophic “historical science” that Jewish eschatology can be equated
with Buddhistic.
Eduard von Hartmann, in the second edition of his work, “The Christianity
of the New Testament,”(223) roundly asserts that there can be no question
of any relation of Jesus to Buddha, nor of any indebtedness either in His
teaching or in the later moulding of the story of His life, but only of a
parallel formation of myth.
XVIII. THE POSITION OF THE SUBJECT AT THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
_Oskar Holtzmann._ Das Leben Jesu. Tübingen, 1901. 417 pp.
Das Messianitätsbewusstsein Jesu und seine neueste Bestreitung.
Vortrag. (The Messianic Consciousness of Jesus and the most recent
denial of it. A Lecture.) 1902. 26 pp. (Against Wrede.)
War Jesus Ekstatiker? (Was Jesus an ecstatic?) Tübingen, 1903. 139
pp.
_Paul Wilhelm Schmidt._ Die Geschichte Jesu. (The History of
Jesus.) Freiburg. 1899. 175 pp. (4th impression.)
Die Geschichte Jesu. Erläutert. Mit drei Karten von Prof. K.
Furrer (Zürich). (The History of Jesus. Preliminary Discussions.
With three maps by Prof. K. Furrer of Zurich.) Tübingen, 1904. 414
pp.
_Otto Schmiedel._ Die Hauptprobleme der Leben‐Jesu‐Forschung. (The
main Problems in the Study of the Life of Jesus.) Tübingen, 1902.
71 pp. 2nd ed., 1906.
_Hermann Freiherr von Soden._ Die wichtigsten Fragen im Leben
Jesu. (The most important Questions about the Life of Jesus.)
Vacation Lectures. Berlin, 1904. 111 pp.
_Gustav Frenssen._ Hilligenlei. Berlin, 1905, pp. 462‐593: “Die
Handschrift.” (“The Manuscript”—in which a Life of Jesus, written
by one of the characters of the story, is given in full.)
_Otto Pfleiderer._ Das Urchristentum, seine Schriften und Lehren
in geschichtlichem Zusammenhang beschrieben. (Primitive
Christianity. Its Documents and Doctrines in their Historical
Context.) 2nd ed. Berlin, 1902. Vol. i., 696 pp.
Die Entstehung des Urchristentums. (How Primitive Christianity
arose.) Munich, 1905. 255 pp.
_Albert Kalthoff._ Das Christus‐Problem. Grundlinien zu einer
Sozialtheologie. (The Christ‐problem. The Ground‐plan of a Social
Theology.) Leipzig, 1902. 87 pp.
Die Entstehung des Christentums. Neue Beiträge zum Christus‐
Problem. (How Christianity arose. New contributions to the Christ‐
problem.) Leipzig, 1904. 155 pp.
_Eduard von Hartmann._ Das Christentum des Neuen Testaments. (The
Christianity of the New Testament.) 2nd revised edition of
“Letters on the Christian Religion.” Sachsa‐in‐the‐Harz, 1905. 311
pp.
_De Jonge._ Jeschua. Der klassische jüdische Mann. Zerstörung des
kirchlichen, Enthüllung des jüdischen Jesus‐Bildes. Berlin, 1904.
112 pp. (Jeshua. The Classical Jewish Man. In which the Jewish
picture of Jesus is unveiled, and the ecclesiastical picture
destroyed.)
_Wolfgang Kirchbach._ Was lehrte Jesus? Zwei Urevangelien. (What
was the teaching of Jesus? Two Primitive Gospels.) Berlin, 1897.
248 pp. 2nd revised and greatly enlarged edition, 1902, 339 pp.
_Albert Dulk._ Der Irrgang des Lebens Jesu. In geschichtlicher
Auffassung dargestellt. (The Error of the Life of Jesus. An
Historical View.) 1st part, 1884, 395 pp.; 2nd part, 1885, 302 pp.
_Paul de Régla._ Jesus von Nazareth. German by A. Just. Leipzig,
1894. 435 pp.
_Ernest Bosc._ La Vie ésotérique de Jésus de Nazareth et les
origines orientales du christianisme. (The secret Life of Jesus of
Nazareth, and the Oriental Origins of Christianity.) Paris, 1902.
The ideal Life of Jesus of the close of the nineteenth century is the Life
which Heinrich Julius Holtzmann did not write—but which can be pieced
together from his commentary on the Synoptic Gospels and his New Testament
Theology.(224) It is ideal because, for one thing, it is unwritten, and
arises only in the idea of the reader by the aid of his own imagination,
and, for another, because it is traced only in the most general outline.
What Holtzmann gives us is a sketch of the public ministry, a critical
examination of details, and a full account of the teaching of Jesus. He
provides, therefore, the plan and the prepared building material, so that
any one can carry out the construction in his own way and on his own
responsibility. The cement and the mortar are not provided by Holtzmann;
every one must decide for himself how he will combine the teaching and the
life, and arrange the details within each.
We may recall the fact that Weisse, too, the other founder of the Marcan
hypothesis, avoided writing a Life of Jesus, because the difficulty of
fitting the details into the ground‐plan appeared to him so great, not to
say insuperable. It is just this modesty which constitutes his greatness
and Holtzmann’s. Thus the Marcan hypothesis ends, as it had begun, with a
certain historical scepticism.(225)
The subordinates, it is true, do not allow themselves to be disturbed by
the change of attitude at head‐quarters. They keep busily at work. That is
their right, and therein consists their significance. By keeping on trying
to take the positions, and constantly failing, they furnish a practical
proof that the plan of operations worked out by the general staff is not
capable of being carried out, and show why it is so, and what kind of new
tactics will have to be evolved.
The credit of having written a life of Christ which is strictly
scientific, in its own way very remarkable, and yet foredoomed to failure,
belongs to Oskar Holtzmann.(226) He has complete confidence in the Marcan
plan, and makes it his task to fit all the sayings of Jesus into this
framework, to show “what can belong to each period of the preaching of
Jesus, and what cannot.” His method is to give free play to the magnetic
power of the most important passages in the Marcan text, making other
sayings of similar import detach themselves from their present connexion
and come and group themselves round the main passages.
For example, the controversy with the scribes at Jerusalem regarding the
charge of doing miracles by the help of Satan (Mark iii. 22‐30) belongs,
according to Holtzmann, as regards content and chronology, to the same
period as the controversy, in Mark vii., about the ordinances of men which
results in Jesus being “obliged to take to flight”; the woes pronounced
upon Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, which now follow on the eulogy
upon the Baptist (Matt. xi. 21‐23), and are accordingly represented as
having been spoken at the time of the sending forth of the Twelve, are
drawn by the same kind of magnetic force into the neighbourhood of Mark
vii., and “express very clearly the attitude of Jesus at the time of His
withdrawal from the scene of His earlier ministry.” The saying in Matt.
vii. 6 about not giving that which is holy to the dogs or casting pearls
before swine, does not belong to the Sermon on the Mount, but to the time
when Jesus, after Caesarea Philippi, forbids the disciples to reveal the
secret of His Messiahship to the multitude; Jesus’ action in cursing the
fig‐tree so that it should henceforth bring no fruit to its owner, who was
perhaps a poor man, is to be brought into relation with the words spoken
on the evening before, with reference to the lavish expenditure involved
in His anointing, “The poor ye have always with you,” the point being that
Jesus now, “in the clear consciousness of His approaching death, feels His
own worth,” and dismisses “the contingency of even the poor having to lose
something for His sake” with the words “it does not matter.”(227)
All these transpositions and new connexions mean, it is clear, a great
deal of internal and external violence to the text.
A further service rendered by this very thorough work of Oskar
Holtzmann’s, is that of showing how much reading between the lines is
necessary in order to construct a Life of Jesus on the basis of the Marcan
hypothesis in its modern interpretation. It is thus, for instance, that
the author must have acquired the knowledge that the controversy about the
ordinances of purification in Mark vii. forced the people “to choose
between the old and the new religion”—in which case it is no wonder that
many “turned back from following Jesus.”
Where are we told that there was any question of an old and a new
“religion”? The disciples certainly did not think of things in this way,
as is shown by their conduct at the time of His death and the discourses
of Peter in Acts. Where do we read that the people turned away from Jesus?
In Mark vii. 17 and 24 all that is said is, that Jesus left the people,
and in Mark vii. 33 the same multitude is still assembled when Jesus
returns from the “banishment” into which Holtzmann relegates Him.
Oskar Holtzmann declares that we cannot tell what was the size of the
following which accompanied Jesus in His journey northwards, and is
inclined to assume that others besides the Twelve shared His exile. The
Evangelists, however, say clearly that it was only the μαθηταί, that is,
the Twelve, who were with Him. The value which this special knowledge,
independent of the text, has for the author, becomes evident a little
farther on. After Peter’s confession Jesus calls the “multitude” to Him
(Mark viii. 34) and speaks to them of His sufferings and of taking up the
cross and following Him. This “multitude” Holtzmann wants to make “the
whole company of Jesus’ followers,” “to which belonged, not only the
Twelve whom Jesus had formerly sent out to preach, but many others also.”
The knowledge drawn from outside the text is therefore required to solve a
difficulty in the text.
But how did His companions in exile, the remnant of the previous
multitude, themselves become a multitude, the same multitude as before?
Would it not be better to admit that we do not know how, in a Gentile
country, a multitude could suddenly rise out of the ground as it were,
continue with Him until Mark ix. 30, and then disappear into the earth as
suddenly as they came, leaving Him to pursue His journey towards Galilee
and Jerusalem alone?
Another thing which Oskar Holtzmann knows is that it required a good deal
of courage for Peter to hail Jesus as Messiah, since the “exile wandering
about with his small following in a Gentile country” answered “so badly to
the general picture which people had formed of the coming of the Messiah.”
He knows too, that in the moment of Peter’s confession, “Christianity was
complete” in the sense that “a community separate from Judaism and
centring about a new ideal, then arose.” This “community” frequently
appears from this point onwards. There is nothing about it in the
narratives, which know only the Twelve and the people.
Oskar Holtzmann’s knowledge even extends to dialogues which are not
reported in the Gospels. After the incident at Caesarea Philippi, the
minds of the disciples were, according to him, preoccupied by two
questions. “How did Jesus know that He was the Messiah?” and “What will be
the future fate of this Messiah?” The Lord answered both questions. He
spoke to them of His baptism, and “doubtless in close connexion with that”
He told them the story of His temptation, during which He had laid down
the lines which He was determined to follow as Messiah.
Of the transfiguration, Oskar Holtzmann can state with confidence, “that
it merely represents the inner experience of the disciples at the moment
of Peter’s confession.” How is it then that Mark expressly dates that
scene, placing it (ix. 2) six days after the discourse of Jesus about
taking up the cross and following Him? The fact is that the time‐
indications of the text are treated as non‐existent whenever the Marcan
hypothesis requires an order determined by inner connexion. The statement
of Luke that the transfiguration took place eight days after, is dismissed
in the remark “the motive of this indication of time is doubtless to be
found in the use of the Gospel narratives for reading in public worship;
the idea was that the section about the transfiguration should be read on
the Sunday following that on which the confession of Peter formed the
lesson.” Where did Oskar Holtzmann suddenly discover this information
about the order of the “Sunday lessons” at the time when Luke’s Gospel was
written?
It was doubtless from the same private source of information that the
author derived his knowledge regarding the gradual development of the
thought of the Passion in the consciousness of Jesus. “After the
confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi,” he explains, “Jesus’ death
became for Him only the necessary point of transition to the glory beyond.
In the discourse of Jesus to which the request of Salome gave occasion,
the death of Jesus already appears as the means of saving many from death,
because His death makes possible the coming of the Kingdom of God. At the
institution of the Supper, Jesus regards His imminent death as the
meritorious deed by which the blessings of the New Covenant, the
forgiveness of sins and victory over sin, are permanently secured to His
‘community.’ We see Jesus constantly becoming more and more at home with
the idea of His death and constantly giving it a deeper interpretation.”
Any one who is less skilled in reading the thoughts of Jesus, and more
simple and natural in his reading of the text of Mark, cannot fail to
observe that Jesus speaks in Mark x. 45 of His death as an expiation, not
as a means of saving others from death, and that at the Lord’s Supper
there was no reference to His “community,” but only to the inexplicable
“many,” which is also the word in Mark x. 45. We ought to admit freely
that we do not know what the thoughts of Jesus about His death were at the
time of the first prediction of the Passion after Peter’s confession; and
to be on our guard against the “original sin” of theology, that of
exalting the argument from silence, when it happens to be useful, to the
rank of positive realities.
Is there not a certain irony in the fact that the application of “natural”
psychology to the explanation of the thoughts of Jesus compels the
assumption of supra‐historical private information such as this? Bahrdt
and Venturini hardly read more subjective interpretations into the text
than many modern Lives of Jesus; and the hypothesis of the secret society,
which after all did recognise and do justice to the inexplicability from
an external standpoint of the relation of events and of the conduct of
Jesus, was in many respects more historical than the psychological links
of connexion which our modernising historians discover without having any
foundation for them in the text.
In the end this supplementary knowledge destroys the historicity of the
simplest sections. Oskar Holtzmann ventures to conjecture that the healing
of the blind man at Jericho “is to be understood as a symbolical
representation of the conversion of Zacchaeus,” which, of course, is found
only in Luke. Here then the defender of the Marcan hypothesis rejects the
incident by which the Evangelist explains the enthusiasm of the entry into
Jerusalem, not to mention that Luke tells us nothing whatever about a
conversion of Zacchaeus, but only that Jesus was invited to his house and
graciously accepted the invitation.
It would be something if this almost Alexandrian symbolical exegesis
contributed in some way to the removal of difficulties and to the solution
of the main question, that, namely, of the present or future Messiah, the
present or future Kingdom. Oskar Holtzmann lays great stress upon the
eschatological character of the preaching of Jesus regarding the Kingdom,
and assumes that, at least at the beginning, it would not have been
natural for His hearers to understand that Jesus, the herald of the
Messiah, was Himself the Messiah. Nevertheless, he is of opinion that, in
a certain sense, the presence of Jesus implied the presence of the
Kingdom, that Peter and the rest of the disciples, advancing beyond the
ideas of the multitude, recognised Him as Messiah, that this recognition
ought to have been possible for the people also, and, in that case, would
have been “the strongest incentive to abandon evil ways,” and “that Jesus
at the time of His entry into Jerusalem seems to have felt that in Isa.
lxii. 11(228) there was a direct command not to withhold the knowledge of
His Messiahship from the inhabitants of Jerusalem.”
But if Jesus made a Messianic entry He must thereafter have given Himself
out as Messiah, and the whole controversy would necessarily have turned
upon this claim. This, however, was not the case. According to Holtzmann,
all that the hearers could make out of that crucial question for the
Messiahship in Mark xii. 35‐37 was only “that Jesus clearly showed from
the Scriptures that the Messiah was not in reality the son of David.”(229)
But how was it that the Messianic enthusiasm on the part of the people did
not lead to a Messianic controversy, in spite of the fact that Jesus “from
the first came forward in Jerusalem as Messiah”? This difficulty O.
Holtzmann seems to be trying to provide against when he remarks in a
footnote: “We have no evidence that Jesus, even during the last sojourn in
Jerusalem, was recognised as Messiah except by those who belonged to the
inner circle of disciples. The repetition by the children of the
acclamations of the disciples (Matt. xxi. 15 and 16) can hardly be
considered of much importance in this connexion.” According to this, Jesus
entered Jerusalem as Messiah, but except for the disciples and a few
children no one recognised His entry as having a Messianic significance!
But Mark states that many spread their garments upon the way, and others
plucked down branches from the trees and strewed them in the way, and that
those that went before and those that followed after, cried “Hosanna!” The
Marcan narrative must therefore be kept out of sight for the moment in
order that the Life of Jesus as conceived by the modern Marcan hypothesis
may not be endangered.
We should not, however, regard the evidence of supernatural knowledge and
the self‐contradictions of this Life of Jesus as a matter for censure, but
rather as a proof of the merits of O. Holtzmann’s work.(230) He has
written the last large‐scale Life of Jesus, the only one which the Marcan
hypothesis has produced, and aims at providing a scientific basis for the
assumptions which the general lines of that hypothesis compel him to make;
and in this process it becomes clearly apparent that the connexion of
events can only be carried through at the decisive passages by violent
treatment, or even by rejection of the Marcan text in the interests of the
Marcan hypothesis.
These merits do not belong in the same measure to the other modern Lives
of Jesus, which follow more or less the same lines. They are short
sketches, in some cases based on lectures, and their brevity makes them
perhaps more lively and convincing than Holtzmann’s work; but they take
for granted just what he felt it necessary to prove. P. W. Schmidt’s(231)
_Geschichte Jesu_ (1899), which as a work of literary art has few rivals
among theological works of recent years, confines itself to pure
narrative. The volume of prolegomena which appeared in 1904, and is
intended to exhibit the foundations of the narrative, treats of the
sources, of the Kingdom of God, of the Son of Man, and of the Law. It
makes the most of the weakening of the eschatological standpoint which is
manifested in the second edition of Johannes Weiss’s “Preaching of Jesus,”
but it does not give sufficient prominence to the difficulties of
reconstructing the public ministry of Jesus.
Neither Otto Schmiedel’s “The Principal Problems of the Study of the Life
of Jesus,” nor von Soden’s “Vacation Lectures” on “The Principal Questions
in the Life of Jesus” fulfils the promise of its title.(232) They both aim
rather at solving new problems proposed by themselves than at restating
the old ones and adding new. They hope to meet the views of Johannes Weiss
by strongly emphasising the eschatology, and think they can escape the
critical scepticism of writers like Volkmar and Brand by assuming an “Ur‐
Markus.” Their view is, therefore, that with a few modifications dictated
by the eschatological and sceptical school, the traditional conception of
the Life of Jesus is still tenable, whereas it is just the a priori
presuppositions of this conception, hitherto held to be self‐evident,
which constitute the main problems.
“It is self‐evident,” says von Soden in one passage, “in view of the inner
connexion in which the Kingdom of God and the Messiah stood in the
thoughts of the people ... that in all classes the question must have been
discussed, so that Jesus could not permanently have avoided their
question, ‘What of the Messiah? Art thou not He?’ ” Where, in the
Synoptics, is there a word to show that this is “self‐evident”? When the
disciples in Mark viii. tell Jesus “whom men held Him to be,” none of them
suggests that any one had been tempted to regard Him as the Messiah. And
that was shortly before Jesus set out for Jerusalem.
From the day when the envoys of the Scribes from Jerusalem first appeared
in the north, the easily influenced Galilaean multitude began, according
to von Soden, “to waver.” How does he know that the Galilaeans were easily
influenced? How does he know they “wavered”? The Gospels tell us neither
one nor the other. The demand for a sign was, to quote von Soden again, a
demand for a proof of His Messiahship. “Yet another indication,” adds the
author, “that later Christianity, in putting so high a value on the
miracles of Jesus as a proof of His Messiahship, departed widely from the
thoughts of Jesus.”
Before levelling reproaches of this kind against later Christianity, it
would be well to point to some passage of Mark or Matthew in which there
is mention of a demand for a sign as a proof of His Messiahship.
When the appearance of Jesus in the south—we are still following von
Soden—aroused the Messianic expectations of the people, as they had
formerly been aroused in His native country, “they once more failed to
understand the correction of them which Jesus had made by the manner of
His entry and His conduct in Jerusalem.” They are unable to understand
this “transvaluation of values,” and as often as the impression made by
His personality suggested the thought that He was the Messiah, they became
doubtful again. Wherein consisted the correction of the Messianic
expectation given at the triumphal entry? Was it that He rode upon an ass?
Would it not be better if modern historical theology, instead of always
making the people “grow doubtful,” were to grow a little doubtful of
itself, and begin to look for the evidence of that “transvaluation of
values” which, according to them, the contemporaries of Jesus were not
able to follow?
Von Soden also possesses special information about the “peculiar history
of the origin” of the Messianic consciousness of Jesus. He knows that it
was subsidiary to a primary general religious consciousness of Sonship.
The rise of this Messianic consciousness implies, in its turn, the
“transformation of the conception of the Kingdom of God, and explains how
in the mind of Jesus this conception was both present and future.” The
greatness of Jesus is, he thinks, to be found in the fact that for Him
this Kingdom of God was only a “limiting conception”—the ultimate goal of
a gradual process of approximation. “To the question whether it was to be
realised here or in the beyond Jesus would have answered, as He answered a
similar question, ‘That, no man knoweth; no, not the Son.’ ”
As if He had not answered that question in the petition “Thy Kingdom
come”—supposing that such a question could ever have occurred to a
contemporary—in the sense that the Kingdom was to pass from the beyond
into the present!
This modern historical theology will not allow Jesus to have formed a
“theory” to explain His thoughts about His passion. “For Him the certainty
was amply sufficient; ‘My death will effect what My life has not been able
to accomplish.’ ”
Is there then no theory implied in the saying about the “ransom for many,”
and in that about “My blood which is shed for many for the forgiveness of
sins,” although Jesus does not explain it? How does von Soden know what
was “amply sufficient” for Jesus or what was not?
Otto Schmiedel goes so far as to deny that Jesus gave distinct expression
to an expectation of suffering; the most He can have done—and this is only
a “perhaps”—is to have hinted at it in His discourses.
In strong contrast with this confidence in committing themselves to
historical conjectures stands the scepticism with which von Soden and
Schmiedel approach the Gospels. “It is at once evident,” says Schmiedel,
“that the great groups of discourses in Matthew, such as the Sermon on the
Mount, the Seven Parables of the Kingdom, and so forth, were not arranged
in this order in the source (the _Logia_), still less by Jesus Himself.
The order is, doubtless, due to the Evangelist. But what is the answer to
the question, ‘On what grounds is this “at once” clear?’ ”(233)
Von Soden’s pronouncement is even more radical. “In the composition of the
discourses,” he says, “no regard is paid in Matthew, any more than in
John, to the supposed audience, or to the point of time in the life of
Jesus to which they are attributed.” As early as the Sermon on the Mount
we find references to persecutions, and warnings against false prophets.
Similarly, in the charge to the Twelve, there are also warnings, which
undoubtedly belong to a later time. Intimate sayings, evidently intended
for the inner circle of disciples, have the widest publicity given to
them.
But why should whatever is incomprehensible to us be unhistorical? Would
it not be better simply to admit that we do not understand certain
connexions of ideas and turns of expression in the discourses of Jesus?
But instead even of making an analytical examination of the apparent
connexions, and stating them as problems, the discourses of Jesus and the
sections of the Gospels are tricked out with ingenious headings which have
nothing to do with them. Thus, for instance, von Soden heads the
Beatitudes (Matt. v. 3‐12), “What Jesus brings to men,” the following
verses (Matt. v. 13‐16), “What He makes of men.” P. W. Schmidt, in his
“History of Jesus,” shows himself a past master in this art. “The rights
of the wife” is the title of the dialogue about divorce, as if the
question at stake had been for Jesus the equality of the sexes, and not
simply and solely the sanctity of marriage. “Sunshine for the children” is
his heading for the scene where Jesus takes the children in His arms—as if
the purpose of Jesus had been to protest against severity in the
upbringing of children. Again, he brings together the stories of the man
who must first bury his father, of the rich young man, of the dispute
about precedence, of Zacchaeus, and others which have equally little
connexion under the heading “Discipline for Jesus’ followers.” These often
brilliant creations of artificial connexions of thought give a curious
attractiveness to the works of Schmidt and von Soden. The latter’s survey
of the Gospels is a really delightful performance. But this kind of thing
is not consistent with pure objective history.
Disposing in this lofty fashion of the connexion of events, Schmiedel and
von Soden do not find it difficult to distinguish between Mark and “Ur‐
Markus”; that is, to retain just so much of the Gospel as will fit in to
their construction. Schmiedel feels sure that Mark was a skilful writer,
and that the redactor was “a Christian of Pauline sympathies.” According
to “Ur‐Markus,” to which Mark iv. 33 belongs, the Lord speaks in parables
in order that the people may understand Him the better; “it was only by
the redactor that the Pauline theory about hardening their hearts (Rom.
ix.‐xi.) was interpolated, in Mark iv. 10 ff., and the meaning of Mark iv.
33 was thus obscured.”
It is high time that instead of merely asserting Pauline influences in
Mark some proof of the assertion should be given. What kind of appearance
would Mark have presented if it had really passed through the hands of a
Pauline Christian?
Von Soden’s analysis is no less confident. The three outstanding miracles,
the stilling of the storm, the casting out of the legion of devils, the
overcoming of death (Mark iv. 35‐v. 43), the romantically told story of
the death of the Baptist (Mark vi. 17‐29), the story of the feeding of the
multitudes in the desert, of Jesus’ walking on the water, and of the
transfiguration upon an high mountain, and the healing of the lunatic
boy—all these are dashed in with a broad brush, and offer many analogies
to Old Testament stories, and some suggestions of Pauline conceptions, and
reflections of experiences of individual believers and of the Christian
community. “All these passages were, doubtless, first written down by the
compiler of our Gospel.”
But how can Schmiedel and von Soden fail to see that they are heading
straight for Bruno Bauer’s position? They assert that there is no
distinction of principle between the way in which the Johannine and the
Synoptic discourses are composed: the recognition of this was Bruno
Bauer’s starting‐point. They propose to find experiences of the Christian
community and Pauline teaching reflected in the Gospel of Mark; Bruno
Bauer asserted the same. The only difference is that he was consistent,
and extended his criticism to those portions of the Gospel which do not
present the stumbling‐block of the supernatural. Why should these not also
contain the theology and the experiences of the community transformed into
history? Is it only because they remain within the limits of the natural?
The real difficulty consists in the fact that all the passages which von
Soden ascribes to the redactor stand, in spite of their mythical
colouring, in a closely‐knit historical connexion; in fact, the historical
connexion is nowhere so close. How can any one cut out the feeding of the
multitudes and the transfiguration as narratives of secondary origin
without destroying the whole of the historical fabric of the Gospel of
Mark? Or was it the redactor who created the plan of the Gospel of Mark,
as von Soden seems to imply?(234)
But in that case how can a modern Life of Jesus be founded on the Marcan
plan? How much of Mark is, in the end, historical? Why should not Peter’s
confession at Caesarea Philippi have been derived from the theology of the
primitive Church, just as well as the transfiguration? The only difference
is that the incident at Caesarea Philippi is more within the limits of the
possible, whereas the scene upon the mountain has a supernatural
colouring. But is the incident at Philippi so entirely natural? Whence
does Peter know that Jesus is the Messiah?
This semi‐scepticism is therefore quite unjustifiable, since in Mark
natural and supernatural both stand in an equally good and close
historical connexion. Either, then, one must be completely sceptical like
Bruno Bauer, and challenge without exception all the facts and connexions
of events asserted by Mark; or, if one means to found an historical Life
of Jesus upon Mark, one must take the Gospel as a whole because of the
plan which runs right through it, accepting it as historical and then
endeavouring to explain why certain narratives, like the feeding of the
multitude and the transfiguration, are bathed in a supernatural light, and
what is the historical basis which underlies them. A division between the
natural and supernatural in Mark is purely arbitrary, because the
supernatural is an essential part of the history. The mere fact that he
has not adopted the mythical material of the childhood stories and the
post‐resurrection scenes ought to have been accepted as evidence that the
supernatural material which he does embody belongs to a category of its
own and cannot be simply rejected as due to the invention of the primitive
Christian community. It must belong in some way to the original tradition.
Oskar Holtzmann realises that to a certain extent. According to him Mark
is a writer “who embodied the materials which he received from the
tradition more faithfully than discriminatingly.” “That which was related
as a symbol of inner events, he takes as history—in the case, for example,
of the temptation, the walking on the sea, the transfiguration of Jesus.”
“Again in other cases he has made a remarkable occurrence into a
supernatural miracle, as in the case of the feeding of the multitude,
where Jesus’ courageous love and ready organising skill overcame a
momentary difficulty, whereas the Evangelist represents it as an amazing
miracle of Divine omnipotence.”
Oskar Holtzmann is thus more cautious than von Soden. He is inclined to
see in the material which he wishes to exclude from the history, not so
much inventions of the Church as mistaken shaping of history by Mark, and
in this way he gets back to genuine old‐fashioned rationalism. In the
feeding of the multitude Jesus showed “the confidence of a courageous
housewife who knows how to provide skilfully for a great crowd of children
from small resources.” Perhaps in a future work Oskar Holtzmann will be
less reserved, not for the sake of theology, but of national well‐being,
and will inform his contemporaries what kind of domestic economy it was
which made it possible for the Lord to satisfy with five loaves and two
fishes several thousand hungry men.
Modern historical theology, therefore, with its three‐quarters scepticism,
is left at last with only a torn and tattered Gospel of Mark in its hands.
One would naturally suppose that these preliminary operations upon the
source would lead to the production of a Life of Jesus of a similarly
fragmentary character. Nothing of the kind. The outline is still the same
as in Schenkel’s day, and the confidence with which the construction is
carried out is not less complete. Only the catch‐words with which the
narrative is enlivened have been changed, being now taken in part from
Nietzsche. The liberal Jesus has given place to the Germanic Jesus. This
is a figure which has as little to do with the Marcan hypothesis as the
“liberal” Jesus had which preceded it; otherwise it could not so easily
have survived the downfall of the Gospel of Mark as an historical source.
It is evident, therefore, that this professedly historical Jesus is not a
purely historical figure, but one which has been artificially transplanted
into history. As formerly in Renan the romantic spirit created the
personality of Jesus in its own image, so at the present day the Germanic
spirit is making a Jesus after its own likeness. What is admitted as
historic is just what the Spirit of the time can take out of the records
in order to assimilate it to itself and bring out of it a living form.
Frenssen betrays the secret of his teachers when in _Hilligenlei_ he
confidently superscribes the narrative drawn from the “latest critical
investigations” with the title “The Life of the Saviour portrayed
according to German research as the basis for a spiritual re‐birth of the
German nation.”(235)
As a matter of fact the Life of Jesus of the “Manuscript”(236) is
unsatisfactory both scientifically and artistically, just because it aims
at being at once scientific and artistic. If only Frenssen, with his
strongly life‐accepting instinct, which gives to his thinking, at least in
his earliest writings where he reveals himself without artificiality, such
a wonderful simplicity and force, had dared to read his Jesus boldly from
the original records, without following modern historical theology in all
its meanderings! He would have been able to force his way through the
underwood well enough if only he had been content to break the branches
that got in his way, instead of always waiting until some one went in
front to disentwine them for him. The dependence to which he surrenders
himself is really distressing. In reading almost every paragraph one can
tell whether Kai Jans was looking, as he wrote it, into Oskar Holtzmann or
P. W. Schmidt or von Soden. Frenssen resigns the dramatic scene of the
healing of the blind man at Jericho. Why? Because at this point he was
listening to Holtzmann, who proposes to regard the healing of the blind
man as only a symbolical representation of the “conversion of Zacchaeus.”
Frenssen’s masters have robbed him of all creative spontaneity. He does
not permit himself to discover _motifs_ for himself, but confines himself
to working over and treating in cruder colours those which he finds in his
teachers.
And since he cannot veil his assumptions in the cautious, carefully
modulated language of the theologians, the faults of the modern treatment
of the life of Jesus appear in him exaggerated an hundredfold. The violent
dislocation of narratives from their connexion, and the forcing upon them
of a modern interpretation, becomes a mania with the writer and a torture
to the reader. The range of knowledge not drawn from the text is
infinitely increased. Kai Jans sees Jesus after the temptation cowering
beneath the brow of the hill “a poor lonely man, torn by fearful doubts, a
man in the deepest distress.” He knows too that there was often great
danger that Jesus would “betray the ’Father in heaven’ and go back to His
village to take up His handicraft again, but now as a man with a torn and
distracted soul and a conscience tortured by the gnawings of remorse.”
The pupil is not content, as his teachers had been, merely to make the
people sometimes believe in Jesus and sometimes doubt Him; he makes the
enthusiastic earthly Messianic belief of the people “tug and tear” at
Jesus Himself. Sometimes one is tempted to ask whether the author in his
zeal “to use conscientiously the results of the whole range of scientific
criticism” has not forgotten the main thing, the study of the Gospels
themselves.
And is all this science supposed to be new?(237) Is this picture of Jesus
really the outcome of the latest criticism? Has it not been in existence
since the beginning of the ’forties, since Weisse’s criticism of the
Gospel history? Is it not in principle the same as Renan’s, only that
Germanic lapses of taste here take the place of Gallic, and “German art
for German people,”(238) here quite out of place, has done its best to
remove from the picture every trace of fidelity?
Kai Jans’ “Manuscript” represents the limit of the process of diminishing
the personality of Jesus. Weisse left Him still some greatness, something
unexplained, and did not venture to apply to everything the petty
standards of inquisitive modern psychology. In the ’sixties psychology
became more confident and Jesus smaller; at the close of the century the
confidence of psychology is at its greatest and the figure of Jesus at its
smallest—so small, that Frenssen ventures to let His life be projected and
written by one who is in the midst of a love affair!
This human life of Jesus is to be “heart‐stirring” from beginning to end,
and “in no respect to go beyond human standards”! And this Jesus who
“racks His brains and shapes His plans” is to contribute to bring about a
re‐birth of the German people. How could He? He is Himself only a phantom
created by the Germanic mind in pursuit of a religious will‐o’‐the‐wisp.
It is possible, however, to do injustice to Frenssen’s presentation, and
to the whole of the confident, unconsciously modernising criticism of
which he here acts as the mouthpiece. These writers have the great merit
of having brought certain cultured circles nearer to Jesus and made them
more sympathetic towards Him. Their fault lies in their confidence, which
has blinded them to what Jesus is and is not, what He can and cannot do,
so that in the end they fail to understand “the signs of the times” either
as historians or as men of the present.
If the Jesus who owes His birth to the Marcan hypothesis and modern
psychology were capable of regenerating the world He would have done it
long ago, for He is nearly sixty years old and his latest portraits are
much less life‐like than those drawn by Weisse, Schenkel, and Renan, or by
Keim, the most brilliant painter of them all.
For the last ten years modern historical theology has more and more
adapted itself to the needs of the man in the street. More and more, even
in the best class of works, it makes use of attractive head‐lines as a
means of presenting its results in a lively form to the masses.
Intoxicated with its own ingenuity in inventing these, it becomes more and
more confident in its cause, and has come to believe that the world’s
salvation depends in no small measure upon the spreading of its own
“assured results” broad‐cast among the people. It is time that it should
begin to doubt itself, to doubt its “historical” Jesus, to doubt the
confidence with which it has looked to its own construction for the moral
and religious regeneration of our time. Its Jesus is not alive, however
Germanic they may make Him.
It was no accident that the chief priest of “German art for German people”
found himself at one with the modern theologians and offered them his
alliance. Since the ’sixties the critical study of the Life of Jesus in
Germany has been unconsciously under the influence of an imposing modern‐
religious nationalism in art. It has been deflected by it as by an
underground magnetic current. It was in vain that a few purely historical
investigators uplifted their voices in protest. The process had to work
itself out. For historical criticism had become, in the hands of most of
those who practised it, a secret struggle to reconcile the Germanic
religious spirit with the Spirit of Jesus of Nazareth.(239) It was
concerned for the religious interests of the present. Therefore its error
had a kind of greatness, it was in fact the greatest thing about it; and
the severity with which the pure historian treats it is in proportion to
his respect for its spirit. For this German critical study of the Life of
Jesus is an essential part of German religion. As of old Jacob wrestled
with the angel, so German theology wrestles with Jesus of Nazareth and
will not let Him go until He bless it—that is, until He will consent to
serve it and will suffer Himself to be drawn by the Germanic spirit into
the midst of our time and our civilisation. But when the day breaks, the
wrestler must let Him go. He will not cross the ford with us. Jesus of
Nazareth will not suffer Himself to be modernised. As an historic figure
He refuses to be detached from His own time. He has no answer for the
question, “Tell us Thy name in our speech and for our day!” But He does
bless those who have wrestled with Him, so that, though they cannot take
Him with them, yet, like men who have seen God face to face and received
strength in their souls, they go on their way with renewed courage, ready
to do battle with the world and its powers.
But the historic Jesus and the Germanic spirit cannot be brought together
except by an act of historic violence which in the end injures both
religion and history. A time will come when our theology, with its pride
in its historical character, will get rid of its rationalistic bias. This
bias leads it to project back into history what belongs to our own time,
the eager struggle of the modern religious spirit with the Spirit of
Jesus, and seek in history justification and authority for its beginning.
The consequence is that it creates the historical Jesus in its own image,
so that it is not the modern spirit influenced by the Spirit of Jesus, but
the Jesus of Nazareth constructed by modern historical theology, that is
set to work upon our race.
Therefore both the theology and its picture of Jesus are poor and weak.
Its Jesus, because He has been measured by the petty standard of the
modern man, at variance with himself, not to say of the modern candidate
in theology who has made shipwreck; the theologians themselves, because
instead of seeking, for themselves and others, how they may best bring the
Spirit of Jesus in living power into our world, they keep continually
forging new portraits of the historical Jesus, and think they have
accomplished something great when they have drawn an Oh! of astonishment
from the multitude, such as the crowds of a great city emit on catching
sight of a new advertisement in coloured lights.
Anyone who, admiring the force and authority of genuine rationalism, has
got rid of the naïve self‐satisfaction of modern theology, which is in
essence only the degenerate offspring of rationalism with a tincture of
history, rejoices in the feebleness and smallness of its professedly
historical Jesus, rejoices in all those who are beginning to doubt the
truth of this portrait, rejoices in the over‐severity with which it is
attacked, rejoices to take a share in its destruction.
Those who have begun to doubt are many, but most of them only make known
their doubts by their silence. There is one, however, who has spoken out,
and one of the greatest—Otto Pfleiderer.(240)
In the first edition of his _Urchristentum_, published in 1887, he still
shared the current conceptions and constructions, except that he held the
credibility of Mark to be more affected than was usually supposed by
hypothetical Pauline influences. In the second edition(241) his positive
knowledge has been ground down in the struggle with the sceptics—it is
Brandt who has especially affected him—and with the partisans of
eschatology. This is the first advance‐guard action of modern theology
coming into touch with the troops of Reimarus and Bruno Bauer.
Pfleiderer accepts the purely eschatological conception of the Kingdom of
God and holds also that the ethics of Jesus were wholly conditioned by
eschatology. But in regard to the question of the Messiahship of Jesus he
takes his stand with the sceptics. He rejects the hypothesis of a Messiah
who, as being a “spiritual Messiah,” conceals His claim, but on the other
hand, he cannot accept the eschatological Son‐of‐Man Messiahship having
reference to the future, which the eschatological school finds in the
utterances of Jesus, since it implies prophecies of His suffering, death,
and resurrection which criticism cannot admit. “Instead of finding the
explanation of how the Messianic title arose in the reflections of Jesus
about the death which lay before Him,” he is inclined to find it “rather
in the reflection of the Christian community upon the catastrophic death
and exaltation of its Lord after this had actually taken place.”
Even the Marcan narrative is not history. The scepticism in regard to the
main source, with which writers like Oskar Holtzmann, Schmiedel, and von
Soden conduct a kind of intellectual flirtation, is here erected into a
principle. “It must be recognised,” says Pfleiderer, “that in respect of
the recasting of the history under theological influences, the whole of
our Gospels stand in principle on the same footing. The distinction
between Mark, the other two Synoptists, and John is only relative—a
distinction of degree corresponding to different stages of theological
reflection and the development of the ecclesiastical consciousness.” If
only Bruno Bauer could have lived to see this triumph of his opinions!
Pfleiderer, however, is conscious that scepticism, too, has its
difficulties. He wishes, indeed, to reject the confession of Jesus before
the Sanhedrin “because its historicity is not well established (none of
the disciples were present to hear it, and the apocalyptic prophecy which
is added, Mark xiv. 62, is certainly derived from the ideas of the
primitive Church)”; on the other hand, he is inclined to admit as
possibilities—though marking them with a note of interrogation—that Jesus
may have accepted the homage of the Passover pilgrims, and that the
controversy with the Scribes about the Son of David had some kind of
reference to Jesus Himself.
On the other hand, he takes it for granted that Jesus did not prophesy His
death, on the ground that the arrest, trial, and betrayal must have lain
outside all possibility of calculation even for Him. All these, he thinks,
came upon Jesus quite unexpectedly. The only thing that He might have
apprehended was “an attack by hired assassins,” and it is to this that He
refers in the saying about the two swords in Luke xxii. 36 and 38, seeing
that two swords would have sufficed as a protection against such an attack
as that, though hardly for anything further. When, however, he remarks in
this connexion that “this has been constantly overlooked” in the romances
dealing with the Life of Jesus, he does injustice to Bahrdt and Venturini,
since according to them the chief concern of the secret society in the
later period of the life of Jesus was to protect Jesus from the
assassination with which He was menaced, and to secure His formal arrest
and trial by the Sanhedrin. Their view of the historical situation is
therefore identical with Pfleiderer’s, viz. that assassination was
possible, but that administrative action was unexpected and is
inexplicable.
But how is this Jesus to be connected with primitive Christianity? How did
the primitive Church’s belief in the Messiahship of Jesus arise? To that
question Pfleiderer can give no other answer than that of Volkmar and
Brandt, that is to say, none. He laboriously brings together wood, straw,
and stubble, but where he gets the fire from to kindle the whole into the
ardent faith of primitive Christianity he is unable to make clear.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
According to Albert Kalthoff,(242) the fire lighted itself—Christianity
arose—by spontaneous combustion, when the inflammable material, religious
and social, which had collected together in the Roman Empire, came in
contact with the Jewish Messianic expectations. Jesus of Nazareth never
existed; and even supposing He had been one of the numerous Jewish
Messiahs who were put to death by crucifixion, He certainly did not found
Christianity. The story of Jesus which lies before us in the Gospels is in
reality only the story of the way in which the picture of Christ arose,
that is to say, the story of the growth of the Christian community. There
is therefore no problem of the Life of Jesus, but only a problem of the
Christ.
Kalthoff has not indeed always been so negative. When in the year 1880 he
gave a series of lectures on the Life of Jesus he felt himself justified
“in taking as his basis without further argument the generally accepted
results of modern theology.” Afterwards he became so completely doubtful
about the Christ after the flesh whom he had at that time depicted before
his hearers that he wished to exclude Him even from the register of
theological literature, and omitted to enter these lectures in the list of
his writings, although they had appeared in print.(243)
His quarrel with the historical Jesus of modern theology was that he could
find no connecting link between the Life of Jesus constructed by the
latter and primitive Christianity. Modern theology, he remarks in one
passage, with great justice, finds itself obliged to assume, at the point
where the history of the Church begins, “an immediate declension from, and
falsification of, a pure original principle,” and that in so doing “it is
deserting the recognised methods of historical science.” If then we cannot
trace the path from its beginning onwards, we had better try to work
backwards, endeavouring first to define in the theology of the primitive
Church the values which we shall look to find again in the Life of Jesus.
In that he is right. Modern historical theology will not have refuted him
until it has explained how Christianity arose out of the life of Jesus
without calling in that theory of an initial “Fall” of which Harnack,
Wernle, and all the rest make use. Until this modern theology has made it
in some measure intelligible how, under the influence of the Jewish
Messiah‐sect, in the twinkling of an eye, in every direction at once,
Graeco‐Roman popular Christianity arose; until at least it has described
the popular Christianity of the first three generations, it must concede
to all hypotheses which fairly face this problem and endeavour to solve it
their formal right of existence.
The criticism which Kalthoff directs against the “positive” accounts of
the Life of Jesus is, in part, very much to the point. “Jesus,” he says in
one place, “has been made the receptacle into which every theologian pours
his own ideas.” He rightly remarks that if we follow “the Christ”
backwards from the Epistles and Gospels of the New Testament right to the
apocalyptic vision of Daniel, we always find in Him superhuman traits
alongside of the human. “Never and nowhere,” he insists, “is He that which
critical theology has endeavoured to make out of Him, a purely natural
man, an indivisible historical unit.” “The title of ’Christ’ had been
raised by the Messianic apocalyptic writings so completely into the sphere
of the heroic that it had become impossible to apply it to a mere
historical man.” Bruno Bauer had urged the same considerations upon the
theology of his time, declaring it to be unthinkable that a man could have
arisen among the Jews and declared “I am the Messiah.”
But the unfortunate thing is that Kalthoff has not worked through Bruno
Bauer’s criticism, and does not appear to assume it as a basis, but
remains standing half‐way instead of thinking the questions through to the
end as that keen critic did. According to Kalthoff it would appear that,
year in year out, there was a constant succession of Messianic
disturbances among the Jews and of crucified claimants of the Messiahship.
“There had been many a ’Christ,’” he says in one place, “before there was
any question of a Jesus in connexion with this title.”
How does Kalthoff know that? If he had fairly considered and felt the
force of Bruno Bauer’s arguments, he would never have ventured on this
assertion; he would have learned that it is not only historically
unproved, but intrinsically impossible.
But Kalthoff was in far too great a hurry to present to his readers a
description of the growth of Christianity, and therewith of the picture of
the Christ, to absorb thoroughly the criticism of his great predecessor.
He soon leads his reader away from the high road of criticism into a
morass of speculation, in order to arrive by a short cut at Graeco‐Roman
primitive Christianity. But the trouble is that while the guide walks
lightly and safely, the ordinary man, weighed down by the pressure of
historical considerations, sinks to rise no more.
The conjectural argument which Kalthoff follows out is in itself acute,
and forms a suitable pendant to Bauer’s reconstruction of the course of
events. Bauer proposed to derive Christianity from the Graeco‐Roman
philosophy; Kalthoff, recognising that the origin of popular Christianity
constitutes the main question, takes as his starting‐point the social
movements of the time.
In the Roman Empire, so runs his argument, among the oppressed masses of
the slaves and the populace, eruptive forces were concentrated under high
tension. A communistic movement arose, to which the influence of the
Jewish element in the proletariat gave a Messianic‐Apocalyptic colouring.
The Jewish synagogue influenced Roman social conditions so that “the crude
social ferment at work in the Roman Empire amalgamated itself with the
religious and philosophical forces of the time to form the new Christian
social movement.” Early Christian writers had learned in the synagogue to
construct “personifications.” The whole Late‐Jewish literature rests upon
this principle. Thus “the Christ” became the ideal hero of the Christian
community, “from the socio‐religious standpoint the figure of Christ is
the sublimated religious expression for the sum of the social and ethical
forces which were at work at a certain period.” The Lord’s Supper was the
memorial feast of this ideal hero.
“As the Christ to whose Parousia the community looks forward this Hero‐god
of the community bears within Himself the capacity for expansion into the
God of the universe, into the Christ of the Church, who is identical in
essential nature with God the Father. Thus the belief in the Christ
brought the Messianic hope of the future into the minds of the masses, who
had already a certain organisation, and by directing their thoughts
towards the future it won all those who were sick of the past and
despairing about the present.”
The death and resurrection of Jesus represent experiences of the
community. “For a Jew crucified under Pontius Pilate there was certainly
no resurrection. All that is possible is a vague hypothesis of a vision
lacking all historical reality, or an escape into the vaguenesses of
theological phraseology. But for the Christian community the resurrection
was something real, a matter of fact. For the community as such was not
annihilated in that persecution: it drew from it, rather, new strength and
life.”
But what about the foundations of this imposing structure?
For what he has to tell us about the condition of the Roman Empire and the
social organisation of the proletariat in the time of Trajan—for it was
then that the Church first came out into the light—we may leave the
responsibility with Kalthoff. But we must inquire more closely how he
brings the Jewish apocalyptic into contact with the Roman proletariat.
Communism, he says, was common to both. It was the bond which united the
apocalyptic “other‐worldliness” with reality. The only difficulty is that
Kalthoff omits to produce any proof out of the Jewish apocalypses that
communism was “the fundamental economic idea of the apocalyptic writers.”
He operates from the first with a special preparation of apocalyptic
thought, of a socialistic or Hellenistic character. Messianism is supposed
to have taken its rise from the Deuteronomic reform as “a social theory
which strives to realise itself in practice.” The apocalyptic of Daniel
arose, according to him, under Platonic influence. “The figure of the
Messiah thus became a human figure; it lost its specifically Jewish
traits.” He is the heavenly proto‐typal ideal man. Along with this
thought, and similarly derived from Plato, the conception of immortality
makes its appearance in apocalyptic.(244) This Platonic apocalyptic never
had any existence, or at least, to speak with the utmost possible caution,
its existence must not be asserted in the absence of all proof.
But, supposing it were admitted that Jewish apocalyptic had some affinity
for the Hellenic world, that it was Platonic and communistic, how are we
to explain the fact that the Gospels, which describe the genesis of Christ
and Christianity, imply a Galilaean and not a Roman environment?
As a matter of fact, Kalthoff says, they do imply a Roman environment. The
scene of the Gospel history is laid in Palestine, but it is drawn in Rome.
The agrarian conditions implied in the narratives and parables are Roman.
A vineyard with a wine‐press of its own could only be found, according to
Kalthoff, on the large Roman estates. So, too, the legal conditions. The
right of the creditor to sell the debtor, with his wife and children, is a
feature of Roman, not of Jewish law.
Peter everywhere symbolises the Church at Rome. The confession of Peter
had to be transferred to Caesarea Philippi because this town, “as the seat
of the Roman administration,” symbolised for Palestine the political
presence of Rome.
The woman with the issue was perhaps Poppaea Sabina, the wife of Nero,
“who in view of her strong leaning towards Judaism might well be described
in the symbolical style of the apocalyptic writings as the woman who
touched the hem of Jesus’ garment.”
The story of the unfaithful steward alludes to Pope Callixtus, who, when
the slave of a Christian in high position, was condemned to the mines for
the crime of embezzlement; that of the woman who was a sinner refers to
Marcia, the powerful mistress of Commodus, at whose intercession Callixtus
was released, to be advanced soon afterwards to the bishopric of Rome.
“These two narratives, therefore,” Kalthoff suggests, “which very clearly
allude to events well known at that time, and doubtless much discussed in
the Christian community, were admitted into the Gospel to express the
views of the Church regarding the life‐story of a Roman bishop which had
run its course under the eyes of the community, and thereby to give to the
events themselves the Church’s sanction and interpretation.”
Kalthoff does not, unfortunately, mention whether this is a case of
simple, ingenuous, or of conscious, didactic, Early Christian imagination.
That kind of criticism is a casting out of Satan by the aid of Beelzebub.
If he was going to invent on this scale, Kalthoff need not have found any
difficulty in accepting the figure of Jesus evolved by modern theology.
One feels annoyed with him because, while his thesis is ingenious, and, as
against “modern theology” has a considerable measure of justification, he
has worked it out in so uninteresting a fashion. He has no one but himself
to blame for the fact that instead of leading to the right explanation, it
only introduced a wearisome and unproductive controversy.(245)
In the end there remains scarcely a shade of distinction between Kalthoff
and his opponents. They want to bring their “historical Jesus” into the
midst of our time. He wants to do the same with his “Christ.” “A
secularised Christ,” he says, “as the type of the self‐determined man who
amid strife and suffering carries through victoriously, and fully
realises, His own personality in order to give the infinite fullness of
love which He bears within Himself as a blessing to mankind—a Christ such
as that can awaken to new life the antique Christ‐type of the Church. He
is no longer the Christ of the scholar, of the abstract theological
thinker with his scholastic rules and methods. He is the people’s Christ,
the Christ of the ordinary man, the figure in which all those powers of
the human soul which are most natural and simple—and therefore most
exalted and divine—find an expression at once sensible and spiritual.” But
that is precisely the description of the Jesus of modern historical
theology; why, then, make this long roundabout through scepticism? The
Christ of Kalthoff is nothing else than the Jesus of those whom he combats
in such a lofty fashion; the only difference is that he draws his figure
of Christ in red ink on blotting‐paper, and because it is red in colour
and smudgy in outline, wants to make out that it is something new.
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It is on ethical grounds that Eduard von Hartmann(246) refuses to accept
the Jesus of modern theology. He finds fault with it because in its
anxiety to retain a personality which would be of value to religion it
does not sufficiently distinguish between the authentic and the
“historical” Jesus. When criticism has removed the paintings‐over and
retouchings to which this authentic portrait of Jesus has been subjected,
it reaches, according to him, an unrecognisable painting below, in which
it is impossible to discover any clear likeness, least of all one of any
religious use and value.
Were it not for the tenacity and the simple fidelity of the epic
tradition, nothing whatever would have remained of the historic Jesus.
What has remained is merely of historical and psychological interest.
At His first appearance the historic Jesus was, according to Eduard von
Hartmann, almost “an impersonal being,” since He regarded Himself so
exclusively as the vehicle of His message that His personality hardly came
into the question. As time went on, however, He developed a taste for
glory and for wonderful deeds, and fell at last into a condition of
“abnormal exaltation of personality.” In the end He declares Himself to
His disciples and before the council as Messiah. “When He felt His death
drawing nigh He struck the balance of His life, found His mission a
failure, His person and His cause abandoned by God, and died with the
unanswered question on His lips, ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ ”
It is significant that Eduard von Hartmann has not fallen into the mistake
of Schopenhauer and many other philosophers, of identifying the pessimism
of Jesus with the Indian speculative pessimism of Buddha. The pessimism of
Jesus, he says, is not metaphysical, it is “a pessimism of indignation,”
born of the intolerable social and political conditions of the time. Von
Hartmann also clearly recognises the significance of eschatology, but he
does not define its character quite correctly, since he bases his
impressions solely on the Talmud, hardly making any use of the Old
Testament, of Enoch, the Psalms of Solomon, Baruch, or Fourth Ezra. He has
an irritating way of still using the name “Jehovah.”
Like Reimarus—von Hartmann’s positions are simply modernised Reimarus—he
is anxious to show that Christian theology has lost the right “to treat
the ideal Kingdom of God as belonging to itself.” Jesus and His teaching,
so far as they have been preserved, belong to Judaism. His ethic is for us
strange and full of stumbling‐blocks. He despises work, property, and the
duties of family life. His gospel is fundamentally plebeian, and
completely excludes the idea of any aristocracy except in so far as it
consents to plebeianise itself, and this is true not only as regards the
aristocracy of rank, property, and fortune, but also the aristocracy of
intellect. Von Hartmann cannot resist the temptation to accuse Jesus of
“Semitic harshness,” finding the evidence of this chiefly in Mark iv. 12,
where Jesus declares that the purpose of His parables was to obscure His
teaching and cause the hearts of the people to be hardened.
His judgment upon Jesus is: “He had no genius, but a certain talent which,
in the complete absence of any sound education, produced in general only
moderate results, and was not sufficient to preserve Him from numerous
weaknesses and serious errors; at heart a fanatic and a transcendental
enthusiast, who in spite of an inborn kindliness of disposition hates and
despises the world and everything it contains, and holds any interest in
it to be injurious to the sole true, transcendental interest; an amiable
and modest youth who, through a remarkable concatenation of circumstances
arrived at the idea, which was at that time epidemic,(247) that He was
Himself the expected Messiah, and in consequence of this met His fate.”
It is to be regretted that a mind like Eduard von Hartmann’s should not
have got beyond the externals of the history, and made an effort to grasp
the simple and impressive greatness of the figure of Jesus in its
eschatological setting; and that he should imagine he has disposed of the
strangeness which he finds in Jesus when he has made it as small as
possible. And yet in another respect there is something satisfactory about
his book. It is the open struggle of the Germanic spirit with Jesus. In
this battle the victory will rest with true greatness. Others wanted to
make peace before the struggle, or thought that theologians could fight
the battle alone, and spare their contemporaries the doubts about the
historical Jesus through which it was necessary to pass in order to reach
the eternal Jesus—and to this end they kept preaching reconciliation while
fighting the battle. They could only preach it on a basis of postulates,
and postulates make poor preaching! Thus, Jülicher, for example, in his
latest sketches of the Life of Jesus(248) distinguishes between “Jewish
and supra‐Jewish” in Jesus, and holds that Jesus transferred the ideal of
the Kingdom of God “to the solid ground of the present, bringing it into
the course of historical events,” and further “associated with the Kingdom
of God” the idea of development which was utterly opposed to all Jewish
ideas about the Kingdom. Jülicher also desires to raise “the strongest
protest against the poor little definition of His preaching which makes it
consist in nothing further than an announcement of the nearness of the
Kingdom, and an exhortation to the repentance necessary as a condition for
attaining the Kingdom.”
But when has a protest against the pure truth of history ever been of any
avail? Why proclaim peace where there is no peace, and attempt to put back
the clock of time? Is it not enough that Schleiermacher and Ritschl
succeeded again and again in making theology send on earth peace instead
of a sword, and does not the weakness of Christian thought as compared
with the general culture of our time result from the fact that it did not
face the battle when it ought to have faced it, but persisted in appealing
to a court of arbitration on which all the sciences were represented, but
which it had successfully bribed in advance?
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Now there comes to join the philosophers a jurist. Herr Doctor jur. De
Jonge lends his aid to Eduard von Hartmann in “destroying the
ecclesiastical,” and “unveiling the Jewish picture of Jesus.”(249)
De Jonge is a Jew by birth, baptized in 1889, who on the 22nd of November
1902 again separated himself from the Christian communion and was desirous
of being received back “with certain evangelical reservations” into the
Jewish community. In spite of his faithful observance of the Law, this was
refused. Now he is waiting “until in the Synagogue of the twentieth
century a freedom of conscience is accorded to him equal to that which in
the first century was enjoyed by John, the beloved disciple of Jeschua of
Nazareth.” In the meantime he beguiles the period of waiting by describing
Jesus and His earliest followers in the character of pattern Jews, and
sets them to work in the interest of his “Jewish views with evangelical
reservations.”
It is the colourless, characterless Jesus of the Superintendents and
Konsistorialrats which especially arouses his enmity. With this figure he
contrasts his own Jesus, the man of holy anger, the man of holy calm, the
man of holy melancholy, the master of dialectic, the imperious ruler, the
man of high gifts and practical ability, the man of inexorable consistency
and reforming vigour.
Jesus was, according to De Jonge, a pupil of Hillel. He demanded voluntary
poverty only in special cases, not as a general principle. In the case of
the rich young man, He knew “that the property which he had inherited was
derived in this particular case from impure sources which must be cut off
at once and for ever.”
But how does De Jonge know that Jesus knew this?
A writer who is attacking the common theological picture of Jesus, and who
displays in the process, as De Jonge does, not only wit and address, but
historical intuition, ought not to fall into the error of the theology
with which he is at feud; he ought to use sober history as his weapon
against the supplementary knowledge which his opponents seem to find
between the lines, instead of meeting it with an esoteric historical
knowledge of his own.
De Jonge knows that Jesus possessed property inherited from His father:
“One proof may serve where many might be given—the hasty flight into Egypt
with his whole family to escape from Herod, and the long sojourn in that
country.”
De Jonge knows—he is here, however, following the Gospel of John, to which
he everywhere gives the preference—that Jesus was between forty and fifty
years old at the time of His first coming forward publicly. The statement
in Luke iii. 23, that He was ὡσεί thirty years old, can only mislead those
who do not remember that Luke was a portrait painter and only meant that
“Jeschua, in consequence of His glorious beauty and His ever‐youthful
appearance, looked ten years younger than He really was.”
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De Jonge knows also that Jesus, at the time when He first emerged from
obscurity, was a widower and had a little son—the “lad” of John vi. 9, who
had the five barley loaves and two fishes, was in fact His son. This and
many other things the author finds in “the glorious John.” According to De
Jonge too we ought to think of Jesus as the aristocratic Jew, more
accustomed to a dress coat than to a workman’s blouse, something of an
expert, as appears from some of the parables, in matters of the table, and
conning the menu with interest when He dined with “privy‐finance‐
councillor” Zacchaeus.
But this is to modernise more distressingly than even the theologians!
De Jonge’s one‐sided preference for the Fourth Gospel is shared by
Kirchbach’s book, “What did Jesus teach?”(250) but here everything,
instead of being judaised, is spiritualised. Kirchbach does not seem to
have been acquainted with Noack’s “History of Jesus,” otherwise he would
hardly have ventured to repeat the same experiment without the latter’s
touch of genius and with much less skill and knowledge.
The teaching of Jesus is interpreted on the lines of the Kantian
philosophy. The saying, “No man hath seen God at any time,” is to be
understood as if it were derived from the same system of thought as the
“Critique of Pure Reason.” Jesus always used the words “death” and “life”
in a purely metaphorical sense. Eternal life is for Him not a life in
another world, but in the present. He speaks of Himself as the Son of God,
not as the Jewish Messiah. Son of Man is only the ethical explanation of
Son of God. The only reason why a Son‐of‐Man problem has arisen, is
because Matthew translated the ancient term Son of Man in the original
collection of Logia “with extreme literality.”
The great discourse of Matt. xxiii. with its warnings and threatenings is,
according to Kirchbach, merely “a patriotic oration in which Jesus gives
expression in moving words to His opposition to the Pharisees and His
inborn love of His native land.”
The teaching of Jesus is not ascetic, it closely resembles the real
teaching of Epicurus, “that is, the rejection of all false metaphysics,
and the resulting condition of blessedness, of _makaria_.” The only
purpose of the demand addressed to the rich young man was to try him. “If
the youth, instead of slinking away dejectedly because he was called upon
to sell all his goods, had replied, confident in the possession of a rich
fund of courage, energy, ability, and knowledge, ‘Right gladly. It will
not go to my heart to part with my little bit of property; if I’m not to
have it, why then I can do without it,’ the Rabbi would probably in that
case not have taken him at his word, but would have said, ‘Young man, I
like you. You have a good chance before you, you may do something in the
Kingdom of God, and in any case for My sake you may attach yourself to Me
by way of trial. We can talk about your stocks and bonds later.’ ”
Finally, Kirchbach succeeds, though only, it must be admitted, by the aid
of some rather awkward phraseology, in spiritualising John vi. “It is not
the body,” he explains, “of the long departed thinker, who apparently
attached no importance whatever to the question of personal survival, that
we, who understand Him in the right Greek sense, ‘eat’; in the sense which
He intended, we eat and drink, and absorb into ourselves, His teaching,
His spirit, His sublime conception of life, by constantly recalling them
in connexion with the symbol of bread and flesh, the symbol of blood, the
symbol of water.”(251)
Worthless as Kirchbach’s Life of Jesus is from an historical point of
view, it is quite comprehensible as a phase in the struggle between the
modern view of the world and Jesus. The aim of the work is to retain His
significance for a metaphysical and non‐ascetic time; and since it is not
possible to do this in the case of the historical Jesus, the author denies
His existence in favour of an apocryphal Jesus.
It is, in fact, the characteristic feature of the Life‐of‐Jesus literature
on the threshold of the new century even in the productions of professedly
historical and scientific theology, to subordinate the historical interest
to the interest of the general world‐view. And those who “wrest the
Kingdom of Heaven” are beginning to wrest Jesus Himself along with it. Men
who have no qualifications for the task, whose ignorance is nothing less
than criminal, who loftily anathematise scientific theology instead of
making themselves in some measure acquainted with the researches which it
has carried out, feel impelled to write a Life of Jesus, in order to set
forth their general religious view in a portrait of Jesus which has not
the faintest claim to be historical, and the most far‐fetched of these
find favour, and are eagerly absorbed by the multitude.
It would be something to be thankful for if all these Lives of Jesus were
based on as definite an idea and as acute historical observation as we
find in Albert Dulk’s “The Error of the Life of Jesus.”(252) In Dulk the
story of the fate of Jesus is also the story of the fate of religion. The
Galilaean teacher, whose true character was marked by deep religious
inwardness, was doomed to destruction from the moment when He set Himself
upon the dizzy heights of the divine sonship and the eschatological
expectation. He died in despair, having vainly expected, down to the very
last, a “telegram from heaven.” Religion as a whole can only avoid the
same fate by renouncing all transcendental elements.
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The vast numbers of imaginative Lives of Jesus shrink into remarkably
small compass on a close examination. When one knows two or three of them,
one knows them all. They have scarcely altered since Venturini’s time,
except that some of the cures performed by Jesus are handled in the modern
Lives from the point of view of the recent investigations in hypnotism and
suggestion.(253)
According to Paul de Régla(254) Jesus was born out of wedlock. Joseph,
however, gave shelter and protection to the mother. De Régla dwells on the
beauty of the child. “His eyes were not exceptionally large, but were
well‐opened, and were shaded by long, silky, dark‐brown eyelashes, and
rather deep‐set. They were of a blue‐grey colour, which changed with
changing emotions, taking on various shades, especially blue and brownish‐
grey.”
He and His disciples were Essenes, as was also the Baptist. That implies
that He was no longer a Jew in the strict sense. His preaching dealt with
the rights of man, and put forward socialistic and communistic demands:
His religion in the pure consciousness of communion with God. With
eschatology He had nothing whatever to do, it was first interpolated into
His teaching by Matthew.
The miracles are all to be explained by suggestion and hypnotism. At the
marriage at Cana, Jesus noticed that the guests were taking too much, and
therefore secretly bade the servants pour out water instead of wine while
He Himself said, “Drink, this is better wine.” In this way He succeeded in
suggesting to a part of the company that they were really drinking wine.
The feeding of the multitude is explained by striking out a couple of
noughts from the numbers; the raising of Lazarus by supposing it a case of
premature burial. Jesus Himself when taken down from the cross was not
dead, and the Essenes succeeded in reanimating Him. His work is inspired
with hatred against Catholicism, but with a real reverence for Jesus.
Another mere variant of the plan of Venturini is the fictitious Life of
Jesus of Pierre Nahor.(255) The sentimental descriptions of nature and the
long dialogues characteristic of the Lives of Jesus of a hundred years ago
are here again in full force. After John had already begun to preach in
the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, Jesus, in company with a distinguished
Brahmin who possessed property at Nazareth and had an influential
following in Jerusalem, made a journey to Egypt and was there
indoctrinated into all kinds of Egyptian, Essene, and Indian philosophy,
thus giving the author, or rather the authoress, an opportunity to develop
her ideas on the philosophy of religion in didactic dialogues. When He
soon afterwards begins to work in Galilee the young teacher is much aided
by the fact that, at the instance of His fellow‐traveller, He had acquired
from Egyptian mendicants a practical acquaintance with the secrets of
hypnotism. By His skill He healed Mary of Magdala, a distinguished
courtesan of Tiberias. They had met before at Alexandria. After being
cured she left Tiberias and went to live in a small house, inherited from
her mother, at Magdala.
Jesus Himself never went to Tiberias, but the social world of that place
took an interest in Him, and often had itself rowed to the beach when He
was preaching. Rich and pious ladies used to inquire of Him where He
thought of preaching to the people on a given day, and sent baskets of
bread and dried fish to the spot which He indicated, that the multitude
might not suffer hunger. This is the explanation of the stories about the
feeding of the multitudes; the people had no idea whence Jesus suddenly
obtained the supplies which He caused His disciples to distribute.
When he became aware that the priests had resolved upon His death, He made
His friend Joseph of Arimathea, a leading man among the Essenes, promise
that he would take Him down from the cross as soon as possible and lay Him
in the grave without other witnesses. Only Nicodemus was to be present. On
the cross He put Himself into a cataleptic trance; He was taken down from
the cross seemingly dead, and came to Himself again in the grave. After
appearing several times to His disciples he set out for Nazareth and
dragged His way painfully thither. With a last effort He reaches the house
of His mysterious old Indian teacher. At the door He falls helpless, just
as the morning dawns. The old slave‐woman recognises Him and carries Him
into the house, where He dies. “The serene solemn night withdrew and day
broke in blinding splendour behind Tiberias.”
Nikolas Notowitsch(256) finds in Luke i. 80 (“And the child grew ... and
was in the deserts until the day of his shewing unto Israel”) a “gap in
the life of Jesus,” in spite of the fact that this passage refers to the
Baptist, and proposes to fill it by putting Jesus to school with the
Brahmins and Buddhists from His thirteenth to His twenty‐ninth year. As
evidence for this he refers to statements about Buddhist worship of a
certain Issa which he professes to have found in the monasteries of Little
Thibet. The whole thing is, as was shown by the experts, a barefaced
swindle and an impudent invention.
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To the fictitious Lives of Jesus belong also in the main the theosophical
“Lives,” which equally play fast and loose with the history, though here
with a view to proving that Jesus had absorbed the Egyptian and Indian
theosophy, and had been indoctrinated with “occult science.” The
theosophists, however, have the advantage of escaping the dilemma between
reanimation after a trance and resurrection, since they are convinced that
it was possible for Jesus to reassume His body after He had really died.
But in the touching up and embellishment of the Gospel narratives they
out‐do even the romancers.
Ernest Bosc,(257) writing as a theosophist, makes it the chief aim of his
work to describe the oriental origin of Christianity, and ventures to
assert that Jesus was not a Semite, but an Aryan. The Fourth Gospel is, of
course, the basis of his representation. He does not hesitate, however, to
appeal also to the anonymous “Revelations” published in 1849, which are a
mere plagiarism from Venturini.
A work which is written with some ability and with much out‐of‐the‐way
learning is “Did Jesus live 100 B.C.?”(258) The author compares the
Christian tradition with the Jewish, and finds in the latter a
reminiscence of a Jesus who lived in the time of Alexander Jannaeus
(104‐76 B.C.). This person was transferred by the earliest Evangelist to
the later period, the attempt being facilitated by the fact that during
the procuratorship of Pilate a false prophet had attracted some attention.
The author, however, only professes to offer it as a hypothesis, and
apologises in advance for the offence which it is likely to cause.
XIX. THOROUGHGOING SCEPTICISM AND THOROUGHGOING ESCHATOLOGY
_W. Wrede._ Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien. Zugleich ein
Beitrag zum Verständnis des Markusevangeliums. (The Messianic
Secret in the Gospels. Forming a contribution also to the
understanding of the Gospel of Mark.) Göttingen, 1901. 286 pp.
_Albert Schweitzer._ Das Messianitäts‐ und Leidensgeheimnis. Eine
Skizze des Lebens Jesu. (The Secret of the Messiahship and the
Passion. A Sketch of the Life of Jesus.) Tübingen and Leipzig,
1901. 109 pp.
The coincidence between the work of Wrede(259) and the “Sketch of the Life
of Jesus” is not more surprising in regard to the time of their appearance
than in regard to the character of their contents. They appeared upon the
self‐same day, their titles are almost identical, and their agreement in
the criticism of the modern historical conception of the life of Jesus
extends sometimes to the very phraseology. And yet they are written from
quite different standpoints, one from the point of view of literary
criticism, the other from that of the historical recognition of
eschatology. It seems to be the fate of the Marcan hypothesis that at the
decisive periods its problems should always be attacked simultaneously and
independently from the literary and the historical sides, and the results
declared in two different forms which corroborate each other. So it was in
the case of Weisse and Wilke; so it is again now, when, retaining the
assumption of the priority of Mark, the historicity of the hitherto
accepted view of the life of Jesus, based upon the Marcan narrative, is
called in question.
The meaning of that is that the literary and the eschatological view,
which have hitherto been marching parallel, on either flank, to the
advance of modern theology, have now united their forces, brought theology
to a halt, surrounded it, and compelled it to give battle.
That in the last three or four years so much has been written in which
this enveloping movement has been ignored does not alter the real position
of modern historical theology in the least. The fact is deserving of
notice that during this period the study of the subject has not made a
step in advance, but has kept moving to and fro upon the old lines with
wearisome iteration, and has thrown itself with excessive zeal into the
work of popularisation, simply because it was incapable of advancing.
And even if it professes gratitude to Wrede for the very interesting
historical point which he has brought into the discussion, and is also
willing to admit that thoroughgoing eschatology has advanced the solution
of many problems, these are mere demonstrations which are quite inadequate
to raise the blockade of modern theology by the allied forces. Supposing
that only a half—nay, only a third—of the critical arguments which are
common to Wrede and the “Sketch of the Life of Jesus” are sound, then the
modern historical view of the history is wholly ruined.
The reader of Wrede’s book cannot help feeling that here no quarter is
given; and any one who goes carefully through the present writer’s
“Sketch” must come to see that between the modern historical and the
eschatological Life of Jesus no compromise is possible.
Thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology may, in their
union, either destroy, or be destroyed by modern historical theology; but
they cannot combine with it and enable it to advance, any more than they
can be advanced by it.
We are confronted with a decisive issue. As with Strauss’s “Life of
Jesus,” so with the surprising agreement in the critical basis of these
two schools—we are not here considering the respective solutions which
they offer—there has entered into the domain of the theology of the day a
force with which it cannot possibly ally itself. Its whole territory is
threatened. It must either reconquer it step by step or else surrender it.
It has no longer the right to advance a single assertion until it has
taken up a definite position in regard to the fundamental questions raised
by the new criticism.
Modern historical theology is no doubt still far from recognising this. It
is warned that the dyke is letting in water and sends a couple of masons
to repair the leak; as if the leak did not mean that the whole masonry is
undermined, and must be rebuilt from the foundation.
To vary the metaphor, theology comes home to find the broker’s marks on
all the furniture and goes on as before quite comfortably, ignoring the
fact it will lose everything if it does not pay its debts.
The critical objections which Wrede and the “Sketch” agree in bringing
against the modern treatment of the subject are as follows.
In order to find in Mark the Life of Jesus of which it is in search,
modern theology is obliged to read between the lines a whole host of
things, and those often the most important, and then to foist them upon
the text by means of psychological conjecture. It is determined to find
evidence in Mark of a development of Jesus, a development of the
disciples, and a development of the outer circumstances; and professes in
so doing to be only reproducing the views and indications of the
Evangelist. In reality, however, there is not a word of all this in the
Evangelist, and when his interpreters are asked what are the hints and
indications on which they base their assertions they have nothing to offer
save _argumenta e silentio_.
Mark knows nothing of any development in Jesus; he knows nothing of any
paedagogic considerations which are supposed to have determined the
conduct of Jesus towards the disciples and the people; he knows nothing of
any conflict in the mind of Jesus between a spiritual and a popular,
political Messianic ideal; he does not know, either, that in this respect
there was any difference between the view of Jesus and that of the people;
he knows nothing of the idea that the use of the ass at the triumphal
entry symbolised a non‐political Messiahship; he knows nothing of the idea
that the question about the Messiah’s being the Son of David had something
to do with this alternative between political and non‐political; he does
not know, either, that Jesus explained the secret of the passion to the
disciples, nor that they had any understanding of it; he only knows that
from first to last they were in all respects equally wanting in
understanding; he does not know that the first period was a period of
success and the second a period of failure; he represents the Pharisees
and Herodians as (from iii. 6 onwards) resolved upon the death of Jesus,
while the people, down to the very last day when He preached in the
temple, are enthusiastically loyal to Him.
All these things of which the Evangelist says nothing—and they are the
foundations of the modern view—should first be proved, if proved they can
be; they ought not to be simply read into the text as something self‐
evident. For it is just those things which appear so self‐evident to the
prevailing critical temper which are in reality the least evident of all.
Another hitherto self‐evident point—the “historical kernel” which it has
been customary to extract from the narratives—must be given up, until it
is proved, if it is capable of proof, that we can and ought to distinguish
between the kernel and the husk. We may take all that is reported as
either historical or unhistorical, but, in respect of the definite
predictions of the passion, death, and resurrection, we ought to give up
taking the reference to the passion as historical and letting the rest go;
we may accept the idea of the atoning death, or we may reject it, but we
ought not to ascribe to Jesus a feeble, anaemic version of this idea,
while setting down to the account of the Pauline theology the
interpretation of the passion which we actually find in Mark.
Whatever the results obtained by the aid of the historical kernel, the
method pursued is the same; “it is detached from its context and
transformed into something different.” “It finally comes to this,” says
Wrede, “that each critic retains whatever portion of the traditional
sayings can be fitted into his construction of the facts and his
conception of historical possibility and rejects the rest.” The
psychological explanation of motive, and the psychological connexion of
the events and actions which such critics have proposed to find in Mark,
simply do not exist. That being so, nothing is to be made out of his
account by the application of a priori psychology. A vast quantity of
treasures of scholarship and erudition, of art and artifice, which the
Marcan hypothesis has gathered into its storehouse in the two generations
of its existence to aid it in constructing its life of Jesus has become
worthless, and can be of no further service to true historical research.
Theology has been simplified. What would become of it if that did not
happen every hundred years or so? And the simplification was badly needed,
for no one since Strauss had cleared away its impedimenta.
Thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology, between them, are
compelling theology to read the Marcan text again with simplicity of mind.
The simplicity consists in dispensing with the connecting links which it
has been accustomed to discover between the sections of the narrative
(_pericopes_), in looking at each one separately, and recognising that it
is difficult to pass from one to the other.
The material with which it has hitherto been usual to solder the sections
together into a life of Jesus will not stand the temperature test. Exposed
to the cold air of critical scepticism it cracks; when the furnace of
eschatology is heated to a certain point the solderings melt. In both
cases the sections all fall apart.
Formerly it was possible to book through‐tickets at the supplementary‐
psychological‐knowledge office which enabled those travelling in the
interests of Life‐of‐Jesus construction to use express trains, thus
avoiding the inconvenience of having to stop at every little station,
change, and run the risk of missing their connexion. This ticket office is
now closed. There is a station at the end of each section of the
narrative, and the connexions are not guaranteed.
The fact is, it is not simply that there is no very obvious psychological
connexion between the sections; in almost every case there is a positive
break in the connexion. And there is a great deal in the Marcan narrative
which is inexplicable and even self‐contradictory.
In their statement of the problems raised by this want of connexion Wrede
and the “Sketch” are in the most exact agreement. That these difficulties
are not artificially constructed has been shown by our survey of the
history of the attempts to write the Life of Jesus, in the course of which
these problems emerge one after another, after Bruno Bauer had by
anticipation grasped them all in their complexity.
How do the demoniacs know that Jesus is the Son of God? Why does the blind
man at Jericho address Him as the Son of David, when no one else knows His
Messianic dignity? How was it that these occurrences did not give a new
direction to the thoughts of the people in regard to Jesus? How did the
Messianic entry come about? How was it possible without provoking the
interference of the Roman garrison of occupation? Why is it as completely
ignored in the subsequent controversies as if had never taken place? Why
was it not brought up at the trial of Jesus? “The Messianic acclamation at
the entry into Jerusalem,” says Wrede, “is in Mark quite an isolated
incident. It has no sequel, neither is there any preparation for it
beforehand.”
Why does Jesus in Mark iv. 10‐12 speak of the parabolic form of discourse
as designed to conceal the mystery of the Kingdom of God, whereas the
explanation which He proceeds to give to the disciples has nothing
mysterious about it? What is the mystery of the Kingdom of God? Why does
Jesus forbid His miracles to be made known even in cases where there is no
apparent purpose for the prohibition? Why is His Messiahship a secret and
yet no secret, since it is known, not only to the disciples, but to the
demoniacs, the blind man at Jericho, the multitude at Jerusalem—which
must, as Bruno Bauer expresses it, “have fallen from heaven”—and to the
High Priest?
Why does Jesus first reveal His Messiahship to the disciples at Caesarea
Philippi, not at the moment when He sends them forth to preach? How does
Peter know without having been told by Jesus that the Messiahship belongs
to his Master? Why must it remain a secret until the “resurrection”? Why
does Jesus indicate His Messiahship only by the title Son of Man? And why
is it that this title is so far from prominent in primitive Christian
theology?
What is the meaning of the statement that Jesus at Jerusalem discovered a
difficulty in the fact that the Messiah was described as at once David’s
son and David’s Lord? How are we to explain the fact that Jesus had to
open the eyes of the people to the greatness of the Baptist’s office,
subsequently to the mission of the Twelve, and to enlighten the disciples
themselves in regard to it during the descent from the mount of
transfiguration? Why should this be described in Matt. xi. 14 and 15 as a
mystery difficult to grasp (“If ye can receive it” ... “He that hath ears
to hear, let him hear”)? What is the meaning of the saying that he that is
least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than the Baptist? Does the
Baptist, then, not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven? How is the Kingdom of
Heaven subjected to violence since the days of the Baptist? Who are the
violent? What is the Baptist intended to understand from the answer of
Jesus?
What importance was attached to the miracles by Jesus Himself? What office
must they have caused the people to attribute to Him? Why is the discourse
at the sending out of the Twelve filled with predictions of persecutions
which experience had given no reason to anticipate, and which did not, as
a matter of fact, occur? What is the meaning of the saying in Matt. x. 23
about the imminent coming of the Son of Man, seeing that the disciples
after all returned to Jesus without its being fulfilled? Why does Jesus
leave the people just when His work among them is most successful, and
journey northwards? Why had He, immediately after the sending forth of the
Twelve, manifested a desire to withdraw Himself from the multitude who
were longing for salvation?
How does the multitude mentioned in Mark viii. 34 suddenly appear at
Caesarea Philippi? Why is its presence no longer implied in Mark ix. 30?
How could Jesus possibly have travelled unrecognised through Galilee, and
how could He have avoided being thronged in Capernaum although He stayed
at “the house”?
How came He so suddenly to speak to His disciples of His suffering and
dying and rising again, without, moreover, explaining to them either the
natural or the moral “wherefore”? “There is no trace of any attempt on the
part of Jesus,” says Wrede, “to break this strange thought gradually to
His disciples ... the prediction is always flung down before the disciples
without preparation, it is, in fact, a characteristic feature of these
sayings that all attempt to aid the understanding of the disciples is
lacking.”
Did Jesus journey to Jerusalem with the purpose of working there, or of
dying there? How comes it that in Mark x. 39, He holds out to the sons of
Zebedee the prospect of drinking His cup and being baptized with His
baptism? And how can He, after speaking so decidedly of the necessity of
His death, think it possible in Gethsemane that the cup might yet pass
from Him? Who are the undefined “many,” for whom, according to Mark x. 45
and xiv. 24, His death shall serve as a ransom?(260)
How came it that Jesus alone was arrested? Why were no witnesses called at
His trial to testify that He had given Himself out to be the Messiah? How
is it that on the morning after His arrest the temper of the multitude
seems to be completely changed, so that no one stirs a finger to help Him?
In what form does Jesus conceive the resurrection, which He promises to
His disciples, to be combined with the coming on the clouds of heaven, to
which He points His judge? In what relation do these predictions stand to
the prospect held out at the time of the sending forth of the Twelve, but
not realized, of the immediate appearance of the Son of Man?
What is the meaning of the further prediction on the way to Gethsemane
(Mark xiv. 28) that after His resurrection He will go before the disciples
into Galilee? How is the other version of this saying (Mark xvi. 7) to be
explained, according to which it means, as spoken by the angel, that the
disciples are to journey to Galilee to have their first meeting with the
risen Jesus there, whereas, on the lips of Jesus, it betokened that, just
as now as a sufferer He was going before them from Galilee to Jerusalem,
so, after His resurrection, He would go before them from Jerusalem to
Galilee? And what was to happen there?
These problems were covered up by the naturalistic psychology as by a
light snow‐drift. The snow has melted, and they now stand out from the
narratives like black points of rock. It is no longer allowable to avoid
these questions, or to solve them, each by itself, by softening them down
and giving them an interpretation by which the reported facts acquire a
quite different significance from that which they bear for the Evangelist.
Either the Marcan text as it stands is historical, and therefore to be
retained, or it is not, and then it should be given up. What is really
unhistorical is any softening down of the wording, and the meaning which
it naturally bears.
The sceptical and eschatological schools, however, go still farther in
company. If the connexion in Mark is really no connexion, it is important
to try to discover whether any principle can be discovered in this want of
connexion. Can any order be brought into the chaos? To this the answer is
in the affirmative.
The complete want of connexion, with all its self‐contradictions, is
ultimately due to the fact that two representations of the life of Jesus,
or, to speak more accurately, of His public ministry, are here crushed
into one; a natural and a deliberately supernatural representation. A
dogmatic element has intruded itself into the description of this
Life—something which has no concern with the events which form the outward
course of that Life. This dogmatic element is the Messianic secret of
Jesus and all the secrets and concealments which go along with it.
Hence the irrational and self‐contradictory features of the presentation
of Jesus, out of which a rational psychology can make only something which
is unhistorical and does violence to the text, since it must necessarily
get rid of the constant want of connexion and self‐contradiction which
belongs to the essence of the narrative, and portray a Jesus who was the
Messiah, not one who at once was and was not Messiah, as the Evangelist
depicts Him. When rational psychology conceives Him as one who was
Messiah, but not in the sense expected by the people, that is a concession
to the self‐contradictions of the Marcan representation; which, however,
does justice neither to the text nor to the history which it records,
since the Gospel does not contain the faintest hint that the contradiction
was of this nature.
Up to this point—up to the complete reconstruction of the system which
runs through the disconnectedness, and the tracing back of the dogmatic
element to the Messianic secret—there extends a close agreement between
thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology. The critical
arguments are identical, the construction is analogous and based on the
same principle. The defenders of the modern psychological view cannot,
therefore, play off one school against the other, as one of them proposed
to do, but must deal with them both at once. They differ only when they
explain whence the system that runs through the disconnectedness comes.
Here the ways divide, as Bauer saw long ago. The inconsistency between the
public life of Jesus and His Messianic claim lies either in the nature of
the Jewish Messianic conception, or in the representation of the
Evangelist. There is, on the one hand, the eschatological solution, which
at one stroke raises the Marcan account as it stands, with all its
disconnectedness and inconsistencies, into genuine history; and there is,
on the other hand, the literary solution, which regards the incongruous
dogmatic element as interpolated by the earliest Evangelist into the
tradition and therefore strikes out the Messianic claim altogether from
the historical Life of Jesus. _Tertium non datur._
But in some respects it really hardly matters which of the two “solutions”
one adopts. They are both merely wooden towers erected upon the solid main
building of the consentient critical induction which offers the enigmas
detailed above to modern historical theology. It is interesting in this
connexion that Wrede’s scepticism is just as constructive as the
eschatological outline of the Life of Jesus in the “Sketch.”
Bruno Bauer chose the literary solution because he thought that we had no
evidence for an eschatological expectation existing in the time of Christ.
Wrede, though he follows Johannes Weiss in assuming the existence of a
Jewish eschatological Messianic expectation, finds in the Gospel only the
Christian conception of the Messiah. “If Jesus,” he thinks, “really knew
Himself to be the Messiah and designated Himself as such, the genuine
tradition is so closely interwoven with later accretions that it is not
easy to recognise it.” In any case, Jesus cannot, according to Wrede, have
spoken of His Messianic Coming in the way which the Synoptists report. The
Messiahship of Jesus, as we find it in the Gospels, is a product of Early
Christian theology correcting history according to its own conceptions.
It is therefore necessary to distinguish in Mark between the reported
events which constitute the outward course of the history of Jesus, and
the dogmatic idea which claims to lay down the lines of its inward course.
The principle of division is found in the contradictions.
The recorded events form, according to Wrede, the following picture. Jesus
came forward as a teacher,(261) first and principally in Galilee. He was
surrounded by a company of disciples, went about with them, and gave them
instruction. To some of them He accorded a special confidence. A larger
multitude sometimes attached itself to Him, in addition to the disciples.
He is fond of discoursing in parables. Besides the teaching there are the
miracles. These make a stir, and He is thronged by the multitudes. He
gives special attention to the cases of demoniacs. He is in such close
touch with the people that He does not hesitate to associate even with
publicans and sinners. Towards the Law He takes up an attitude of some
freedom. He encounters the opposition of the Pharisees and the Jewish
authorities. They set traps for Him and endeavour to bring about His fall.
Finally they succeed, when He ventures to show Himself not only on Judaean
soil, but in Jerusalem. He remains passive and is condemned to death. The
Roman administration supports the Jewish authorities.
“The texture of the Marcan narrative as we know it,” continues Wrede, “is
not complete until to the warp of these general historical notions there
is added a strong weft of ideas of a dogmatic character,” the substance of
which is that “Jesus, the bearer of a special office to which He was
appointed by God,” becomes “a higher, superhuman being.” If this is the
case, however, then the motives of His conduct are not derived from human
characteristics, human aims and necessities. “The one motive which runs
throughout is rather a Divine decree which lies beyond human
understanding. This He seeks to fulfil alike in His actions and His
sufferings. The teaching of Jesus is accordingly supernatural.” On this
assumption the want of understanding of the disciples to whom He
communicates, without commentary, unconnected portions of this
supernatural knowledge becomes natural and explicable. The people are,
moreover, essentially “non‐receptive of revelation.”
“It is these _motifs_ and not those which are inherently historical which
give movement and direction to the Marcan narrative. It is they that give
the general colour. On them naturally depends the main interest, it is to
them that the thought of the writer is really directed. The consequence is
that the general picture offered by the Gospel is not an historical
representation of the Life of Jesus. Only some faded remnants of such an
impression have been taken over into a supra‐historical religious view. In
this sense the Gospel of Mark belongs to the history of dogma.”
The two conceptions of the Life of Jesus, the natural and the
supernatural, are brought, not without inconsistencies, into a kind of
harmony by means of the idea of intentional secrecy. The Messiahship of
Jesus is concealed in His life as in a closed dark lantern, which,
however, is not quite closed—otherwise one could not see that it was
there—and allows a few bright beams to escape.
The idea of a secret which must remain a secret until the resurrection of
Jesus could only arise at a time when nothing was known of a Messianic
claim of Jesus during His life upon earth: that is to say, at a time when
the Messiahship of Jesus was thought of as beginning with the
resurrection. But that is a weighty piece of indirect historical evidence
that Jesus did not really profess to be the Messiah at all.
The positive fact which is to be inferred from this is that the
appearances of the risen Jesus produced a sudden revolution in His
disciples’ conception of Him. “The resurrection” is for Wrede the real
Messianic event in the Life of Jesus.
Who is responsible, then, for introducing this singular feature, so
destructive of the real historical connexion, into the life of Jesus,
which was in reality that of a teacher? It is quite impossible, Wrede
argues, that the idea of the Messianic secret is the invention of Mark. “A
thing like that is not done by a single individual. It must, therefore,
have been a view which was current in certain circles, and was held by a
considerable number, though not necessarily perhaps by a very great number
of persons. To say this is not to deny that Mark had a share and perhaps a
considerable share in the creation of the view which he sets forth ... the
_motifs_ themselves are doubtless not, in part at least, peculiar to the
Evangelist, but the concrete embodiment of them is certainly his own work;
and to this extent we may speak of a special Marcan point of view which
manifests itself here and there. Where the line is to be drawn between
what is traditional and what is individual cannot always be determined
even by a careful examination directed to this end. We must leave it
commingled, as we find it.”
The Marcan narrative has therefore arisen from the impulse to give a
Messianic form to the earthly life of Jesus. This impulse was, however,
restrained by the impression and tradition of the non‐Messianic character
of the life of Jesus, which were still strong and vivid, and it was
therefore not able wholly to recast the material, but could only bore its
way into it and force it apart, as the roots of the bramble disintegrate a
rock. In the Gospel literature which arose on the basis of Mark the
Messianic secret becomes gradually of more subordinate importance and the
life of Jesus more Messianic in character, until in the Fourth Gospel He
openly comes before the people with Messianic claims.
In estimating the value of this construction we must not attach too much
importance to its a priori assumptions and difficulties. In this respect
Wrede’s position is much more precarious than that of his precursor Bruno
Bauer. According to the latter the interpolation of the Messianic secret
is the personal, absolutely original act of the Evangelist. Wrede thinks
of it as a collective act, representing the new conception as moulded by
the tradition before it was fixed by the Evangelist. That is very much
more difficult to carry through. Tradition alters its materials in a
different way from that in which we find them altered in Mark. Tradition
transforms from without. Mark’s way of drawing secret threads of a
different material through the texture of the tradition, without otherwise
altering it, is purely literary, and could only be the work of an
individual person.
A creative tradition would have carried out the theory of the Messianic
secret in the life of Jesus much more boldly and logically, that is to
say, at once more arbitrarily and more consistently.
The only alternative is to distinguish two stages of tradition in early
Christianity, a naive, freely‐working, earlier stage, and a more
artificial later stage confined to a smaller circle of a more literary
character. Wrede does, as a matter of fact, propose to find in Mark traces
of a simpler and bolder transformation which, leaving aside the Messianic
secret, makes Jesus an openly‐professed Messiah, and is therefore of a
distinct origin from the conception of the secret Christ. To this
tradition may belong, he thinks, the entry into Jerusalem and the
confession before the High Priest, since these narratives “naively” imply
an openly avowed Messiahship.
The word “naively” is out of place here; a really naive tradition which
intended to represent the entry of Jesus as Messianic would have done so
in quite a different way from Mark, and would not have stultified itself
so curiously as we find done even in Matthew, where the Galilaean Passover
pilgrims, after the “Messianic entry,” answer the question of the people
of Jerusalem as to who it was whom they were acclaiming, with the words
“This is the Prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee” (Matt. xxi. 11).
The tradition, too, which makes Jesus acknowledge His Messiahship before
His judges is not “naive” in Wrede’s sense, for, if it were, it would not
represent the High Priest’s knowledge of Jesus’ Messiahship as something
so extraordinary and peculiar to himself that he can cite witnesses only
for the saying about the Temple, not with reference to Jesus’ Messianic
claim, and bases his condemnation only on the fact that Jesus in answer to
his question acknowledges Himself as Messiah—and Jesus does so, it should
be remarked, as in other passages, with an appeal to a future
justification of His claim. The confession before the council is therefore
anything but a “naive representation of an openly avowed Messiahship.”
The Messianic statements in these two passages present precisely the same
remarkable character as in all the other cases to which Wrede draws
attention. We have not here to do with a different tradition, with a clear
Messianic light streaming in through the window‐pane, but, just as
elsewhere, with the rays of a dark lantern. The real point is that Wrede
cannot bring these two passages within the lines of the theory of secrecy,
and practically admits this by assuming the existence of a second and
rather divergent line of tradition. What concerns us is to note that this
theory does not suffice to explain the two facts in question, the
knowledge of Jesus’ Messiahship shown by the Galilaean Passover pilgrims
at the time of the entry into Jerusalem, and the knowledge of the High
Priest at His trial.
We can only touch on the question whether any one who wished to date back
in some way or other the Messiahship into the life of Jesus could not have
done it much more simply by making Jesus give His closest followers some
hints regarding it. Why does the re‐moulder of the history, instead of
doing that, have recourse to a supernatural knowledge on the part of the
demoniacs and the disciples? For Wrede rightly remarks, as Bruno Bauer and
the “Sketch” also do, that the incident of Caesarea Philippi, as
represented by Mark, involves a miracle, since Jesus does not, as is
generally supposed, reveal His Messiahship to Peter; it is Peter who
reveals it to Jesus (Mark viii. 29). This fact, however, makes nonsense of
the whole theory about the disciples’ want of understanding. It will not
therefore fit into the concealment theory, and Wrede, as a matter of fact,
feels obliged to give up that theory as regards this incident. “This
scene,” he remarks, “can hardly have been created by Mark himself.” It
also, therefore, belongs to another tradition.
Here, then, is a third Messianic fact which cannot be brought within the
lines of Wrede’s “literary” theory of the Messianic secret. And these
three facts are precisely the most important of all: Peter’s confession,
the Entry into Jerusalem, and the High Priest’s knowledge of Jesus’
Messiahship! In each case Wrede finds himself obliged to refer these to
tradition instead of to the literary conception of Mark.(262) This
tradition undermines his literary hypothesis, for the conception of a
tradition always involves the possibility of genuine historical elements.
How greatly this inescapable intrusion of tradition weakens the theory of
the literary interpolation of the Messiahship into the history, becomes
evident when we consider the story of the passion. The representation that
Jesus was publicly put to death as Messiah because He had publicly
acknowledged Himself to be so, must, like the High Priest’s knowledge of
His claim, be referred to the other tradition which has nothing to do with
the Messianic secret, but boldly antedates the Messiahship without
employing any finesse of that kind. But that strongly tends to confirm the
historicity of this tradition, and throws the burden of proof upon those
who deny it. It is wholly independent of the hypothesis of secrecy, and in
fact directly opposed to it. If, on the other hand, in spite of all the
difficulties, the representation that Jesus was condemned to death on
account of His Messianic claims is dragged by main force into the theory
of secrecy, the question arises: What interest had the persons who set up
the literary theory of secrecy, in representing Jesus as having been
openly put to death as Messiah and in consequence of His Messianic claims?
And the answer is: “None whatever: quite the contrary.” For in doing so
the theory of secrecy stultifies itself. As though one were to develop a
photographic plate with painful care and, just when one had finished,
fling open the shutters, so, on this hypothesis, the natural Messianic
light suddenly shines into the room which ought to be lighted only by the
rays of the dark lantern.
Here, therefore, the theory of secrecy abandoned the method which it had
hitherto followed in regard to the traditional material. For if Jesus was
not condemned and crucified at Jerusalem as Messiah, a tradition must have
existed which preserved the truth about the last conflicts, and the
motives of the condemnation. This is supposed to have been here completely
set aside by the theory of the secret Messiahship, which, instead of
drawing its delicate threads through the older tradition, has simply
substituted its own representation of events. But in that case why not do
away with the remainder of the public ministry? Why not at least get rid
of the public appearance at Jerusalem? How can the crudeness of method
shown in the case of the passion be harmonised with the skilful
conservatism towards the non‐Messianic tradition which it is obvious that
the “Marcan circle” has scrupulously observed elsewhere?
If according to the original tradition, of which Wrede admits the
existence, Jesus went to Jerusalem not to die, but to work there, the
dogmatic view, according to which He went to Jerusalem to die, must have
struck out the whole account of His sojourn in Jerusalem and His death, in
order to put something else in its place. What we now read in the Gospels
concerning those last days in Jerusalem cannot be derived from the
original tradition, for one who came to work, and, according to Wrede, “to
work with decisive effect,” would not have cast all His preaching into the
form of obscure parables of judgment and minatory discourses. That is a
style of speech which could be adopted only by one who was determined to
force his adversaries to put him to death. Therefore the narrative of the
last days of Jesus must be, from beginning to end, a creation of the
dogmatic idea. And, as a matter of fact, Wrede, here in agreement with
Weisse, “sees grounds for asserting that the sojourn at Jerusalem is
presented to us in the Gospels in a very much abridged and weakened
version.” That is a euphemistic expression, for if it was really the
dogmatic idea which was responsible for representing Jesus as being
condemned as Messiah, it is not a mere case of “abridging and weakening
down,” but of displacing the tradition in favour of a new one.
But if Jesus was not condemned as Messiah, on what grounds was He
condemned? And, again, what interest had those whose concern was to make
the Messiahship a secret of His earthly life, in making Him die as
Messiah, contrary to the received tradition? And what interest could the
tradition have had in falsifying history in that way? Even admitting that
the prediction of the passion to the disciples is of a dogmatic character,
and is to be regarded as a creation of primitive Christian theology, the
historic fact that He died would have been a sufficient fulfilment of
those sayings. That He was publicly condemned and crucified as Messiah has
nothing to do with the fulfilment of those predictions, and goes far
beyond it.
To take a more general point: what interest had primitive theology in
dating back the Messiahship of Jesus to the time of His earthly ministry?
None whatever. Paul shows us with what complete indifference the earthly
life of Jesus was regarded by primitive Christianity. The discourses in
Acts show an equal indifference, since in them also Jesus first becomes
the Messiah by virtue of His exaltation. To date the Messiahship earlier
was not an undertaking which offered any advantage to primitive theology,
in fact it would only have raised difficulties for it, since it involved
the hypothesis of a dual Messiahship, one of earthly humiliation and one
of future glory. The fact is, if one reads through the early literature
one becomes aware that so long as theology had an eschatological
orientation and was dominated by the expectation of the Parousia the
question of how Jesus of Nazareth “had been” the Messiah not only did not
exist, but was impossible. Primitive theology is simply a theology of the
future, with no interest in history! It was only with the decline of
eschatological interest and the change in the orientation of Christianity
which was connected therewith that an interest in the life of Jesus and
the “historical Messiahship” arose.
That is to say, the Gnostics, who were the first to assert the Messiahship
of the historical Jesus, and who were obliged to assert it precisely
because they denied the eschatological conceptions, forced this view upon
the theology of the Early Church, and compelled it to create in the Logos
Christology an un‐Gnostic mould in which to cast the speculative
conception of the historical Messiahship of Jesus; and that is what we
find in the Fourth Gospel. Prior to the anti‐Gnostic controversies we find
in the early Christian literature no conscious dating back of the
Messiahship of Jesus to His earthly life, and no theological interest at
work upon the dogmatic recasting of His history.(263) It is therefore
difficult to suppose that the Messianic secret in Mark, that is to say, in
the very earliest tradition, was derived from primitive theology. The
assertion of the Messiahship of Jesus was wholly independent of the
latter. The instinct which led Bruno Bauer to explain the Messianic secret
as the literary invention of Mark himself was therefore quite correct.
Once suppose that tradition and primitive theology have anything to do
with the matter, and the theory of the interpolation of the Messiahship
into the history becomes almost impossible to carry through. But Wrede’s
greatness consists precisely in the fact that he was compelled by his
acute perception of the significance of the critical data to set aside the
purely literary version of the hypothesis and make Mark, so to speak, the
instrument of the literary realisation of the ideas of a definite
intellectual circle within the sphere of primitive theology.
The positive difficulty which confronts the sceptical theory is to explain
how the Messianic beliefs of the first generation arose, if Jesus,
throughout His life, was for all, even for the disciples, merely a
“teacher,” and gave even His intimates no hint of the dignity which He
claimed for Himself. It is difficult to eliminate the Messiahship from the
“Life of Jesus,” especially from the narrative of the passion; it is more
difficult still, as Keim saw long ago, to bring it back again after its
elimination from the “Life” into the theology of the primitive Church. In
Wrede’s acute and logical thinking this difficulty seems to leap to light.
Since the Messianic secret in Mark is always connected with the
resurrection, the date at which the Messianic belief of the disciples
arose must be the resurrection of Jesus. “But the idea of dating the
Messiahship from the resurrection is certainly not a thought of Jesus, but
of the primitive Church. It presupposes the Church’s experience of the
appearance of the risen Jesus.”
The psychologist will say that the “resurrection experiences,” however
they may be conceived, are only intelligible as based upon the expectation
of the resurrection, and this again as based on references of Jesus to the
resurrection. But leaving psychology aside, let us accept the resurrection
experiences of the disciples as a pure psychological miracle. Even so, how
can the appearances of the risen Jesus have suggested to the disciples the
idea that Jesus, the crucified teacher, was the Messiah? Apart from any
expectations, how can this conclusion have resulted for them from the mere
“fact of the resurrection”? The fact of the appearance did not by any
means imply it. In certain circles, indeed, according to Mark vi. 14‐16,
in the very highest quarters, the resurrection of the Baptist was believed
in; but that did not make John the Baptist the Messiah. The inexplicable
thing is that, according to Wrede, the disciples began at once to assert
confidently and unanimously that He was the Messiah and would before long
appear in glory.
But how did the appearance of the risen Jesus suddenly become for them a
proof of His Messiahship and the basis of their eschatology? That Wrede
fails to explain, and so makes this “event” an “historical” miracle which
in reality is harder to believe than the supernatural event.
Any one who holds “historical” miracles to be just as impossible as any
other kind, even when they occur in a critical and sceptical work, will be
forced to the conclusion that the Messianic eschatological significance
attached to the “resurrection experience” by the disciples implies some
kind of Messianic eschatological references on the part of the historical
Jesus which gave to the “resurrection” its Messianic eschatological
significance. Here Wrede himself, though without admitting it, postulates
some Messianic hints on the part of Jesus, since he conceives the judgment
of the disciples upon the resurrection to have been not analytical, but
synthetic, inasmuch as they add something to it, and that, indeed, the
main thing, which was not implied in the conception of the event as such.
Here again the merit of Wrede’s contribution to criticism consists in the
fact that he takes the position as it is and does not try to improve it
artificially. Bruno Bauer and others supposed that the belief in the
Messiahship of Jesus had slowly solidified out of a kind of gaseous state,
or had been forced into primitive theology by the literary invention of
Mark. Wrede, however, feels himself obliged to base it upon an historical
fact, and, moreover, the same historical fact which is pointed to by the
sayings in the Synoptics and the Pauline theology. But in so doing he
creates an almost insurmountable difficulty for his hypothesis.
We can only briefly refer to the question what form the accounts of the
resurrection must have taken if the historic fact which underlay them was
the first surprised apprehension and recognition of the Messiahship of
Jesus on the part of the disciples. The Messianic teaching would
necessarily in that case have been somehow or other put into the mouth of
the risen Jesus. It is, however, completely absent, because it was already
contained in the teaching of Jesus during His earthly life. The theory of
Messianic secrecy must therefore have re‐moulded not merely the story of
the passion, but also that of the resurrection, removing the revelation of
the Messiahship to the disciples from the latter in order to insert it
into the public ministry!
Wrede, moreover, will only take account of the Marcan text as it stands,
not of the historical possibility that the “futuristic Messiahship” which
meets us in the mysterious utterances of Jesus goes back in some form to a
sound tradition. Further he does not take the eschatological character of
the teaching of Jesus into his calculations, but works on the false
assumption that he can analyse the Marcan text in and by itself and so
discover the principle on which it is composed. He carries out experiments
on the law of crystallisation of the narrative material in this Gospel,
but instead of doing so in the natural and historical atmosphere he does
it in an atmosphere artificially neutralised, which contains no trace of
contemporary conceptions.(264) Consequently the conclusion based on the
sum of his observations has in it something arbitrary. Everything which
conflicts with the rational construction of the course of the history is
referred directly to the theory of the concealment of the Messianic
secret. But in the carrying out of that theory a number of self‐
contradictions, without which it could not subsist, must be recognised and
noted.
Thus, for example, all the prohibitions,(265) whatever they may refer to,
even including the command not to make known His miracles, are referred to
the same category as the injunction not to reveal the Messianic secret.
But what justification is there for that? It presupposes that according to
Mark the miracles could be taken as proofs of the Messiahship, an idea of
which there is no hint whatever in Mark. “The miracles,” Wrede argues,
“are certainly used by the earliest Christians as evidence of the nature
and significance of Christ.... I need hardly point to the fact that Mark,
not less than Matthew, Luke, and John, must have held the opinion that the
miracles of Jesus encountered a widespread and ardent Messianic
expectation.”
In John this Messianic significance of the miracles is certainly assumed;
but then the really eschatological view of things has here fallen into the
background. It seems indeed as if genuine eschatology excluded the
Messianic interpretation of the miracles. In Matthew the miracles of Jesus
have nothing whatever to do with the proof of the Messiahship, but, as is
evident from the saying about Chorazin and Bethsaida, Matt. xi. 20‐24, are
only an exhibition of mercy intended to awaken repentance, or, according
to Matt. xii. 28, an indication of the nearness of the Kingdom of God.
They have as little to do with the Messianic office as in the Acts of the
Apostles.(266) In Mark, from first to last, there is not a single syllable
to suggest that the miracles have a Messianic significance. Even admitting
the possibility that the “miracles of Jesus encountered an ardent
Messianic expectation,” that does not necessarily imply a Messianic
significance in them. To justify that conclusion requires the pre‐
supposition that the Messiah was expected to be some kind of an earthly
man who should do miracles. This is presupposed by Wrede, by Bruno Bauer,
and by modern theology in general, but it has not been proved, and it is
at variance with eschatology, which pictured the Messiah to itself as a
heavenly being in a world which was already being transformed into
something supra‐mundane.
The assumption that the clue to the explanation of the command not to make
known the miracles is to be found in the necessity of guarding the secret
of the Messiahship is, therefore, not justified. The miracles are
connected with the Kingdom and the nearness of the Kingdom, not with the
Messiah. But Wrede is obliged to refer everything to the Messianic secret,
because he leaves the preaching of the Kingdom out of account.
The same process is repeated in the discussion of the veiling of the
mystery of the Kingdom of God in the parables of Mark iv. The mystery of
the Kingdom is for Wrede the secret of Jesus’ Messiahship. “We have
learned in the meantime,” he says, “that one main element in this mystery
is that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. If Jesus, according to Mark,
conceals his Messiahship, we are justified in interpreting the μυστήριον
τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ θεοῦ in the light of this fact.”
That is one of the weakest points in Wrede’s whole theory. Where is there
any hint of this in these parables? And why should the secret of the
Kingdom of God contain within it as one of its principal features the
secret of the Messiahship of Jesus?
“Mark’s account of Jesus’ parabolic teaching,” he concludes, “is
completely unhistorical,” because it is directly opposed to the essential
nature of the parables. The ultimate reason, according to Wrede, why this
whole view of the parables arose, was simply “because the general opinion
was already in existence that Jesus had revealed Himself to the disciples,
but concealed Himself from the multitude.”
Instead of simply admitting that we are unable to discover what the
mystery of the Kingdom in Mark iv. is, any more than we can understand why
it must be veiled, and numbering it among the unsolved problems of Jesus’
preaching of the Kingdom, Wrede forces this chapter inside the lines of
his theory of the veiled Messiahship.
The desire of Jesus to be alone, too, and remain unrecognised (Mark vii.
24 and ix. 30 ff.) is supposed to have some kind of connexion with the
veiling of the Messiahship. He even brings the multitude, which in Mark x.
47 ff. rebukes the blind beggar at Jericho who cried out to Jesus, into
the service of his theory ... on the ground that the beggar had addressed
Him as Son of David. But all the narrative says is that they told him to
hold his peace—to cease making an outcry—not that they did so because of
his addressing Jesus as “Son of David.”
In an equally arbitrary fashion the surprising introduction of the
“multitude” in Mark viii. 34, after the incident of Caesarea Philippi, is
dragged into the theory of secrecy.(267) Wrede does not feel the
possibility or impossibility of the sudden appearance of the multitude in
this locality as an historical problem, any more than he grasps the sudden
withdrawal of Jesus from His public ministry as primarily an historical
question. Mark is for him a writer who is to be judged from a pathological
point of view, a writer who, dominated by the fixed idea of introducing
everywhere the Messianic secret of Jesus, is always creating mysterious
and unintelligible situations, even when these do not directly serve the
interests of his theory, and who in some of his descriptions, writes in a
rather “fairy‐tale” style. When all is said, his treatment of the history
scarcely differs from that of the fourth Evangelist.
The absence of historical prepossessions which Wrede skilfully assumes in
his examination of the connexion in Mark is not really complete. He is
bound to refer everything inexplicable to the principle of the concealment
of the Messiahship, which is the only principle that he recognises in the
dogmatic stratum of the narrative, and is consequently obliged to deny the
historicity of such passages, whereas in reality the veiling of the
Messiahship is only involved in a few places and is there indicated in
clear and simple words. He is unwilling to recognise that there is a
second, wider circle of mystery which has to do, not with Jesus’
Messiahship, but with His preaching of the Kingdom, with the mystery of
the Kingdom of God in the wider sense, and that within this second circle
there lie a number of historical problems, above all the mission of the
Twelve and the inexplicable abandonment of public activity on the part of
Jesus which followed soon afterwards. His mistake consists in endeavouring
by violent methods to subsume the more general, the mystery of the Kingdom
of God, under the more special, the mystery of the Messiahship, instead of
inserting the latter as the smaller circle, within the wider, the secret
of the Kingdom of God.
As he does not deal with the teaching of Jesus, he has no occasion to take
account of the secret of the Kingdom of God. That is the more remarkable
because corresponding to one fundamental idea of the Messianic secret
there is a parallel, more general dogmatic conception in Jesus’ preaching
of the Kingdom. For if Jesus in Matt. x. gives the disciples nothing to
take with them on their mission but predictions of suffering; if at the
very beginning of His ministry He closes the Beatitudes with a blessing
upon the persecuted; if in Mark viii. 34 ff. He warns the people that they
will have to choose between life and life, between death and death; if, in
short, from the first, He loses no opportunity of preaching about
suffering and following Him in His sufferings; that is just as much a
matter of dogma as His own sufferings and predictions of sufferings. For
in both cases the necessity of suffering, the necessity of facing death,
is not “a necessity of the historical situation,” not a necessity which
arises out of the circumstances; it is an assertion put forth without
empirical basis, a prophecy of storm while the sky is blue, since neither
Jesus nor the people to whom He spoke were undergoing any persecution; and
when His fate overtook Him not even the disciples were involved in it. It
is distinctly remarkable that, except for a few meagre references, the
enigmatic character of Jesus’ constant predictions of suffering has not
been discussed in the Life‐of‐Jesus literature.(268)
What has now to be done, therefore, is, in contradistinction to Wrede, to
make a critical examination of the dogmatic element in the life of Jesus
on the assumption that the atmosphere of the time was saturated with
eschatology, that is, to keep in even closer touch with the facts than
Wrede does, and moreover, to proceed, not from the particular to the
general, but from the general to the particular, carefully considering
whether the dogmatic element is not precisely the historical element. For,
after all, why should not Jesus think in terms of doctrine, and make
history in action, just as well as a poor Evangelist can do it on paper,
under the pressure of the theological interests of the primitive
community.
Once again, however, we must repeat that the critical analysis and the
assertion of a system running through the disorder are the same in the
eschatological as in the sceptical hypothesis, only that in the
eschatological analysis a number of problems come more clearly to light.
The two constructions are related like the bones and cartilage of the
body. The general structure is the same, only that in the case of the one
a solid substance, lime, is distributed even in the minutest portions,
giving it firmness and solidity, while in the other case this is lacking.
This reinforcing substance is the eschatological world‐view.
How is it to be explained that Wrede, in spite of the eschatological
school, in spite of Johannes Weiss, could, in critically investigating the
connecting principle of the life of Jesus, simply leave eschatology out of
account? The blame rests with the eschatological school itself, for it
applied the eschatological explanation only to the preaching of Jesus, and
not even to the whole of this, but only to the Messianic secret, instead
of using it also to throw light upon the whole public work of Jesus, the
connexion and want of connexion between the events. It represented Jesus
as thinking and speaking eschatologically in some of the most important
passages of His teaching, but for the rest gave as uneschatological a
presentation of His life as modern historical theology had done. The
teaching of Jesus and the history of Jesus were set in different keys.
Instead of destroying the modern‐historical scheme of the life of Jesus,
or subjecting it to a rigorous examination, and thereby undertaking the
performance of a highly valuable service to criticism, the eschatological
theory confined itself within the limits of New Testament Theology, and
left it to Wrede to reveal one after another by a laborious purely
critical method the difficulties which from its point of view it might
have grasped historically at a single glance. It inevitably follows that
Wrede is unjust to Johannes Weiss and Johannes Weiss towards Wrede.(269)
It is quite inexplicable that the eschatological school, with its clear
perception of the eschatological element in the preaching of the Kingdom
of God, did not also hit upon the thought of the “dogmatic” element in the
history of Jesus. Eschatology is simply “dogmatic history”—history as
moulded by theological beliefs—which breaks in upon the natural course of
history and abrogates. it. Is it not even a priori the only conceivable
view that the conduct of one who looked forward to His Messianic
“Parousia” in the near future should be determined, not by the natural
course of events, but by that expectation? The chaotic confusion of the
narratives ought to have suggested the thought that the events had been
thrown into this confusion by the volcanic force of an incalculable
personality, not by some kind of carelessness or freak of the tradition.
A very little consideration suffices to show that there is something quite
incomprehensible in the public ministry of Jesus taken as a whole.
According to Mark it lasted less than a year, for since he speaks of only
one Passover‐journey we may conclude that no other Passover fell within
the period of Jesus’ activity as a teacher. If it is proposed to assume
that He allowed a Passover to go by without going up to Jerusalem, His
adversaries, who took Him to task about hand‐washings and about rubbing
the ears of corn on the Sabbath, would certainly have made a most serious
matter of this, and we should have to suppose that the Evangelist for some
reason or other thought fit to suppress the fact. That is to say, the
burden of proof lies upon those who assert a longer duration for the
ministry of Jesus.
Until they have succeeded in proving it, we may assume something like the
following course of events. Jesus, in going up to a Passover, came in
contact with the movement initiated by John the Baptist in Judaea, and,
after the lapse of a little time—if we bring into the reckoning the forty
days’ sojourn in the wilderness mentioned in Mark i. 13, a few weeks
later—appeared in Galilee proclaiming the near approach of the Kingdom of
God. According to Mark He had known Himself since His baptism to be the
Messiah, but from the historical point of view that does not matter, since
history is concerned with the first announcement of the Messiahship, not
with inward psychological processes.(270)
This work of preaching the Kingdom was continued until the sending forth
of the Twelve; that is to say, at the most for a few weeks. Perhaps in the
saying “the harvest is great but the labourers are few,” with which Jesus
closes His work prior to sending forth the disciples, there lies an
allusion to the actual state of the natural fields. The flocking of the
people to Him after the Mission of the Twelve, when a great multitude
thronged about Him for several days during His journey along the northern
shore of the lake, can be more naturally explained if the harvest had just
been brought in.
However that may be, it is certain that Jesus, in the midst of His initial
success, left Galilee, journeyed northwards, and only resumed His work as
a teacher in Judaea on the way to Jerusalem! Of His “public ministry,”
therefore, a large section falls out, being cancelled by a period of
inexplicable concealment; it dwindles to a few weeks of preaching here and
there in Galilee and the few days of His sojourn in Jerusalem.(271)
But in that case the public life of Jesus becomes practically
unintelligible. The explanation that His cause in Galilee was lost, and
that He was obliged to flee, has not the slightest foundation in the
text.(272) That was recognised even by Keim, the inventor of the
successful and unsuccessful periods in the life of Jesus, as is shown by
his suggestion that the Evangelists had intentionally removed the traces
of failure from the decisive period which led up to the northern journey.
The controversy over the washing of hands in Mark vii. 1‐23, to which
appeal is always made, is really a defeat for the Pharisees. The theory of
the “desertion of the Galilaeans,” which appears with more or less
artistic variations in all modern Lives of Jesus, owes its existence not
to any other confirmatory fact, but simply to the circumstance that Mark
makes the simple statement: “And Jesus departed and went into the region
of Tyre” (vii. 24) without offering any explanation of this decision.
The only conclusion which the text warrants is that Mark mentioned no
reason because he knew of none. The decision of Jesus did not rest upon
the recorded facts, since it ignores these, but upon considerations lying
outside the history. His life at this period was dominated by a “dogmatic
idea” which rendered Him indifferent to all else ... even to the happy and
successful work as a teacher which was opening before Him. How could Jesus
the “teacher” abandon at that moment a people so anxious to learn and so
eager for salvation? His action suggests a doubt whether He really felt
Himself to be a “teacher.” If all the controversial discourses and sayings
and answers to questions, which were so to speak wrung from Him, were
subtracted from the sum of His utterances, how much of the didactic
preaching of Jesus would be left over?
But even the supposed didactic preaching is not really that of a
“teacher,” since the purpose of His parables was, according to Mark iv.
10‐12, not to reveal, but to conceal, and of the Kingdom of God He spoke
only in parables (Mark iv. 34).
Perhaps, however, we are not justified in extending the theory of
concealment, simply because it is mentioned in connexion with the first
parable, to all the parables which He ever spoke, for it is never
mentioned again. It could hardly indeed be applied to the parables with a
moral, like that, for instance, of the pearl of great price. It is equally
inapplicable to the parables of coming judgment uttered at Jerusalem, in
which He explicitly exhorts the people to be prepared and watchful in view
of the coming of judgment and of the Kingdom. But here too it is deserving
of notice that Jesus, whenever He desires to make known anything further
concerning the Kingdom of God than just its near approach, seems to be
confined, as it were by a higher law, to the parabolic form of discourse.
It is as though, for reasons which we cannot grasp, His teaching lay under
certain limitations. It appears as a kind of accessory aspect of His
vocation. Thus it was possible for Him to give up His work as a teacher
even at the moment when it promised the greatest success.
Accordingly the fact of His always speaking in parables and of His taking
this inexplicable resolution both point back to a mysterious pre‐
supposition which greatly reduces the importance of Jesus’ work as a
teacher.
One reason for this limitation is distinctly stated in Mark iv. 10‐12,
viz. predestination! Jesus knows that the truth which He offers is
exclusively for those who have been definitely chosen, that the general
and public announcement of His message could only thwart the plans of God,
since the chosen are already winning their salvation from God. Only the
phrase, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand” and its variants belong
to the public preaching. And this, therefore, is the only message which He
commits to His disciples when sending them forth. What this repentance,
supplementary to the law, the special ethic of the interval before the
coming of the Kingdom (_Interimsethik_) is, in its positive acceptation,
He explains in the Sermon on the Mount. But all that goes beyond that
simple phrase must be publicly presented only in parables, in order that
those only, who are shown to possess predestination by having the initial
knowledge which enables them to understand the parables, may receive a
more advanced knowledge, which is imparted to them in a measure
corresponding to their original degree of knowledge: “Unto him that hath
shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that
which he hath” (Mark iv. 24‐25).
The predestinarian view goes along with the eschatology. It is pushed to
its utmost consequences in the closing incident of the parable of the
marriage of the King’s son (Matt. xxii. 1‐14) where the man who, in
response to a publicly issued invitation, sits down at the table of the
King, but is recognised from his appearance as not called, is thrown out
into perdition. “Many are called but few are chosen.” The ethical idea of
salvation and the predestinarian limitation of acceptance to the elect are
constantly in conflict in the mind of Jesus. In one case, however, He
finds relief in the thought of predestination. When the rich young man
turned away, not having strength to give up his possessions for the sake
of following Jesus as he had been commanded to do, Jesus and His disciples
were forced to draw the conclusion that he, like other rich men, was lost,
and could not enter into the Kingdom of God. But immediately afterwards
Jesus makes the suggestion, “With men it is impossible, but not with God,
for with God all things are possible” (Mark x. 17‐27). That is, He will
not give up the hope that the young man, in spite of appearances, which
are against him, will be found to have belonged to the Kingdom of God,
solely in virtue of the secret all‐powerful will of God. Of a “conversion”
of the young man there is no question.
In the Beatitudes, on the other hand, the argument is reversed; the
predestination is inferred from its outward manifestation. It may seem to
us inconceivable, but they are really predestinarian in form. Blessed are
the poor in spirit! Blessed are the meek! Blessed are the
peacemakers!—that does not mean that by virtue of their being poor in
spirit, meek, peace‐loving, they deserve the Kingdom. Jesus does not
intend the saying as an injunction or exhortation, but as a simple
statement of fact: in their being poor in spirit, in their meekness, in
their love of peace, it is made manifest that they are predestined to the
Kingdom. By the possession of these qualities they are marked as belonging
to it. In the case of others (Matt. v. 10‐12) the predestination to the
Kingdom is made manifest by the persecutions which befall them in this
world. These are the light of the world, which already shines among men
for the glory of God (Matt. v. 14‐15).
The kingdom cannot be “earned”; what happens is that men are called to it,
and show themselves to be called to it. On careful examination it appears
that the idea of reward in the sayings of Jesus is not really an idea of
reward, because it is relieved against a background of predestination. For
the present it is sufficient to note the fact that the eschatologico‐
predestinarian view brings a mysterious element of dogma not merely into
the teaching, but also into the public ministry of Jesus.
To take another point, what is the mystery of the Kingdom of God? It must
consist of something more than merely its near approach, and something of
extreme importance; otherwise Jesus would be here indulging in mere
mystery‐mongering. The saying about the candle which He puts upon the
stand, in order that what was hidden may be revealed to those who have
ears to hear, implies that He is making a tremendous revelation to those
who understand the parables about the growth of the seed. The mystery must
therefore contain the explanation why the Kingdom must now come, and how
men are to know how near it is. For the general fact that it is very near
had already been openly proclaimed both by the Baptist and by Jesus. The
mystery, therefore, must consist of something more than that.
In these parables it is not the idea of development, but of the apparent
absence of causation which occupies the foremost place. The description
aims at suggesting the question, how, and by what power, incomparably
great and glorious results can be infallibly produced by an insignificant
fact without human aid. A man sowed seed. Much of it was lost, but the
little that fell into good ground brought forth a harvest—thirty, sixty,
an hundredfold—which left no trace of the loss in the sowing. How did that
come about?
A man sows seed and does not trouble any further about it—cannot indeed do
anything to help it, but he knows that after a definite time the glorious
harvest which arises out of the seed will stand before him. By what power
is that effected?
An extremely minute grain of mustard seed is planted in the earth and
there necessarily arises out of it a great bush, which cannot certainly
have been contained in the grain of seed. How was that?
What the parables emphasise is, therefore, so to speak, the in itself
negative, inadequate, character of the initial fact, upon which, as by a
miracle, there follows in the appointed time, through the power of God,
some great thing. They lay stress not upon the natural, but upon the
miraculous character of such occurrences.
But what is the initial fact of the parables? It is the sowing.
It is not said that by the man who sows the seed Jesus means Himself. The
man has no importance. In the parable of the mustard seed he is not even
mentioned. All that is asserted is that the initial fact is already
present, as certainly present as the time of the sowing is past at the
moment when Jesus speaks. That being so, the Kingdom of God must follow as
certainly as harvest follows seed‐sowing. As a man believes in the
harvest, without being able to explain it, simply because the seed has
been sown; so with the same absolute confidence he may believe in the
Kingdom of God.
And the initial fact which is symbolised? Jesus can only mean a fact which
was actually in existence—the movement of repentance evoked by the Baptist
and now intensified by His own preaching. That necessarily involves the
bringing in of the Kingdom by the power of God; as man’s sowing
necessitates the giving of the harvest by the same Infinite Power. Any one
who knows this sees with different eyes the corn growing in the fields and
the harvest ripening, for he sees the one fact in the other, and awaits
along with the earthly harvest the heavenly, the revelation of the Kingdom
of God.
If we look into the thought more closely we see that the coming of the
Kingdom of God is not only symbolically or analogically, but also really
and temporally connected with the harvest. The harvest ripening upon earth
is the last! With it comes also the Kingdom of God which brings in the new
age. When the reapers are sent into the fields, the Lord in Heaven will
cause His harvest to be reaped by the holy angels.
If the three parables of Mark iv. contain the mystery of the Kingdom of
God, and are therefore capable of being summed up in a single formula,
this can be nothing else than the joyful exhortation: “Ye who have eyes to
see, read, in the harvest which is ripening upon earth, what is being
prepared in heaven!” The eager eschatological hope was to regard the
natural process as the last of its kind, and to see in it a special
significance in view of the event of which it was to give the signal.
The analogical and temporal parallelism becomes complete if we assume that
the movement initiated by the Baptist began in the spring, and notice that
Jesus, according to Matt. ix. 37 and 38, before sending out the disciples
to make a speedy proclamation of the nearness of the Kingdom of God,
uttered the remarkable saying about the rich harvest. It seems like a
final expression of the thought contained in the parables about the seed
and its promise, and finds its most natural explanation in the supposition
that the harvest was actually at hand.
Whatever may be thought of this attempt to divine historically the secret
of the Kingdom of God, there is one thing that cannot be got away from,
viz. that the initial fact to which Jesus points, under the figure of the
sowing, is somehow or other connected with the eschatological preaching of
repentance, which had been begun by the Baptist.
That may be the more confidently asserted because Jesus in another
mysterious saying describes the days of the Baptist as a time which makes
preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of God. “From the days of John
the Baptist,” He says in Matt. xi. 12, “even until now, the Kingdom of
Heaven is subjected to violence, and the violent wrest it to themselves.”
The saying has nothing to do with the entering of individuals into the
Kingdom; it simply asserts, that since the coming of the Baptist a certain
number of persons are engaged in forcing on and compelling the coming of
the Kingdom. Jesus’ expectation of the Kingdom is an expectation based
upon a fact which exercises an active influence upon the Kingdom of God.
It was not He, and not the Baptist who “were working at the coming of the
Kingdom”; it is the host of penitents which is wringing it from God, so
that it may now come at any moment.
The eschatological insight of Johannes Weiss made an end of the modern
view that Jesus founded the Kingdom. It did away with all activity, as
exercised upon the Kingdom of God, and made the part of Jesus purely a
waiting one. Now the activity comes back into the preaching of the
Kingdom, but this time eschatologically conditioned. The secret of the
Kingdom of God which Jesus unveils in the parables about confident
expectation in Mark iv., and declares in so many words in the eulogy on
the Baptist (Matt. xi.), amounts to this, that in the movement to which
the Baptist gave the first impulse, and which still continued, there was
an initial fact which was drawing after it the coming of the Kingdom, in a
fashion which was miraculous, unintelligible, but unfailingly certain,
since the sufficient cause for it lay in the power and purpose of God.
It should be observed that Jesus in these parables, as well as in the
related saying at the sending forth of the Twelve, uses the formula, “He
that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Mark iv. 23 and Matt. xi. 15),
thereby signifying that in this utterance there lies concealed a
supernatural knowledge concerning the plans of God, which only those who
have ears to hear—that is, the foreordained—can detect. For others these
sayings are unintelligible.
If this genuinely “historical” interpretation of the mystery of the
Kingdom of God is correct, Jesus must have expected the coming of the
Kingdom at harvest time. And that is just what He did expect. It is for
that reason that He sends out His disciples to make known in Israel, as
speedily as may be, what is about to happen. That in this He is actuated
by a dogmatic idea, becomes clear when we notice that, according to Mark,
the mission of the Twelve followed immediately on the rejection at
Nazareth. The unreceptiveness of the Nazarenes had made no impression upon
Him; He was only astonished at their unbelief (Mark vi. 6). This passage
is often interpreted to mean that He was astonished to find His miracle‐
working power fail Him. There is no hint of that in the text. What He is
astonished at is, that in His native town there were so few believers,
that is, elect, knowing as He does that the Kingdom of God may appear at
any moment. But that fact makes no difference whatever to the nearness of
the coming of the Kingdom.
The Evangelist, therefore, places the rejection at Nazareth and the
mission of the Twelve side by side, simply because he found them in this
temporal connexion in the tradition. If he had been working by
“association of ideas,” he would not have arrived at this order. The want
of connexion, the impossibility of applying any natural explanation, is
just what is historical, because the course of the history was determined,
not by outward events, but by the decisions of Jesus, and these were
determined by dogmatic, eschatological considerations.
To how great an extent this was the case in regard to the mission of the
Twelve is clearly seen from the “charge” which Jesus gave them. He tells
them in plain words (Matt. x. 23), that He does not expect to see them
back in the present age. The Parousia of the Son of Man, which is
logically and temporally identical with the dawn of the Kingdom, will take
place before they shall have completed a hasty journey through the cities
of Israel to announce it. That the words mean this and nothing else, that
they ought not to be in any way weakened down, should be sufficiently
evident. This is the form in which Jesus reveals to them the secret of the
Kingdom of God. A few days later, He utters the saying about the violent
who, since the days of John the Baptist, are forcing on the coming of the
Kingdom.
It is equally clear, and here the dogmatic considerations which guided the
resolutions of Jesus become still more prominent, that this prediction was
not fulfilled. The disciples returned to Him; and the appearing of the Son
of Man had not taken place. The actual history disavowed the dogmatic
history on which the action of Jesus had been based. An event of
supernatural history which must take place, and must take place at that
particular point of time, failed to come about. That was for Jesus, who
lived wholly in the dogmatic history, the first “historical” occurrence,
the central event which closed the former period of His activity and gave
the coming period a new character. To this extent modern theology is
justified when it distinguishes two periods in the Life of Jesus; an
earlier, in which He is surrounded by the people, a later in which He is
“deserted” by them, and travels about with the Twelve only. It is a sound
observation that the two periods are sharply distinguished by the attitude
of Jesus. To explain this difference of attitude, which they thought
themselves bound to account for on natural historical grounds, theologians
of the modern historical school invented the theory of growing opposition
and waning support. Weisse, no doubt, had expressed himself in direct
opposition to this theory.(273) Keim, who gave it its place in theology,
was aware that in setting it up he was going against the plain sense of
the texts. Later writers lost this consciousness, just as in the first and
third Gospel the significance of the Messianic secret in Mark gradually
faded away; they imagined that they could find the basis of fact for the
theory in the texts, and did not realise that they only believed in the
desertion of the multitude and the “flights and retirements” of Jesus
because they could not otherwise explain historically the alteration in
His conduct, His withdrawal from public work, and His resolve to die.
The thoroughgoing eschatological school makes better work of it. They
recognise in the non‐occurrence of the Parousia promised in Matt. x. 23,
the “historic fact,” in the estimation of Jesus, which in some way
determined the alteration in His plans, and His attitude towards the
multitude.
The whole history of “Christianity” down to the present day, that is to
say, the real inner history of it, is based on the delay of the Parousia,
the non‐occurrence of the Parousia, the abandonment of eschatology, the
progress and completion of the “de‐eschatologising” of religion which has
been connected therewith. It should be noted that the non‐fulfilment of
Matt. x. 23 is the first postponement of the Parousia. We have therefore
here the first significant date in the “history of Christianity”; it gives
to the work of Jesus a new direction, otherwise inexplicable.
Here we recognise also why the Marcan hypothesis, in constructing its view
of the Life of Jesus, found itself obliged to have recourse more and more
to the help of modern psychology, and thus necessarily became more and
more unhistorical. The fact which alone makes possible an understanding of
the whole, is lacking in this Gospel. Without Matt. x. and xi. everything
remains enigmatic. For this reason Bruno Bauer and Wrede are in their own
way the only consistent representatives of the Marcan hypothesis from the
point of view of historical criticism, when they arrive at the result that
the Marcan account is inherently unintelligible. Keim, with his strong
sense of historical reality, rightly felt that the plan of the Life of
Jesus should not be constructed exclusively on the basis of Mark.
The recognition that Mark alone gives an inadequate basis, is more
important than any “Ur‐Markus” theories, for which it is impossible to
discover a literary foundation, or find an historical use. A simple
induction from the “facts” takes us beyond Mark. In the discourse‐material
of Matthew, which the modern‐historical school thought they could sift in
here and there, wherever there seemed to be room for it, there lie hidden
certain facts—facts which never happened but are all the more important
for that.
Why Mark describes the events and discourses in the neighbourhood of the
mission of the Twelve with such careful authentication is a literary
question which the historical study of the life of Jesus may leave open;
the more so since, even as a literary question, it is insoluble.
The prediction of the Parousia of the Son of Man is not the only one which
remained unfulfilled. There is the prediction of sufferings which is
connected with it. To put it more accurately, the prediction of the
appearing of the Son of Man in Matt. x. 23 runs up into a prediction of
sufferings, which, working up to a climax, forms the remainder of the
discourse at the sending forth of the disciples. This prediction of
sufferings has as little to do with objective history as the prediction of
the Parousia. Consequently, none of the Lives of Jesus, which follow the
lines of a natural psychology, from Weisse down to Oskar Holtzmann, can
make anything of it.(274) They either strike it out, or transfer it to the
last “gloomy epoch” of the life of Jesus, regard it as an unintelligible
anticipation, or put it down to the account of “primitive theology,” which
serves as a scrap‐heap for everything for which they cannot find a place
in the “historical life of Jesus.”
In the texts it is quite evident that Jesus is not speaking of sufferings
after His death, but of sufferings which will befall them as soon as they
have gone forth from Him. The death of Jesus is not here pre‐supposed, but
only the Parousia of the Son of Man, and it is implied that this will
occur just after these sufferings and bring them to a close. If the
theology of the primitive Church had remoulded the tradition, as is always
being asserted, it would have made Jesus give His followers directions for
their conduct after His death. That we do not find anything of this kind
is the best proof that there can be no question of a remoulding of the
Life of Jesus by primitive theology. How easy it would have been for the
Early Church to scatter here and there through the discourses of Jesus
directions which were only to be applied after His death! But the simple
fact is that it did not do so.
The sufferings of which the prospect is held out at the sending forth are
doubly, trebly, nay four times over, unhistorical. In the first place—and
this is the only point which modern historical theology has
noticed—because there is not a shadow of a suggestion in the outward
circumstances of anything which could form a natural occasion for such
predictions of, and exhortations relating to, sufferings. In the second
place—and this has been overlooked by modern theology because it had
already declared them to be unhistorical in its own characteristic
fashion, viz. by striking them out—because they were not fulfilled. In the
third place—and this has not entered into the mind of modern theology at
all—because these sayings were spoken in the closest connexion with the
promise of the Parousia and are placed in the closest connexion with that
event. In the fourth place, because the description of that which is to
befall the disciples is quite without any basis in experience. A time of
general dissension will begin, in which brothers will rise up against
brothers, and fathers against sons and children against their parents to
cause them to be put to death (Matt. x. 21). And the disciples “shall be
hated of all men for His name’s sake.” Let them strive to hold out to the
“end,” that is, to the coming of the Son of Man, in order that they may be
saved (Matt. x. 22).
But why should they suddenly be hated and persecuted for the name of
Jesus, seeing that this name played no part whatever in their preaching?
That is simply inconceivable. The relation of Jesus to the Son of Man, the
fact, that is to say, that it is He who is to be manifested as Son of Man,
must therefore in some way or other become known in the interval; not,
however, through the disciples, but by some other means of revelation. A
kind of supernatural illumination will suddenly make known all that Jesus
has been keeping secret regarding the Kingdom of God and His position in
the Kingdom. This illumination will arise as suddenly and without
preparation as the spirit of strife.
And as a matter of fact Jesus predicts to the disciples in the same
discourse that to their own surprise a supernatural wisdom will suddenly
speak from their lips, so that it will be not they but the Spirit of God
who will answer the great ones of the earth. As the Spirit is for Jesus
and early Christian theology something concrete which is to descend upon
the elect among mankind only in consequence of a definite event—the
outpouring of the Spirit which, according to the prophecy of Joel, should
precede the day of judgment—Jesus must have anticipated that this would
occur during the absence of the disciples, in the midst of the time of
strife and confusion.
To put it differently; the whole of the discourse at the sending forth of
the Twelve, taken in the clear sense of the words, is a prediction of the
events of the “time of the end,” events which are immediately at hand, in
which the supernatural eschatological course of history will break through
into the natural course. The expectation of sufferings is therefore
doctrinal and unhistorical, as is, precisely in the same way, the
expectation of the pouring forth of the Spirit uttered at the same time.
The Parousia of the Son of Man is to be preceded according to the
Messianic dogma by a time of strife and confusion—as it were, the birth‐
throes of the Messiah—and the outpouring of the Spirit. It should be
noticed that according to Joel iii. and iv. the outpouring of the Spirit,
along with the miraculous signs, forms the prelude to the judgment; and
also, that in the same context, Joel iii. 13, the judgment is described as
the harvest‐day of God.(275) Here we have a remarkable parallel to the
saying about the harvest in Matt. ix. 38, which forms the introduction to
the discourse at the sending forth of the disciples.
There is only one point in which the predicted course of eschatological
events is incomplete: the appearance of Elias is not mentioned.
Jesus could not prophesy to the disciples the Parousia of the Son of Man
without pointing them, at the same time, to the pre‐eschatological events
which must first occur. He must open to them a part of the secret of the
Kingdom of God, viz. the nearness of the harvest, that they might not be
taken by surprise and caused to doubt by these events.
Thus this discourse is historical as a whole and down to the smallest
detail precisely because, according to the view of modern theology, it
must be judged unhistorical. It is, in fact, full of eschatological dogma.
Jesus had no need to instruct the disciples as to what they were to teach;
for they had only to utter a cry. But concerning the events which should
supervene, it was necessary that He should give them information.
Therefore the discourse does not consist of instruction, but of
predictions of sufferings and of the Parousia.
That being so, we may judge with what right the modern psychological
theology dismisses the great Matthaean discourses off‐hand as mere
“composite structures.” Just let any one try to show how the Evangelist
when he was racking his brains over the task of making a “discourse at the
sending forth of the disciples,” half by the method of piecing it together
out of traditional sayings and “primitive theology,” and half by inventing
it, lighted on the curious idea of making Jesus speak entirely of
inopportune and unpractical matters; and of then going on to provide the
evidence that they never happened.
The foretelling of the sufferings that belong to the eschatological
distress is part and parcel of the preaching of the approach of the
Kingdom of God, it embodies the secret of the Kingdom. It is for that
reason that the thought of suffering appears at the end of the Beatitudes
and in the closing petition of the Lord’s Prayer. For the πειρασμός which
is there in view is not an individual psychological temptation, but the
general eschatological time of tribulation, from which God is besought to
exempt those who pray so earnestly for the coming of the Kingdom, and not
to expose them to that tribulation by way of putting them to the test.
There followed neither the sufferings, nor the outpouring of the Spirit,
nor the Parousia of the Son of Man. The disciples returned safe and sound
and full of a proud satisfaction; for one promise had been realised—the
power which had been given them over the demons.
But from the moment when they rejoined Him, all His thoughts and efforts
were devoted to getting rid of the people in order to be alone with them
(Mark vi. 30‐33). Previously, during their absence, He had, almost in open
speech, taught the multitude concerning the Baptist, concerning that which
was to precede the coming of the Kingdom, and concerning the judgment
which should come upon the impenitent, even upon whole towns of them
(Matt. xi. 20‐24), because, in spite of the miracles which they had
witnessed, they had not recognised the day of grace and diligently used it
for repentance. At the same time He had rejoiced before them over all
those whom God had enlightened that they might see what was going forward;
and had called them to His side (Matt. xi. 25‐30).
And now suddenly, the moment the disciples return, His one thought is to
get away from the people. They, however, follow Him and overtake Him on
the shores of the lake. He puts the Jordan between Himself and them by
crossing to Bethsaida. They also come to Bethsaida. He returns to
Capernaum. They do the same. Since in Galilee it is impossible for Him to
be alone, and He absolutely must be alone, He “slips away” to the north.
Once more modern theology was right: He really does flee; not, however,
from hostile Scribes, but from the people, who dog His footsteps in order
to await in His company the appearing of the Kingdom of God and of the Son
of Man—to await it in vain.(276)
In Strauss’s first Life of Jesus the question is thrown out whether, in
view of Matt. x. 23, Jesus did not think of His Parousia as a
transformation which should take place during His lifetime. Ghillany bases
his work on this possibility as on an established historical fact. Dalman
takes this hypothesis to be the necessary correlative of the
interpretation of the self‐designation Son of Man on the basis of Daniel
and the Apocalypses.
If Jesus, he argues, designated Himself in this futuristic sense as the
Son of Man who comes from Heaven, He must have assumed that He would first
be transported thither. “A man who had died or been rapt away from the
earth might perhaps be brought into the world again in this way, or one
who had never been on earth might so descend thither.” But as this
conception of transformation and removal seems to Dalman untenable in the
case of Jesus, he treats it as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the
eschatological interpretation of the title.
But why? If Jesus as a man walking in a natural body upon earth, predicts
to His disciples the Parousia of the Son of Man in the immediate future,
with the secret conviction that He Himself was to be revealed as the Son
of Man, He must have made precisely this assumption that He would first be
supernaturally removed and transformed. He thought of Himself as any one
must who believes in the immediate coming of the last things, as living in
two different conditions: the present, and the future condition into which
He is to be transferred at the coming of the new supernatural world. We
learn later that the disciples on the way up to Jerusalem were entirely
possessed by the thought of what they should be when this transformation
took place. They contend as to who shall have the highest position (Mark
ix. 33); James and John wish Jesus to promise them in advance the thrones
on His right hand and on His left (Mark x. 35‐37).
He, moreover, does not rebuke them for indulging such thoughts, but only
tells them how much, in the present age, of service, humiliation, and
suffering is necessary to constitute a claim to such places in the future
age, and that it does not in the last resort belong to Him to allot the
places on His left and on His right, but that they shall be given to those
for whom they are prepared; therefore, perhaps not to any of the disciples
(Mark x. 40). At this point, therefore, the knowledge and will of Jesus
are thwarted and limited by the predestinarianism which is bound up with
eschatology.
It is quite mistaken, however, to speak as modern theology does, of the
“service” here required as belonging to the “new ethic of the Kingdom of
God.” There is for Jesus no ethic of the Kingdom of God, for in the
Kingdom of God all natural relationships, even, for example, the
distinction of sex (Mark xii. 25 and 26), are abolished. Temptation and
sin no longer exist. All is “reign,” a “reign” which has gradations—Jesus
speaks of the “least in the Kingdom of God”—according as it has been
determined in each individual case from all eternity, and according as
each by his self‐humiliation and refusal to rule in the present age has
proved his fitness for bearing rule in the future Kingdom.
For the loftier stations, however, it is necessary to have proved oneself
in persecution and suffering. Accordingly, Jesus asks the sons of Zebedee
whether, since they claim these thrones on His right hand and on His left,
they feel themselves strong enough to drink of His cup and be baptized
with His baptism (Mark x. 38). To serve, to humble oneself, to incur
persecution and death, belong to “the ethic of the interim” just as much
as does penitence. They are indeed only a higher form of penitence.
A vivid eschatological expectation is therefore impossible to conceive
apart from the idea of a metamorphosis. The resurrection is only a special
case of this metamorphosis, the form in which the new condition of things
is realised in the case of those who are already dead. The resurrection,
the metamorphosis, and the Parousia of the Son of Man take place
simultaneously, and are one and the same act.(277) It is therefore quite
indifferent whether a man loses his life shortly before the Parousia in
order to “find his life,” if that is what is ordained for him; that
signifies only that he will undergo the eschatological metamorphosis with
the dead instead of with the living.
The Pauline eschatology recognises both conceptions side by side, in such
a way, however, that the resurrection is subordinated to the
metamorphosis. “Behold, I shew you a mystery,” he says in 1 Cor. xv. 51
ff.; “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in
the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound,
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”
The apostle himself desires to be one of those who live to experience the
metamorphosis and to be clothed with the heavenly mode of existence (2
Cor. v. 1 ff.). The metamorphosis, however, and the resurrection are, for
those who are “in Christ,” connected with a being caught up into the
clouds of heaven (1 Thess. iv. 15 ff.). Therefore Paul also makes one and
the same event of the metamorphosis, resurrection, and translation.
In seeking clues to the eschatology of Jesus, scholars have passed over
the eschatology which lies closest to it, that of Paul. But why? Is it not
identical with that of Jesus, at least in so far that both are “Jewish
eschatology”? Did not Reimarus long ago declare that the eschatology of
the primitive Christian community was identical with the Jewish, and only
went beyond it in claiming a definite knowledge on a single point which
was unessential to the nature and course of the expected events, in
knowing, that is, who the Son of Man should be? That Christians drew no
distinction between their own eschatology and the Jewish is evident from
the whole character of the earlier apocalyptic literature, and not least
from the Apocalypse of John! After all, what alteration did the belief
that Jesus was the Son of Man who was to be revealed make in the general
scheme of the course of apocalyptic events?
From the Rabbinic literature little help is to be derived towards the
understanding of the world of thought in which Jesus lived, and His view
of His own Person. The latest researches may be said to have made that
clear. A few moral maxims, a few halting parables—that is all that can be
produced in the way of parallels. Even the conception which is there
suggested of the hidden coming and work of the Messiah is of little
importance. We find the same ideas in the mouth of Trypho in Justin’s
dialogue, and that makes their Jewish character doubtful. That Jesus of
Nazareth knew Himself to be the Son of Man who was to be revealed is for
us the great fact of His self‐consciousness, which is not to be further
explained, whether there had been any kind of preparation for it in
contemporary theology or not.
The self‐consciousness of Jesus cannot in fact be illustrated or
explained; all that can be explained is the eschatological view, in which
the Man who possessed that self‐consciousness saw reflected in advance the
coming events, both those of a more general character, and those which
especially related to Himself.(278)
The eschatology of Jesus can therefore only be interpreted by the aid of
the curiously intermittent Jewish apocalyptic literature of the period
between Daniel and the Bar‐Cochba rising. What else, indeed, are the
Synoptic Gospels, the Pauline letters, the Christian apocalypses than
products of Jewish apocalyptic, belonging, moreover, to its greatest and
most flourishing period? Historically regarded, the Baptist, Jesus, and
Paul are simply the culminating manifestations of Jewish apocalyptic
thought. The usual representation is the exact converse of the truth.
Writers describe Jewish eschatology in order to illustrate the ideas of
Jesus. But what is this “Jewish eschatology” after all? It is an
eschatology with a great gap in it, because the culminating period, with
the documents which relate to it, has been left out. The true historian
will describe the eschatology of the Baptist, of Jesus, and of Paul in
order to explain Jewish eschatology. It is nothing less than a misfortune
for the science of New Testament Theology that no real attempt has
hitherto been made to write the history of Jewish eschatology as it really
was; that is, with the inclusion of the Baptist, of Jesus, and of
Paul.(279)
All this has had to be said in order to justify the apparently self‐
evident assertion that Mark, Matthew, and Paul are the best sources for
the Jewish eschatology of the time of Jesus. They represent a phase, which
even in detail is self‐explanatory, of that Jewish apocalyptic hope which
manifested itself from time to time. We are, therefore, justified in first
reconstructing the Jewish apocalyptic of the time independently out of
these documents, that is to say, in bringing the details of the discourses
of Jesus into an eschatological system, and then on the basis of this
system endeavouring to explain the apparently disconnected events in the
history of His public life.
The lines of connection which run backwards towards the Psalms of Solomon,
Enoch, and Daniel, and forwards towards the apocalypses of Baruch and
Enoch, are extremely important for the understanding of certain general
conceptions. On the other hand, it is impossible to over‐emphasise the
uniqueness of the point of view from which the eschatology of the time of
the Baptist, of Jesus, and of Paul presents itself to us.
In the first place, men feel themselves so close to the coming events that
they only see what lies nearest to them, the imaginative development of
detail entirely ceases. In the second place, it appears to us as though
seen, so to speak, from within, passed through the medium of powerful
minds like those of the Baptist and Jesus. That is why it is so great and
simple. On the other hand, a certain complication arises from the fact
that it now intersects actual history. All these are original features of
it, which are not found in the Jewish apocalyptic writings of the
preceding and following periods, and that is why these documents give us
so little help in regard to the characteristic detail of the eschatology
of Jesus and His contemporaries.
A further point to be noticed is that the eschatology of the time of Jesus
shows the influence of the eschatology of the ancient prophets in a way
which is not paralleled either before or after. Compare the Synoptic
eschatology with that of the Psalms of Solomon. In place of the legal
righteousness, which, since the return from the exile, had formed the link
of connexion between the present and the future, we find the prophetic
ethic, the demand for a general repentance, even in the case of the
Baptist. In the Apocalypses of Baruch and Ezra we see, especially in the
theological character of the latter, the persistent traces of this ethical
deepening of apocalyptic.
But even in individual conceptions the apocalyptic of the Baptist, and of
the period which he introduces, reaches back to the eschatology of the
prophetic writings. The pouring forth of the spirit, and the figure of
Elias, who comes again to earth, play a great rôle in it. The difficulty
is, indeed, consciously felt of combining the two eschatologies, and
bringing the prophetic within the Danielic. How, it is asked, can the Son
of David be at the same time the Danielic Son‐of‐Man Messiah, at once
David’s son and David’s Lord?
It is inadequate to speak of a synthesis of the two eschatologies. What
has happened is nothing less than the remoulding, the elevation, of the
Daniel‐Enoch apocalyptic by the spirit and conceptions belonging to the
ancient prophetic hope.
A great simplification and deepening of eschatology begins to show itself
even in the Psalms of Solomon. The conception of righteousness which the
writer applies is, in spite of its legal aspect, of an ethical, prophetic
character. It is an eschatology associated with great historical events,
the eschatology of a Pharisaism which is fighting for a cause, and has
therefore a certain inward greatness.(280) Between the Psalms of Solomon
and the appearance of the Baptist there lies the decadence of Pharisaism.
At this point there suddenly appears an eschatological movement detached
from Pharisaism, which was declining into an external legalism, a movement
resting on a basis of its own, and thoroughly penetrated with the spirit
of the ancient prophets.
The ultimate _differentia_ of this eschatology is that it was not, like
the other apocalyptic movements, called into existence by historical
events. The Apocalypse of Daniel was called forth by the religious
oppression of Antiochus;(281) the Psalms of Solomon by the civil strife at
Jerusalem and the first appearance of the Roman power under Pompey;(282)
Fourth Ezra and Baruch by the destruction of Jerusalem.(283) The
apocalyptic movement in the time of Jesus is not connected with any
historical event. It cannot be said, as Bruno Bauer rightly perceived,
that we know anything about the Messianic expectations of the Jewish
people at that time.(284) On the contrary, the indifference shown by the
Roman administration towards the movement proves that the Romans knew
nothing of a condition of great and general Messianic excitement among the
Jewish people. The conduct of the Pharisaic party also, and the
indifference of the great mass of the people, show that there can have
been no question at that time of a national movement. What is really
remarkable about this wave of apocalyptic enthusiasm is the fact that it
was called forth not by external events, but solely by the appearance of
two great personalities, and subsides with their disappearance, without
leaving among the people generally any trace, except a feeling of hatred
towards the new sect.
The Baptist and Jesus are not, therefore, borne upon the current of a
general eschatological movement. The period offers no events calculated to
give an impulse to eschatological enthusiasm. They themselves set the
times in motion by acting, by creating eschatological facts. It is this
mighty creative force which constitutes the difficulty in grasping
historically the eschatology of Jesus and the Baptist. Instead of literary
artifice speaking out of a distant imaginary past, there now enter into
the field of eschatology men, living, acting men. It was the only time
when that ever happened in Jewish eschatology.
There is silence all around. The Baptist appears, and cries: “Repent, for
the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Soon after that comes Jesus, and in the
knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the
world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all
ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself
upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. Instead of bringing in the
eschatological conditions, He has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward,
and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong
enough to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend
history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is His victory and
His reign.
These considerations regarding the distinctive character of the Synoptic
eschatology were necessary in order to explain the significance of the
sending forth of the disciples and the discourse which Jesus uttered upon
that occasion. Jesus’ purpose is to set in motion the eschatological
development of history, to let loose the final woes, the confusion and
strife, from which shall issue the Parousia, and so to introduce the
supra‐mundane phase of the eschatological drama. That is His task, for
which He has authority here below. That is why He says in the same
discourse, “Think not that I am come to send peace on the earth; I am not
come to send peace, but a sword” (Matt. x. 34).
It was with a view to this initial movement that He chose His disciples.
They are not His helpers in the work of teaching; we never see them in
that capacity, and He did not prepare them to carry on that work after His
death. The very fact that He chooses just twelve shows that it is a
dogmatic idea which He has in mind. He chooses them as those who are
destined to hurl the firebrand into the world, and are afterwards, as
those who have been the comrades of the unrecognised Messiah, before He
came to His Kingdom, to be His associates in ruling and judging it.(285)
But what was to be the fate of the future Son of Man during the Messianic
woes of the last times? It appears as if it was appointed for Him to share
the persecution and the suffering. He says that those who shall be saved
must take their cross and follow Him (Matt. x. 38), that His followers
must be willing to lose their lives for His sake, and that only those who
in this time of terror confess their allegiance to Him, shall be confessed
by Him before His heavenly Father (Matt. x. 32). Similarly, in the last of
the Beatitudes, He had pronounced those blessed who were despised and
persecuted for His sake (Matt. v. 11, 12). As the future bearer of the
supreme rule He must go through the deepest humiliation. There is danger
that His followers may doubt Him. Therefore, the last words of His message
to the Baptist, just at the time when He had sent forth the Twelve, is,
“Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me” (Matt. xi. 6).
If He makes a point of familiarising others with the thought that in the
time of tribulation they may even lose their lives, He must have
recognised that this possibility was still more strongly present in His
own case. It is possible that in the enigmatic saying about the disciples
fasting “when the bridegroom is taken away from them” (Mark ii. 20), there
is a hint of what Jesus expected. In that case suffering, death, and
resurrection must have been closely united in the Messianic consciousness
from the first. So much, however, is certain, viz. that the thought of
suffering formed part, at the time of the sending forth the disciples, of
the mystery of the Kingdom of God and of the Messiahship of Jesus, and
that in the form that Jesus and all the elect were to be brought low in
the πειρασμός at the time of the death‐struggle against the evil world‐
power which would arise against them; brought down, it might be, even to
death. It mattered as little in His own case as in that of others whether
at the time of the Parousia He should be one of those who should be
metamorphosed, or one who had died and risen again. The question arises,
however, how this self‐consciousness of Jesus could remain concealed. It
is true the miracles had nothing to do with the Messiahship, since no one
expected the Messiah to come as an earthly miracle‐worker in the present
age. On the contrary, it would have been the greatest of miracles if any
one had recognised the Messiah in an earthly miracle‐worker. How far the
cries of the demoniacs who addressed Him as Messiah were intelligible by
the people must remain an open question. What is clear is that His
Messiahship did not become known in this way even to His disciples.
And yet in all His speech and action the Messianic consciousness shines
forth. One might, indeed, speak of the acts of His Messianic
consciousness. The Beatitudes, nay, the whole of the Sermon on the Mount,
with the authoritative “I” for ever breaking through, bear witness to the
high dignity which He ascribed to Himself. Did not this “I” set the people
thinking?
What must they have thought when, at the close of this discourse, He spoke
of people who, at the Day of Judgment, would call upon Him as Lord, and
appeal to the works that they had done in His name, and who yet were
destined to be rejected because He would not recognise them (Matt. vii.
21‐23)?
What must they have thought of Him when He pronounced those blessed who
were persecuted and despised for His sake (Matt. v. 11, 12)? By what
authority did this man forgive sins (Mark ii. 5 ff.)?
In the discourse at the sending forth of the disciples the “I” is still
more prominent. He demands of men that in the trials to come they shall
confess Him, that they shall love Him more than father or mother, bear
their cross after Him, and follow Him to the death, since it is only for
such that He can entreat His Heavenly Father (Matt. x. 32 ff.). Admitting
that the expression “Heavenly Father” contained no riddle for the
listening disciples, since He had taught them to pray “Our Father which
art in Heaven,” we have still to ask who was He whose yea or nay should
prevail with God to determine the fate of men at the Judgment?
And yet they found it hard, nay impossible, to think of Him as Messiah.
They guessed Him to be a prophet; some thought of Elias, some of John the
Baptist risen from the dead, as appears clearly from the answer of the
disciples at Caesarea Philippi.(286) The Messiah was a supernatural
personality who was to appear in the last times, and who was not expected
upon earth before that.
At this point a difficulty presents itself. How could Jesus be Elias for
the people? Did they not hold John the Baptist to be Elias? Not in the
least! Jesus was the first and the only person who attributed this office
to him. And, moreover, He declares it to the people as something
mysterious, difficult to understand—“If ye can receive it, this is Elias,
which was for to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matt. xi.
14, 15). In making this revelation He is communicating to them a piece of
supernatural knowledge, opening up a part of the mystery of the Kingdom of
God. Therefore He uses the same formula of emphasis as when making known
in parables the mystery of the Kingdom of God (Mark iv.).
The disciples were not with Him at this time, and therefore did not learn
what was the rôle of John the Baptist. When a little later, in descending
from the mount of transfiguration He predicted to the three who formed the
inner circle of His followers the resurrection of the Son of Man, they
came to Him with difficulties about the rising from the dead—how could
this be possible when, according to the Pharisees and Scribes, Elias must
first come?—whereupon Jesus explains to them that the preacher of
repentance whom Herod had put to death had been Elias (Mark ix. 11‐13).
Why did not the people take the Baptist to be Elias? In the first place no
doubt because he did not describe himself as such. In the next place
because he did no miracle! He was only a natural man without any evidence
of supernatural power, only a prophet. In the third place, and that was
the decisive point, he had himself pointed forward to the coming of Elias.
He who was to come, he whom he preached, was not the Messiah, but Elias.
He describes him, not as a supernatural personality, not as a judge, not
as one who will be manifested at the unveiling of the heavenly world, but
as one who in his work shall resemble himself, only much greater—one who,
like himself, baptizes, though with the Holy Spirit. Had it ever been
represented as the work of the Messiah to baptize?
Before the Last Judgment, so it was inferred from Joel, the great
outpouring of the Spirit was to take place; before the Last Judgment, so
taught Malachi, Elias was to come. Until these events had occurred the
manifestation of the Son of Man was not to be looked for. Men’s thoughts
were fixed, therefore, not on the Messiah, but upon Elias and the
outpouring of the Spirit.(287) The Baptist in his preaching combines both
ideas, and predicts the coming of the Great One who shall “baptize with
the Holy Spirit,” _i.e._ who brings about the outpouring of the Spirit.
His own preaching was only designed to secure that at His coming that
Great One should find a community sanctified and prepared to receive the
Spirit.
When he heard in the prison of one who did great wonders and signs, he
desired to learn with certainty whether this was “he who was to come.” If
this question is taken as referring to the Messiahship the whole narrative
loses its meaning, and it upsets the theory of the Messianic secret, since
in this case at least one person had become aware, independently, of the
office which belonged to Jesus, not to mention all the ineptitudes
involved in making the Baptist here speak in doubt and confusion.
Moreover, on this false interpretation of the question the point of Jesus’
discourse is lost, for in this case it is not clear why He says to the
people afterwards, “If ye can receive it, John himself is Elias.” This
revelation presupposes that Jesus and the people, who had heard the
question which had been addressed to Him, also gave it its only natural
meaning, referring it to Jesus as the bearer of the office of Elias.
That even the first Evangelist gives the episode a Messianic setting by
introducing it with the words “When John heard in the prison of the works
of the Christ” does not alter the facts of the body of the narrative. The
sequel directly contradicts the introduction. And this interpretation
fully explains the evasive answer of Jesus, in which exegesis has always
recognised a certain reserve without ever being able to make it
intelligible why Jesus did not simply send him the message, “Yes, I am
he”—whereto, however, according to modern theology, He would have needed
to add, “but another kind of Messiah from him whom you expect.”
The fact was, the Baptist had put Him in an extremely difficult position.
He could not answer that He was Elias if He held Himself to be the
Messiah; on the other hand He could not, and would not, disclose to him,
and still less to the messengers and the listening multitude, the secret
of His Messiahship. Therefore He sends this obscure message, which only
contains a confirmation of the facts which John had already heard and
closes with a warning, come what may, not to be offended in Him. Of this
the Baptist was to make what he could.
It mattered, in fact, little how John understood the message. The time was
much more advanced than he supposed; the hammer of the world’s clock had
risen to strike the last hour. All that he needed to know was that he had
no cause to doubt.
In revealing to the people the true office of the Baptist, Jesus unveiled
to them almost the whole mystery of the Kingdom of God, and nearly
disclosed the secret of His Messiahship. For if Elias was already present,
was not the coming of the Kingdom close at hand? And if John was Elias,
who was Jesus?... There could only be one answer: the Messiah. But this
seemed impossible, because Messiah was expected as a supernatural
personality. The eulogy on the Baptist is, historically regarded,
identical in content with the prediction of the Parousia in the discourse
at the sending forth of the disciples. For after the coming of Elias there
must follow immediately the judgment and the other events belonging to the
last time. Now we can understand why in the enumeration of the events of
the last time in the discourse to the Twelve the coming of Elias is not
mentioned.
We see here, too, how, in the thought of Jesus, Messianic doctrine forces
its way into history and simply abolishes the historic aspect of the
events. The Baptist had not held himself to be Elias, the people had not
thought of attributing this office to him; the description of Elias did
not fit him at all, since he had done none of those things which Elias was
to do: and yet Jesus makes him Elias, simply because He expected His own
manifestation as Son of Man, and before that it was necessary that Elias
must first have come. And even when John was dead Jesus still told the
disciples that in him Elias had come, although the death of Elias was not
contemplated in the eschatological doctrine, and was in fact unthinkable,
But Jesus must somehow drag or force the eschatological events into the
framework of the actual occurrences.
Thus the conception of the “dogmatic element” in the narrative widens in
an unsuspected fashion. And even what before seemed natural becomes on a
closer examination doctrinal. The Baptist is made into Elias solely by the
force of Jesus’ Messianic consciousness.
A short time afterwards, immediately upon the return of the disciples, He
spoke and acted before their eyes in a way which presupposed the Messianic
secret. The people had been dogging his steps; at a lonely spot on the
shores of the lake they surrounded Him, and He “taught them about many
things” (Mark vi. 30‐34). The day was drawing to a close, but they held
closely to Him without troubling about food. In the evening, before
sending them away, He fed them.
Weisse, long ago, had constantly emphasised the fact that the feeding of
the multitude was one of the greatest historical problems, because this
narrative, like that of the transfiguration, is very firmly riveted to its
historical setting and, therefore, imperatively demands explanation. How
is the historical element in it to be got at? Certainly not by seeking to
explain the apparently miraculous in it on natural lines, by representing
that at the bidding of Jesus people brought out the baskets of provisions
which they had been concealing, and, thus importing into the tradition a
natural fact which, so far from being hinted at in the narrative, is
actually excluded by it.
Our solution is that the whole is historical, except the closing remark
that they were all filled. Jesus distributed the provisions which He and
His disciples had with them among the multitude so that each received a
very little, after He had first offered thanks. The significance lies in
the giving of thanks and in the fact that they had received from Him
consecrated food. Because He is the future Messiah, this meal becomes
without their knowledge the Messianic feast. With the morsel of bread
which He gives His disciples to distribute to the people He consecrates
them as partakers in the coming Messianic feast, and gives them the
guarantee that they, who had shared His table in the time of His
obscurity, would also share it in the time of His glory. In the prayer He
gave thanks not only for the food, but also for the coming Kingdom and all
its blessings. It is the counterpart of the Lord’s prayer, where He so
strangely inserts the petition for daily bread between the petitions for
the coming of the Kingdom and for deliverance from the πειρασμός.
The feeding of the multitude was more than a love‐feast, a fellowship‐
meal. It was from the point of view of Jesus a sacrament of salvation.
We never realise sufficiently that in a period when the judgment and the
glory were expected as close at hand, one thought arising out of this
expectation must have acquired special prominence—how, namely, in the
present time a man could obtain a guarantee of coming scatheless through
the judgment, of being saved and received into the Kingdom, of being
signed and sealed for deliverance amid the coming trial, as the Chosen
People in Egypt had a sign revealed to them from God by means of which
they might be manifest as those who were to be spared. But once we do
realise this, we can understand why the thought of signing and sealing
runs through the whole of the apocalyptic literature. It is found as early
as the ninth chapter of Ezekiel. There, God is making preparation for
judgment. The day of visitation of the city is at hand. But first the Lord
calls unto “the man clothed with linen who had the writer’s ink‐horn by
his side” and said unto him, “Go through the midst of the city, through
the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that
sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst
thereof.” Only after that does He give command to those who are charged
with the judgment to begin, adding, “But come not near any man upon whom
is the mark” (Ezek. ix. 4 and 6).
In the fifteenth of the Psalms of Solomon,(288) the last eschatological
writing before the movement initiated by the Baptist, it is expressly said
in the description of the judgment that “the saints of God bear a sign
upon them which saves them.”
In the Pauline theology very striking prominence is given to the thought
of being sealed unto salvation. The apostle is conscious of bearing about
with him in his body “the marks of Jesus” (Gal. vi. 17), the “dying” of
Jesus (2 Cor. iv. 10). This sign is received in baptism, since it is a
baptism “into the death of Christ”; in this act the recipient is in a
certain sense really buried with Him, and thenceforth walks among men as
one who belongs, even here below, to risen humanity (Rom. vi. 1 ff.).
Baptism is the seal, the earnest of the spirit, the pledge of that which
is to come (2 Cor i. 22; Eph. i. 13, 14, iv. 30).
This conception of baptism as a “salvation” in view of that which was to
come goes down through the whole of ancient theology. Its preaching might
really be summed up in the words, “Keep your baptism holy and without
blemish.”
In the Shepherd of Hermas even the spirits of the men of the past must
receive “the seal, which is the water” in order that they may “bear the
name of God upon them.” That is why the tower is built over the water, and
the stones which are brought up out of the deep are rolled through the
water (Vis. iii. and Sim. ix. 16).
In the Apocalypse of John the thought of the sealing stands prominently in
the foreground. The locusts receive power to hurt those only who have not
the seal of God on their foreheads (Rev. ix. 4, 5). The beast (Rev. xiii.
16 ff.) compels men to bear his mark; only those who will not accept it
are to reign with Christ (Rev. xx. 4). The chosen hundred and forty‐four
thousand bear the name of God and the name of the Lamb upon their
foreheads (Rev. xiv. 1).
“Assurance of salvation” in a time of eschatological expectation demanded
some kind of security for the future of which the earnest could be
possessed in the present. And with this the predestinarian thought of
election was in complete accord. If we find the thought of being sealed
unto salvation previously in the Psalms of Solomon, and subsequently in
the same signification in Paul, in the Apocalypse of John, and down to the
Shepherd of Hermas, it may be assumed in advance that it will be found in
some form or other in the so strongly eschatological teaching of Jesus and
the Baptist.
It may be said, indeed, to dominate completely the eschatological
preaching of the Baptist, for this preaching does not confine itself to
the declaration of the nearness of the Kingdom, and the demand for
repentance, but leads up to an act to which it gives a special reference
in relation to the forgiveness of sins and the outpouring of the spirit.
It is a mistake to regard baptism with water as a “symbolic act” in the
modern sense, and make the Baptist decry his own wares by saying, “I
baptize only with water, but the other can baptize with the Holy Spirit.”
He is not contrasting the two baptisms, but connecting them—he who is
baptized by him has the certainty that he will share in the outpouring of
the Spirit which shall precede the judgment, and at the judgment shall
receive forgiveness of sins, as one who is signed with the mark of
repentance. The object of being baptized by him is to secure baptism with
the Spirit later. The forgiveness of sins associated with baptism is
proleptic; it is to be realised at the judgment. The Baptist himself did
not forgive sin.(289) If he had done so, how could such offence have been
taken when Jesus claimed for Himself the right to forgive sins in the
present (Mark ii. 10).
The baptism of John was therefore an eschatological sacrament pointing
forward to the pouring forth of the spirit and to the judgment, a
provision for “salvation.” Hence the wrath of the Baptist when he saw
Pharisees and Sadducees crowding to his baptism: “Ye generation of vipers,
who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth now fruits
meet for repentance” (Matt. iii. 7, 8). By the reception of baptism, that
is, they are saved from the judgment.
As a cleansing unto salvation it is a divine institution, a revealed means
of grace. That is why the question of Jesus, whether the baptism of John
was from heaven or from men, placed the Scribes at Jerusalem in so awkward
a dilemma (Mark xi. 30).
The authority of Jesus, however, goes farther than that of the Baptist. As
the Messiah who is to come He can give even here below to those who gather
about Him a right to partake in the Messianic feast, by this distribution
of food to them; only, they do not know what is happening to them and He
cannot solve the riddle for them. The supper at the Lake of Gennesareth
was a veiled eschatological sacrament. Neither the disciples nor the
multitude understood what was happening, since they did not know who He
was who thus made them His guests.(290) This meal must have been
transformed by tradition into a miracle, a result which may have been in
part due to the references to the wonders of the Messianic feast which
were doubtless contained in the prayers, not to speak of the
eschatological enthusiasm which then prevailed universally. Did not the
disciples believe that on the same evening, when they had been commanded
to take Jesus into their ship at the mouth of the Jordan, to which point
He had walked along the shore—did they not believe that they saw Him come
walking towards them upon the waves of the sea? The impulse to the
introduction of the miraculous into the narrative came from the
unintelligible element with which the men who surrounded Jesus were at
this time confronted.(291)
The Last Supper at Jerusalem had the same sacramental significance as that
at the lake. Towards the end of the meal Jesus, after giving thanks,
distributes the bread and wine. This had as little to do with the
satisfaction of hunger as the distribution to the Galilaean believers. The
act of Jesus is an end in itself, and the significance of the celebration
consists in the fact that it is He Himself who makes the distribution. In
Jerusalem, however, they understood what was meant, and He explained it to
them explicitly by telling them that He would drink no more of the fruit
of the vine until He drank it new in the Kingdom of God. The mysterious
images which He used at the time of the distribution concerning the
atoning significance of His death do not touch the essence of the
celebration, they are only discourses accompanying it.
On this interpretation, therefore, we may think of Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper as from the first eschatological sacraments in the eschatological
movement which later detached itself from Judaism under the name of
Christianity. That explains why we find them both in Paul and in the
earliest theology as sacramental acts, not as symbolic ceremonies, and
find them dominating the whole Christian doctrine. Apart from the
assumption of the eschatological sacraments, we can only make the history
of dogma begin with a “fall” from the earlier purer theology into the
sacramental magical, without being able to adduce a single syllable in
support of the idea that after the death of Jesus Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper existed even for an hour as symbolical actions—Paul, indeed, makes
this supposition wholly impossible.
In any case the adoption of the baptism of John in Christian practice
cannot be explained except on the assumption that it was the sacrament of
the eschatological community, a revealed means of securing “salvation”
which was not altered in the slightest by the Messiahship of Jesus. How
else could we explain the fact that baptism, without any commandment of
Jesus, and without Jesus’ ever having baptized, was taken over, as a
matter of course, into Christianity, and was given a special reference to
the receiving of the Spirit?
It is no use proposing to explain it as having been instituted as a
symbolical repetition of the baptism of Jesus, thought of as “an anointing
to the Messiahship.” There is not a single passage in ancient theology to
support such a theory. And we may point also to the fact that Paul never
refers to the baptism of Jesus in explaining the character of Christian
baptism, never, in fact, makes any distinct reference to it. And how could
baptism, if it had been a symbolical repetition of the baptism of Jesus,
ever have acquired this magic‐sacramental sense of “salvation”?
Nothing shows more clearly than the dual character of ancient baptism,
which makes it the guarantee both of the reception of the Spirit and of
deliverance from the judgment, that it is nothing else than the
eschatological baptism of John with a single difference. Baptism with
water and baptism with the Spirit are now connected not only logically,
but also in point of time, seeing that since the day of Pentecost the
period of the outpouring of the Spirit is present. The two portions of the
eschatological sacrament which in the Baptist’s preaching were
distinguished in point of time—because he did not expect the outpouring of
the Spirit until some future period—are now brought together, since one
eschatological condition—the baptism with the Spirit—is now present. The
“Christianising” of baptism consisted in this and in nothing else; though
Paul carried it a stage farther when he formed the conception of baptism
as a mystic partaking in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Thus the thoroughgoing eschatological interpretation of the Life of Jesus
puts into the hands of those who are reconstructing the history of dogma
in the earliest times an explanation of the conception of the sacraments,
of which they had been able hitherto only to note the presence as an _x_
of which the origin was undiscoverable, and for which they possessed no
equation by which it could be evaluated. If Christianity as the religion
of historically revealed mysteries was able to lay hold upon Hellenism and
overcome it, the reason of this was that it was already in its purely
eschatological beginnings a religion of sacraments, a religion of
eschatological sacraments, since Jesus had recognised a Divine institution
in the baptism of John, and had Himself performed a sacramental action in
the distribution of food at the Lake of Gennesareth and at the Last
Supper.
This being so, the feeding of the multitude also belongs to the dogmatic
element in the history. But no one had previously recognised it as what it
really was, an indirect disclosure of the Messianic secret, just as no one
had understood the full significance of Jesus’ description of the Baptist
as Elias.
But how does Peter at Caesarea Philippi know the secret of his Master?
What he there declares is not a conviction which had gradually dawned on
him, and slowly grown through various stages of probability and certainty.
The real character of this incident has been interpreted with remarkable
penetration by Wrede. The incident itself, he says, is to be understood in
quite as supernatural a fashion in Mark as in Matthew. But on the other
hand one does not receive the impression that the writer intends to
represent the confession as a merit or a discovery of Peter. “For
according to the text of Mark, Jesus shows no trace of joy or surprise at
this confession. His only answer consists of the command to say nothing
about His Messiahship.” Keim, whom Wrede quotes, had received a similar
impression from the Marcan account, and had supposed that Jesus had
actually found the confession of Peter inopportune.
How is all this to be explained—the supernatural knowledge of Peter and
the rather curt fashion in which Jesus receives his declaration?
It might be worth while to put the story of the transfiguration side by
side with the incident at Caesarea Philippi, since there the Divine
Sonship of Jesus is “a second time” revealed to the “three,” Peter, James,
and John, and the revelation is made supernaturally by a voice from
heaven. It is rather striking that Mark does not seem to be conscious that
he is reporting something which the disciples knew already. At the
beginning of the actual transfiguration Peter still addresses Jesus simply
as Rabbi (Mark ix. 5). And what does it mean when Jesus, during the
descent from the mountain, forbids them to speak to any man concerning
that which they have seen until after the resurrection of the Son of Man?
That would exclude even the other disciples who knew only the secret of
His Messiahship. But why should they not be told of the Divine
confirmation of that which Peter had declared at Caesarea Philippi and
Jesus had “admitted”?
What has the transfiguration to do with the resurrection of the dead? And
why are the thoughts of the disciples suddenly busied, not with what they
have seen, not with the fact that the Son of Man shall rise from the dead,
but simply with the possibility of the rising from the dead, the
difficulty being that Elias was not yet present? Those who see in the
transfiguration a projection backwards of the Pauline theology into the
Gospel history do not realise what are the principal points and
difficulties of the narrative. The problem lies in the conversation during
the descent. Against the Messiahship of Jesus, against His rising from the
dead, they have only one objection to suggest: Elias had not yet come.
We see here, in the first place, the importance of the revelation which
Jesus had made to the people in declaring to them the secret that the
Baptist is Elias. From the standpoint of the eschatological expectation no
one could recognise Elias in the Baptist, unless he knew of the
Messiahship of Jesus. And no one could believe in the Messiahship and
“resurrection” of Jesus, that is, in His Parousia, without presupposing
that Elias had in some way or other already come. This was therefore the
primary difficulty of the disciples, the stumbling‐block which Jesus must
remove for them by making the same revelation concerning the Baptist to
them as to the people. It is also once more abundantly clear that
expectation was directed at that time primarily to the coming of
Elias.(292) But since the whole eschatological movement arose out of the
Baptist’s preaching, the natural conclusion is that by “him who was to
come after” and baptize with the Holy Spirit John meant, not the Messiah,
but Elias.
But if the non‐appearance of Elias was the primary difficulty of the
disciples in connexion with the Messiahship of Jesus and all that it
implied, why does it only strike the “three,” and moreover, all three of
them together, now, and not at Caesarea Philippi?(293) How could Peter
there have declared it and here be still labouring with the rest over the
difficulty which stood in the way of his own declaration? To make the
narrative coherent, the transfiguration, as being a revelation of the
Messiahship, ought to precede the incident at Caesarea Philippi. Now let
us look at the connexion in which it actually occurs. It falls in that
inexplicable section Mark viii. 34‐ix. 30 in which the multitude suddenly
appears in the company of Jesus who is sojourning in a Gentile district,
only to disappear again, equally enigmatically, afterwards, when He sets
out for Galilee, instead of accompanying Him back to their own country.
In this section everything points to the situation during the days at
Bethsaida after the return of the disciples from their mission. Jesus is
surrounded by the people, while what He desires is to be alone with His
immediate followers. The disciples make use of the healing powers which He
had bestowed upon them when sending them forth, and have the experience of
finding that they are not in all cases adequate (Mark ix. 14‐29). The
mountain to which He takes the “three” is not a mountain in the north, or
as some have suggested, an imaginary mountain of the Evangelist, but the
same to which Jesus went up to pray and to be alone on the evening of the
feeding of the multitude (Mark vi. 46 and ix. 2). The house to which He
goes after His return from the transfiguration is therefore to be placed
at Bethsaida.
Another thing which points to a sojourn at Bethsaida after the feeding of
the multitude is the story of the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida
(Mark viii. 22‐26).
The circumstances, therefore, which we have to presuppose are that Jesus
is surrounded and thronged by the people at Bethsaida. In order to be
alone He once more puts the Jordan between Himself and the multitude, and
goes with the “three” to the mountain where He had prayed after the
feeding of the five thousand. This is the only way in which we can
understand how the people failed to follow Him, and He was able really to
carry out His plan.
But how could this story be torn out of its natural context and its scene
removed to Caesarea Philippi, where it is both on external and internal
grounds impossible? What we need to notice is the Marcan account of the
events which followed the sending forth of the disciples. We have two
stories of the feeding of the multitude with a crossing of the lake after
each (Mark vi. 31‐56, Mark viii. 1‐22), two stories of Jesus going away
towards the north with the same motive, that of being alone and
unrecognised. The first time, after the controversy about the washing of
hands, His course is directed towards Tyre (Mark vii. 24‐30), the second
time, after the demand for a sign, he goes into the district of Caesarea
Philippi (Mark viii. 27). The scene of the controversy about the washing
of hands is some locality in the plain of Gennesareth (Mark vi. 53 ff);
Dalmanutha is named as the place where the sign was demanded (Mark viii.
10 ff.).
The most natural conclusion is to identify the two cases of feeding the
multitude, and the two journeys northwards. In that case we should have in
the section Mark vi. 31‐ix. 30, two sets of narratives worked into one
another, both recounting how Jesus, after the disciples came back to Him,
went with them from Capernaum to the northern shore of the lake, was there
surprised by the multitude, and after the meal which He gave them, crossed
the Jordan by boat to Bethsaida, stayed there for a while, and then
returned again by ship to the country of Gennesareth, and was there again
overtaken and surrounded by the people; then after some controversial
encounters with the Scribes, who at the report of His miracles had come
down from Jerusalem (Mark vii. 1), left Galilee and again went
northwards.(294)
The seams at the joining of the narratives can be recognised in Mark vii.
31, where Jesus is suddenly transferred from the north to Decapolis, and
in the saying in Mark viii. 14 ff., which makes explicit reference to the
two miracles of feeding the multitude. Whether the Evangelist himself
worked these two sets of narratives together, or whether he found them
already united, cannot be determined, and is not of any direct historical
interest. The disorder is in any case so complete that we cannot fully
reconstruct each of the separate sets of narratives.
The external reasons why the narratives of Mark viii. 34‐ix. 30, of which
the scene is on the northern shore of the lake, are placed in this way
after the incident of Caesarea Philippi are not difficult to grasp. The
section contains an impressive discourse to the people on following Jesus
in His sufferings, crucifixion, and death (Mark viii. 34‐ix. 1). For this
reason the whole series of scenes is attached to the revelation of the
secret of the suffering of the Son of Man; and the redactor did not stop
to think how the people could suddenly appear, and as suddenly disappear
again. The statement, too, “He called the people with the disciples” (Mark
viii. 34), helped to mislead him into inserting the section at this point,
although this very remark points to the circumstances of the time just
after the return of the disciples, when Jesus was sometimes alone with the
disciples, and sometimes calls the eager multitude about Him.
The whole scene belongs, therefore, to the days which He spent at
Bethsaida, and originally followed immediately upon the crossing of the
lake, after the feeding of the multitude. It was after Jesus had been six
days surrounded by the people, not six days after the revelation at
Caesarea Philippi, that the “transfiguration” took place (Mark ix. 2). On
this assumption, all the difficulties of the incident at Caesarea Philippi
are cleared up in a moment; there is no longer anything strange in the
fact that Peter declares to Jesus who He really is, while Jesus appears
neither surprised nor especially rejoiced at the insight of His disciple.
The transfiguration had, in fact, been the revelation of the secret of the
Messiahship to the three who constituted the inner circle of the
disciples.(295) And Jesus had not Himself revealed it to them; what had
happened was, that in a state of rapture common to them all, in which they
had seen the Master in a glorious transfiguration, they had seen Him
talking with Moses and Elias and had heard a voice from heaven saying,
“This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him.”
We must always make a fresh effort to realise to ourselves, that Jesus and
His immediate followers were, at that time, in an enthusiastic state of
intense eschatological expectation. We must picture them among the people,
who were filled with penitence for their sins, and with faith in the
Kingdom, hourly expecting the coming of the Kingdom, and the revelation of
Jesus as the Son of Man, seeing in the eager multitude itself a sign that
their reckoning of the time was correct; thus the psychological conditions
were present for a common ecstatic experience such as is described in the
account of the transfiguration.
In this ecstasy the “three” heard the voice from heaven saying who He was.
Therefore, the Matthaean report, according to which Jesus praises Simon
“because flesh and blood have not revealed it to him, but the Father who
is in heaven,” is not really at variance with the briefer Marcan account,
since it rightly indicates the source of Peter’s knowledge.
Nevertheless Jesus was astonished. For Peter here disregarded the command
given during the descent from the mount of transfiguration. He had
“betrayed” to the Twelve Jesus’ consciousness of His Messiahship. One
receives the impression that Jesus did not put the question to the
disciples in order to reveal Himself to them as Messiah, and that by the
impulsive speech of Peter, upon whose silence He had counted because of
His command, and to whom He had not specially addressed the question, He
was forced to take a different line of action in regard to the Twelve from
what He had intended. It is probable that He had never had the intention
of revealing the secret of His Messiahship to the disciples. Otherwise He
would not have kept it from them at the time of their mission, when He did
not expect them to return before the Parousia. Even at the transfiguration
the “three” do not learn it from His lips, but in a state of ecstasy, an
ecstasy which He shared with them. At Caesarea Philippi it is not He, but
Peter, who reveals His Messiahship. We may say, therefore, that Jesus did
not voluntarily give up His Messianic secret; it was wrung from Him by the
pressure of events.
However that may be, from Caesarea Philippi onwards it was known to the
other disciples through Peter; what Jesus Himself revealed to them, was
the secret of his sufferings.
Pfleiderer and Wrede were quite right in pointing to the clear and
definite predictions of the suffering, death, and resurrection as the
historically inexplicable element in our reports, since the necessity of
Jesus’ death, by which modern theology endeavours to make His resolve and
His predictions intelligible, is not a necessity which arises out of the
historical course of events. There was not present any natural ground for
such a resolve on the part of Jesus. Had He returned to Galilee, He would
immediately have had the multitudes flocking after Him again.
In order to make the historical possibility of the resolve to suffer and
the prediction of the sufferings in some measure intelligible, modern
theology has to ignore the prediction of the resurrection which is bound
up with them, for this is “dogmatic.” That is, however, not permissible.
We must, as Wrede insists, take the words as they are, and must not even
indulge in ingenious explanations of the “three days.” Therefore, the
resolve to suffer and to die are dogmatic; therefore, according to him,
they are unhistorical, and only to be explained by a literary hypothesis.
But the thoroughgoing eschatological school says they are dogmatic, and
therefore historical; because they find their explanation in
eschatological conceptions.
Wrede held that the Messianic conception implied in the Marcan narrative
is not the Jewish Messianic conception, just because of the thought of
suffering and death which it involves. No stress must be laid on the fact
that in Fourth Ezra vii. 29 the Christ dies and rises again, because His
death takes place at the end of the Messianic Kingdom.(296) The Jewish
Messiah is essentially a glorious being who shall appear in the last time.
True, but the case in which the Messiah should be present, prior to the
Parousia, should cause the final tribulations to come upon the earth, and
should Himself undergo them, does not arise in the Jewish eschatology as
described from without. It first arises with the self‐consciousness of
Jesus. Therefore, the Jewish conception of the Messiah has no information
to give us upon this point.
In order to understand Jesus’ resolve to suffer, we must first recognise
that the mystery of this suffering is involved in the mystery of the
Kingdom of God, since the Kingdom cannot come until the πειρασμός has
taken place. This certainty of suffering is quite independent of the
historic circumstances, as the beatitude on the persecuted in the sermon
on the mount, and the predictions in the discourse at the sending forth of
the Twelve, clearly show. Jesus’ prediction of His own sufferings at
Caesarea Philippi is precisely as unintelligible, precisely as dogmatic,
and therefore precisely as historical as the prediction to the disciples
at the time of their mission. The “must be” of the sufferings is the
same—the coming of the Kingdom, and of the Parousia, which are dependent
upon the πειρασμός having first taken place.
In the first period Jesus’ thoughts concerning His own sufferings were
included in the more general thought of the sufferings which formed part
of the mystery of the Kingdom of God. The exhortations to hold steadfastly
to Him in the time of trial, and not to lose faith in Him, certainly
tended to suggest that He thought of Himself as the central point amid
these conflicts and confusions, and reckoned on the possibility of His own
death as much as on that of others. Upon this point nothing more definite
can be said, since the mystery of Jesus’ own sufferings does not detach
itself from the mystery of the sufferings connected with the Kingdom of
God until after the Messianic secret is made known at Caesarea Philippi.
What is certain is that, for Him, suffering was always associated with the
Messianic secret, since He placed His Parousia at the end of the pre‐
Messianic tribulations in which He was to have His part.
The suffering, death, and resurrection of which the secret was revealed at
Caesarea Philippi are not therefore in themselves new or surprising.(297)
The novelty lies in the form in which they are conceived. The tribulation,
so far as Jesus is concerned, is now connected with an historic event: He
will go to Jerusalem, there to suffer death at the hands of the
authorities.
For the future, however, He no longer speaks of the general tribulation
which He is to bring upon the earth, nor of the sufferings which await His
followers, nor of the sufferings in which they must rally round Him. In
the predictions of the passion there is no word of that; at Jerusalem
there is no word of that. This thought disappears once for all.
In the secret of His passion which Jesus reveals to the disciples at
Caesarea Philippi the pre‐Messianic tribulation is for others set aside,
abolished, concentrated upon Himself alone, and that in the form that they
are fulfilled in His own passion and death at Jerusalem. That was the new
conviction that had dawned upon Him. He must suffer for others ... that
the Kingdom might come.
This change was due to the non‐fulfilment of the promises made in the
discourse at the sending forth of the Twelve. He had thought then to let
loose the final tribulation and so compel the coming of the Kingdom. And
the cataclysm had not occurred. He had expected it also after the return
of the disciples. In Bethsaida, in speaking to the multitude which He had
consecrated by the foretaste of the Messianic feast, as also to the
disciples at the time of their mission, He had turned their thoughts to
things to come and had adjured them to be prepared to suffer with Him, to
give up their lives, not to be ashamed of Him in His humiliation, since
otherwise the Son of Man would be ashamed of them when He came in glory
(Mark viii. 34‐ix. 1).(298)
In leaving Galilee He abandoned the hope that the final tribulation would
begin of itself. If it delays, that means that there is still something to
be done, and yet another of the violent must lay violent hands upon the
Kingdom of God. The movement of repentance had not been sufficient. When,
in accordance with His commission, by sending forth the disciples with
their message, he hurled the fire‐brand which should kindle the fiery
trials of the Last Time, the flame went out. He had not succeeded in
sending the sword on earth and stirring up the conflict. And until the
time of trial had come, the coming of the Kingdom and His own
manifestation as Son of Man were impossible.
That meant—not that the Kingdom was not near at hand—but that God had
appointed otherwise in regard to the time of trial. He had heard the
Lord’s Prayer in which Jesus and His followers prayed for the coming of
the Kingdom—and at the same time, for deliverance from the πειρασμός. The
time of trial was not come; therefore God in His mercy and omnipotence had
eliminated it from the series of eschatological events, and appointed to
Him whose commission had been to bring it about, instead to accomplish it
in His own person. As He who was to rule over the members of the Kingdom
in the future age, He was appointed to serve them in the present, to give
His life for them, the many (Mark x. 45 and xiv. 24), and to make in His
own blood the atonement which they would have had to render in the
tribulation.
The Kingdom could not come until the debt which weighed upon the world was
discharged. Until then, not only the now living believers, but the chosen
of all generations since the beginning of the world wait for their
manifestation in glory—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the countless
unknown who should come from the East and from the West to sit at tables
with them at the Messianic feast (Matt. viii. 11). The enigmatic πολλοί
for whom Jesus dies are those predestined to the Kingdom, since His death
must at last compel the Coming of the Kingdom.(299)
This thought Jesus found in the prophecies of Isaiah, which spoke of the
suffering Servant of the Lord. The mysterious description of Him who in
His humiliation was despised and misunderstood, who, nevertheless bears
the guilt of others and afterwards is made manifest in what He has done
for them, points, He feels, to Himself.
And since He found it there set down that He must suffer unrecognised, and
that those for whom He suffered should doubt Him, His suffering should,
nay must, remain a mystery. In that case those who doubted Him would not
bring condemnation upon themselves. He no longer needs to adjure them for
their own sakes to be faithful to Him and to stand by Him even amid
reproach and humiliation; He can calmly predict to His disciples that they
shall all be offended in Him and shall flee (Mark xiv. 26, 27); He can
tell Peter, who boasts that he will die with Him, that before the dawn he
shall deny Him thrice (Mark xiv. 29‐31); all that is so set down in the
Scripture. They must doubt Him. But now they shall not lose their
blessedness, for He bears all sins and transgressions. That, too, is
buried in the atonement which He offers.
Therefore, also, there is no need for them to understand His secret. He
spoke of it to them without any explanation. It is sufficient that they
should know why He goes up to Jerusalem. They, on their part, are thinking
only of the coming transformation of all things, as their conversation
shows. The prospect which He has opened up to them is clear enough; the
only thing that they do not understand is why He must first die at
Jerusalem. The first time that Peter ventured to speak to Him about it, He
had turned on him with cruel harshness, had almost cursed him (Mark viii.
32, 33); from that time forward they no longer dared to ask Him anything
about it. The new thought of His own passion has its basis therefore in
the authority with which Jesus was armed to bring about the beginning of
the final tribulation. Ethically regarded, His taking the suffering upon
Himself is an act of mercy and compassion towards those who would
otherwise have had to bear these tribulations, and perhaps would not have
stood the test. Historically regarded, the thought of His sufferings
involves the same lofty treatment both of history and eschatology as was
manifested in the identification of the Baptist with Elias. For now He
identifies His condemnation and execution, which are to take place on
natural lines, with the predicted pre‐Messianic tribulations. This
imperious forcing of eschatology into history is also its destruction; its
assertion and abandonment at the same time.
Towards Passover, therefore, Jesus sets out for Jerusalem, solely in order
to die there.(300) “It is,” says Wrede, “beyond question the opinion of
Mark that Jesus went to Jerusalem because He had decided to die; that is
obvious even from the details of the story.” It is therefore a mistake to
speak of Jesus as “teaching” in Jerusalem. He has no intention of doing
so. As a prophet He foretells in veiled parabolic form the offence which
must come (Mark xii. 1‐12), exhorts men to watch for the Parousia,
pictures the nature of the judgment which the Son of Man shall hold, and,
for the rest, thinks only how He can so provoke the Pharisees and the
rulers that they will be compelled to get rid of Him. That is why He
violently cleanses the Temple, and attacks the Pharisees, in the presence
of the people, with passionate invective.
From the revelation at Caesarea Philippi onward, all that belongs to the
history of Jesus, in the strict sense, are the events which lead up to His
death; or, to put it more accurately, the events in which He Himself is
the sole actor. The other things which happen, the questions which are
laid before Him for decision, the episodic incidents which occur in those
days, have nothing to do with the real “Life of Jesus,” since they
contribute nothing to the decisive issue, but merely form the anecdotic
fringes of the real outward and inward event, the deliberate bringing down
of death upon Himself.
It is in truth surprising that He succeeded in transforming into history
this resolve which had its roots in dogma, and really dying alone. Is it
not almost unintelligible that His disciples were not involved in His
fate? Not even the disciple who smote with the sword was arrested along
with Him (Mark xiv. 47); Peter, recognised in the courtyard of the High
Priest’s house as one who had been with Jesus the Nazarene, is allowed to
go free.
For a moment indeed, Jesus believes that the “three” are destined to share
His fate, not from any outward necessity, but because they had professed
themselves able to suffer the last extremities with Him. The sons of
Zebedee, when He asked them whether, in order to sit at His right hand and
His left, they are prepared to drink His cup and be baptized with His
baptism, had declared that they were, and thereupon He had predicted that
they should do so (Mark x. 38, 39). Peter again had that very night, in
spite of the warning of Jesus, sworn that he would go even unto death with
Him (Mark xiv. 30, 31). Hence He is conscious of a higher possibility that
these three are to go through the trial with Him. He takes them with Him
to Gethsemane and bids them remain near Him and watch with Him. And since
they do not perceive the danger of the hour, He adjures them to watch and
pray. They are to pray that they may not have to pass through the trial
(ἵνα μὴ ἔλθητε εἰς πειρασμόν) since, though the spirit is willing, the
flesh is weak. Amid His own sore distress He is anxious about them and
their capacity to share His trial as they had declared their willingness
to do.(301)
Here also it is once more made clear that for Jesus the necessity of His
death is grounded in dogma, not in external historical facts. Above the
dogmatic eschatological necessity, however, there stands the omnipotence
of God, which is bound by no limitations. As Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer
had taught His followers to pray for deliverance from the πειρασμός, and
as in His fears for the three He bids them pray for the same thing, so now
He Himself prays for deliverance, even in this last moment when He knows
that the armed band which is coming to arrest Him is already on the way.
Literal history does not exist for Him, only the will of God; and this is
exalted even above eschatological necessity.
But how did this exact agreement between the fate of Jesus and His
predictions come about? Why did the authorities strike at Him only, not at
His whole following, not even at the disciples? He was arrested and
condemned on account of His Messianic claims. But how did the High Priest
know that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah? And why does he put the
accusation as a direct question without calling witnesses in support of
it? Why was the attempt first made to bring up a saying about the Temple
which could be interpreted as blasphemy in order to condemn Him on this
ground (Mark xiv. 57‐59)? Before that again, as is evident from Mark’s
account, they had brought up a whole crowd of witnesses in the hope of
securing evidence sufficient to justify His condemnation; and the attempt
had not succeeded.
It was only after all these attempts had failed that the High Priest
brought his accusation concerning the Messianic claim, and he did so
without citing the three necessary witnesses. Why so? Because he had not
got them. The condemnation of Jesus depended on His own admission. That
was why they had endeavoured to convict Him upon other charges.(302)
This wholly unintelligible feature of the trial confirms what is evident
also from the discourses and attitude of Jesus at Jerusalem, viz. that He
had not been held by the multitude to be the Messiah, that the idea of His
making such claims had not for a moment occurred to them—lay in fact for
them quite beyond the range of possibility. Therefore He cannot have made
a Messianic entry.
According to Havet, Brandt, Wellhausen, Dalman, and Wrede the ovation at
the entry had no Messianic character whatever. It is wholly mistaken, as
Wrede quite rightly remarks, to represent matters as if the Messianic
ovation was forced upon Jesus—that He accepted it with inner repugnance
and in silent passivity. For that would involve the supposition that the
people had for a moment regarded Him as Messiah and then afterwards had
shown themselves as completely without any suspicion of His Messiahship as
though they had in the interval drunk of the waters of Lethe. The exact
opposite is true: Jesus Himself made the preparations for the Messianic
entry. Its Messianic features were due to His arrangements. He made a
point of riding upon the ass, not because He was weary, but because He
desired that the Messianic prophecy of Zech. ix. 9 should be secretly
fulfilled.
The entry is therefore a Messianic act on the part of Jesus, an action in
which His consciousness of His office breaks through, as it did at the
sending forth of the disciples, in the explanation that the Baptist was
Elias, and in the feeding of the multitude. But others can have had no
suspicion of the Messianic significance of that which was going on before
their eyes. The entry into Jerusalem was therefore Messianic for Jesus,
but not Messianic for the people.
But what was He for the people? Here Wrede’s theory that He was a teacher
again refutes itself. In the triumphal entry there is more than the
ovation offered to a teacher. The jubilations have reference to “Him who
is to come”; it is to Him that the acclamations are offered and because of
Him that the people rejoice in the nearness of the Kingdom, as in Mark,
the cries of jubilation show; for here, as Dalman rightly remarks, there
is actually no mention of the Messiah.
Jesus therefore made His entry into Jerusalem as the Prophet, as Elias.
That is confirmed by Matthew (xxi. 11), although Matthew gives a Messianic
colouring to the entry itself by bringing in the acclamation in which He
was designated the Son of David, just as, conversely, he reports the
Baptist’s question rightly, and introduces it wrongly, by making the
Baptist hear of the “works of the Christ.”
Was Mark conscious, one wonders, that it was not a Messianic entry that he
was reporting? We do not know. It is not inherently impossible that, as
Wrede asserts, “he had no real view concerning the historical life of
Jesus,” did not know whether Jesus was recognised as Messiah, and took no
interest in the question from an historical point of view. Fortunately for
us! For that is why he simply hands on tradition and does not write a Life
of Jesus.
The Marcan hypothesis went astray in conceiving this Gospel as a Life of
Jesus written with either complete or partial historical consciousness,
and interpreting it on these lines, on the sole ground that it only brings
in the name Son of Man twice prior to the incident at Caesarea Philippi.
The Life of Jesus cannot be arrived at by following the arrangement of a
single Gospel, but only on the basis of the tradition which is preserved
more or less faithfully in the earliest pair of Synoptic Gospels.
Questions of literary priority, indeed literary questions in general, have
in the last resort, as Keim remarked long ago, nothing to do with the
gaining of a clear idea of the course of events, since the Evangelists had
not themselves a clear idea of it before their minds; it can only be
arrived at hypothetically by an experimental reconstruction based on the
necessary inner connexion of the incidents.
But who could possibly have had in early times a clear conception of the
Life of Jesus? Even its most critical moments were totally unintelligible
to the disciples who had themselves shared in the experiences, and who
were the only sources for the tradition.
They were simply swept through these events by the momentum of the purpose
of Jesus. That is why the tradition is incoherent. The reality had been
incoherent too, since it was only the secret Messianic self‐consciousness
of Jesus which created alike the events and their connexion. Every Life of
Jesus remains therefore a reconstruction on the basis of a more or less
accurate insight into the nature of the dynamic self‐consciousness of
Jesus which created the history.
The people, whatever Mark may have thought, did not offer Jesus a
Messianic ovation at all; it was He who, in the conviction that they were
wholly unable to recognise it, played with His Messianic self‐
consciousness before their eyes, just as He did at the time after the
sending forth of the disciples, when, as now, He thought the end at hand.
It was in the same way, too, that He closed the invective against the
Pharisees with the words “I say unto you, ye shall see me no more until ye
shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matt.
xxiii. 39). This saying implies His Parousia.
Similarly He is playing with His secret in that crucial question regarding
the Messiahship in Mark xii. 35‐37. There is no question of dissociating
the Davidic Sonship from the Messiahship.(303) He asks only how can the
Christ in virtue of His descent from David be, as his son, inferior to
David, and yet be addressed by David in the Psalm as his Lord? The answer
is; by reason of the metamorphosis and Parousia in which natural
relationships are abolished and the scion of David’s line who is the
predestined Son of Man shall take possession of His unique glory.
Far from rejecting the Davidic Sonship in this saying, Jesus, on the
contrary, presupposes His possession of it. That raises the question
whether He did not really during His lifetime regard Himself as a
descendant of David and whether He was not regarded as such. Paul, who
otherwise shows no interest in the earthly phase of the existence of the
Lord, certainly implies His descent from David.
The blind man at Jericho, too, cries out to the Nazarene prophet as “Son
of David” (Mark x. 47). But in doing so he does not mean to address Jesus
as Messiah, for afterwards, when he is brought to Him he simply calls Him
“Rabbi” (Mark x. 51). And the people thought nothing further about what he
had said. When the expectant people bid him keep silence they do not do so
because the expression Son of David offends them, but because his clamour
annoys them. Jesus, however, was struck by this cry, stood still and
caused him, as he was standing timidly behind the eager multitude, to be
brought to Him. It is possible, of course, that this address is a mere
mistake in the tradition, the same tradition which unsuspectingly brought
in the expression Son of Man at the wrong place.
So much, however, is certain: the people were not made aware of the
Messiahship of Jesus by the cry of the blind man any more than by the
outcries of the demoniacs. The entry into Jerusalem was not a Messianic
ovation. All that history is concerned with is that this fact should be
admitted on all hands. Except Jesus and the disciples, therefore, no one
knew the secret of His Messiahship even in those days at Jerusalem. But
the High Priest suddenly showed himself in possession of it. How? Through
the betrayal of Judas.
For a hundred and fifty years the question has been historically discussed
why Judas betrayed his Master. That the main question for history was
_what he betrayed_ was suspected by few and they touched on it only in a
timid kind of way—indeed the problems of the trial of Jesus may be said to
have been non‐existent for criticism.
The traitorous act of Judas cannot have consisted in informing the
Sanhedrin where Jesus was to be found at a suitable place for an arrest.
They could have had that information more cheaply by causing Jesus to be
watched by spies. But Mark expressly says that Judas when he betrayed
Jesus did not yet know of a favourable opportunity for the arrest, but was
seeking such an opportunity. Mark xiv. 10, 11, “And Judas Iscariot, one of
the twelve, went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them. And when
they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he
sought how he might conveniently betray him.”
In the betrayal, therefore, there were two points, a more general and a
more special: the general fact by which he gave Jesus into their power,
and the undertaking to let them know of the next opportunity when they
could arrest Him quietly, without publicity. The betrayal by which he
brought his Master to death, in consequence of which the rulers decided
upon the arrest, knowing that their cause was safe in any case, was the
betrayal of the Messianic secret. Jesus died because two of His disciples
had broken His command of silence: Peter when he made known the secret of
the Messiahship to the Twelve at Caesarea Philippi; Judas Iscariot by
communicating it to the High Priest. But the difficulty was that Judas was
the sole witness. Therefore the betrayal was useless so far as the actual
trial was concerned unless Jesus admitted the charge. So they first tried
to secure His condemnation on other grounds, and only when these attempts
broke down did the High Priest put, in the form of a question, the charge
in support of which he could have brought no witnesses.
But Jesus immediately admitted it, and strengthened the admission by an
allusion to His Parousia in the near future as Son of Man.
The betrayal and the trial can only be rightly understood when it is
realised that the public knew nothing whatever of the secret of the
Messiahship.(304)
It is the same in regard to the scene in the presence of Pilate. The
people on that morning knew nothing of the trial of Jesus, but came to
Pilate with the sole object of asking the release of a prisoner, as was
the custom at the feast (Mark xv. 6‐8). The idea then occurs to Pilate,
who was just about to hand over, willingly enough, this troublesome fellow
and prophet to the priestly faction, to play off the people against the
priests and work on the multitude to petition for the release of Jesus. In
this way he would have secured himself on both sides. He would have
condemned Jesus to please the priests, and after condemning Him would have
released Him to please the people. The priests are greatly embarrassed by
the presence of the multitude. They had done everything so quickly and
quietly that they might well have hoped to get Jesus crucified before any
one knew what was happening or had had time to wonder at His non‐
appearance in the Temple.
The priests therefore go among the people and induce them not to agree to
the Procurator’s proposal. How? By telling them why He was condemned, by
revealing to them the Messianic secret. That makes Him at once from a
prophet worthy of honour into a deluded enthusiast and blasphemer. That
was the explanation of the “fickleness” of the Jerusalem mob which is
always so eloquently described, without any evidence for it except this
single inexplicable case.
At midday of the same day—it was the 14th Nisan, and in the evening the
Paschal lamb would be eaten—Jesus cried aloud and expired. He had chosen
to remain fully conscious to the last.
XX. RESULTS
Those who are fond of talking about negative theology can find their
account here. There is nothing more negative than the result of the
critical study of the Life of Jesus.
The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who
preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of
Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never
had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with
life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb.
This image has not been destroyed from without, it has fallen to pieces,
cleft and disintegrated by the concrete historical problems which came to
the surface one after another, and in spite of all the artifice, art,
artificiality, and violence which was applied to them, refused to be
planed down to fit the design on which the Jesus of the theology of the
last hundred and thirty years had been constructed, and were no sooner
covered over than they appeared again in a new form. The thoroughgoing
sceptical and the thoroughgoing eschatological school have only completed
the work of destruction by linking the problems into a system and so
making an end of the _Divide et impera_ of modern theology, which
undertook to solve each of them separately, that is, in a less difficult
form. Henceforth it is no longer permissible to take one problem out of
the series and dispose of it by itself, since the weight of the whole
hangs upon each.
Whatever the ultimate solution may be, the historical Jesus of whom the
criticism of the future, taking as its starting‐point the problems which
have been recognised and admitted, will draw the portrait, can never
render modern theology the services which it claimed from its own half‐
historical, half‐modern, Jesus. He will be a Jesus, who was Messiah, and
lived as such, either on the ground of a literary fiction of the earliest
Evangelist, or on the ground of a purely eschatological Messianic
conception.
In either case, He will not be a Jesus Christ to whom the religion of the
present can ascribe, according to its long‐cherished custom, its own
thoughts and ideas, as it did with the Jesus of its own making. Nor will
He be a figure which can be made by a popular historical treatment so
sympathetic and universally intelligible to the multitude. The historical
Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma.
The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in
quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it
could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Saviour. It loosed
the bands by which He had been riveted for centuries to the stony rocks of
ecclesiastical doctrine, and rejoiced to see life and movement coming into
the figure once more, and the historical Jesus advancing, as it seemed, to
meet it. But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His
own. What surprised and dismayed the theology of the last forty years was
that, despite all forced and arbitrary interpretations, it could not keep
Him in our time, but had to let Him go. He returned to His own time, not
owing to the application of any historical ingenuity, but by the same
inevitable necessity by which the liberated pendulum returns to its
original position.
The historical foundation of Christianity as built up by rationalistic, by
liberal, and by modern theology no longer exists; but that does not mean
that Christianity has lost its historical foundation. The work which
historical theology thought itself bound to carry out, and which fell to
pieces just as it was nearing completion, was only the brick facing of the
real immovable historical foundation which is independent of any
historical confirmation or justification.
Jesus means something to our world because a mighty spiritual force
streams forth from Him and flows through our time also. This fact can
neither be shaken nor confirmed by any historical discovery. It is the
solid foundation of Christianity.
The mistake was to suppose that Jesus could come to mean more to our time
by entering into it as a man like ourselves. That is not possible. First
because such a Jesus never existed. Secondly because, although historical
knowledge can no doubt introduce greater clearness into an existing
spiritual life, it cannot call spiritual life into existence. History can
destroy the present; it can reconcile the present with the past; can even
to a certain extent transport the present into the past; but to contribute
to the making of the present is not given unto it.
But it is impossible to over‐estimate the value of what German research
upon the Life of Jesus has accomplished. It is a uniquely great expression
of sincerity, one of the most significant events in the whole mental and
spiritual life of humanity. What has been done for the religious life of
the present and the immediate future by scholars such as P. W. Schmidt,
Bousset, Jülicher, Weinel, Wernle—and their pupil Frenssen—and the others
who have been called to the task of bringing to the knowledge of wider
circles, in a form which is popular without being superficial, the results
of religious‐historical study, only becomes evident when one examines the
literature and social culture of the Latin nations, who have been scarcely
if at all touched by the influence of these thinkers.
And yet the time of doubt was bound to come. We modern theologians are too
proud of our historical method, too proud of our historical Jesus, too
confident in our belief in the spiritual gains which our historical
theology can bring to the world. The thought that we could build up by the
increase of historical knowledge a new and vigorous Christianity and set
free new spiritual forces, rules us like a fixed idea, and prevents us
from seeing that the task which we have grappled with and in some measure
discharged is only one of the intellectual preliminaries of the great
religious task. We thought that it was for us to lead our time by a
roundabout way through the historical Jesus, as we understood Him, in
order to bring it to the Jesus who is a spiritual power in the present.
This roundabout way has now been closed by genuine history.
There was a danger of our thrusting ourselves between men and the Gospels,
and refusing to leave the individual man alone with the sayings of Jesus.
There was a danger that we should offer them a Jesus who was too small,
because we had forced Him into conformity with our human standards and
human psychology. To see that, one need only read the Lives of Jesus
written since the ’sixties, and notice what they have made of the great
imperious sayings of the Lord, how they have weakened down His imperative
world‐contemning demands upon individuals, that He might not come into
conflict with our ethical ideals, and might tune His denial of the world
to our acceptance of it. Many of the greatest sayings are found lying in a
corner like explosive shells from which the charges have been removed. No
small portion of elemental religious power needed to be drawn off from His
sayings to prevent them from conflicting with our system of religious
world‐acceptance. We have made Jesus hold another language with our time
from that which He really held.
In the process we ourselves have been enfeebled, and have robbed our own
thoughts of their vigour in order to project them back into history and
make them speak to us out of the past. It is nothing less than a
misfortune for modern theology that it mixes history with everything and
ends by being proud of the skill with which it finds its own thoughts—even
to its beggarly pseudo‐metaphysic with which it has banished genuine
speculative metaphysic from the sphere of religion—in Jesus, and
represents Him as expressing them. It had almost deserved the reproach:
“he who putteth his hand to the plough, and looketh back, is not fit for
the Kingdom of God.”
It was no small matter, therefore, that in the course of the critical
study of the Life of Jesus, after a resistance lasting for two
generations, during which first one expedient was tried and then another,
theology was forced by genuine history to begin to doubt the artificial
history with which it had thought to give new life to our Christianity,
and to yield to the facts, which, as Wrede strikingly said, are sometimes
the most radical critics of all. History will force it to find a way to
transcend history, and to fight for the lordship and rule of Jesus over
this world with weapons tempered in a different forge.
We are experiencing what Paul experienced. In the very moment when we were
coming nearer to the historical Jesus than men had ever come before, and
were already stretching out our hands to draw Him into our own time, we
have been obliged to give up the attempt and acknowledge our failure in
that paradoxical saying: “If we have known Christ after the flesh yet
henceforth know we Him no more.” And further we must be prepared to find
that the historical knowledge of the personality and life of Jesus will
not be a help, but perhaps even an offence to religion.
But the truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as
spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our time and can
help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from
Him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that
which overcomes the world.
It is not given to history to disengage that which is abiding and eternal
in the being of Jesus from the historical forms in which it worked itself
out, and to introduce it into our world as a living influence. It has
toiled in vain at this undertaking. As a water‐plant is beautiful so long
as it is growing in the water, but once torn from its roots, withers and
becomes unrecognisable, so it is with the historical Jesus when He is
wrenched loose from the soil of eschatology, and the attempt is made to
conceive Him “historically” as a Being not subject to temporal conditions.
The abiding and eternal in Jesus is absolutely independent of historical
knowledge and can only be understood by contact with His spirit which is
still at work in the world. In proportion as we have the Spirit of Jesus
we have the true knowledge of Jesus.
Jesus as a concrete historical personality remains a stranger to our time,
but His spirit, which lies hidden in His words, is known in simplicity,
and its influence is direct. Every saying contains in its own way the
whole Jesus. The very strangeness and unconditionedness in which He stands
before us makes it easier for individuals to find their own personal
standpoint in regard to Him.
Men feared that to admit the claims of eschatology would abolish the
significance of His words for our time; and hence there was a feverish
eagerness to discover in them any elements that might be considered not
eschatologically conditioned. When any sayings were found of which the
wording did not absolutely imply an eschatological connexion there was
great jubilation—these at least had been saved uninjured from the coming
_débâcle_.
But in reality that which is eternal in the words of Jesus is due to the
very fact that they are based on an eschatological world‐view, and contain
the expression of a mind for which the contemporary world with its
historical and social circumstances no longer had any existence. They are
appropriate, therefore, to any world, for in every world they raise the
man who dares to meet their challenge, and does not turn and twist them
into meaninglessness, above his world and his time, making him inwardly
free, so that he is fitted to be, in his own world and in his own time, a
simple channel of the power of Jesus.
Modern Lives of Jesus are too general in their scope. They aim at
influencing, by giving a complete impression of the life of Jesus, a whole
community. But the historical Jesus, as He is depicted in the Gospels,
influenced individuals by the individual word. They understood Him so far
as it was necessary for them to understand, without forming any conception
of His life as a whole, since this in its ultimate aims remained a mystery
even for the disciples.
Because it is thus preoccupied with the general, the universal, modern
theology is determined to find its world‐accepting ethic in the teaching
of Jesus. Therein lies its weakness. The world affirms itself
automatically; the modern spirit cannot but affirm it. But why on that
account abolish the conflict between modern life, with the world‐affirming
spirit which inspires it as a whole, and the world‐negating spirit of
Jesus? Why spare the spirit of the individual man its appointed task of
fighting its way through the world‐negation of Jesus, of contending with
Him at every step over the value of material and intellectual goods—a
conflict in which it may never rest? For the general, for the institutions
of society, the rule is: affirmation of the world, in conscious opposition
to the view of Jesus, on the ground that the world has affirmed itself!
This general affirmation of the world, however, if it is to be Christian,
must in the individual spirit be Christianised and transfigured by the
personal rejection of the world which is preached in the sayings of Jesus.
It is only by means of the tension thus set up that religious energy can
be communicated to our time. There was a danger that modern theology, for
the sake of peace, would deny the world‐negation in the sayings of Jesus,
with which Protestantism was out of sympathy, and thus unstring the bow
and make Protestantism a mere sociological instead of a religious force.
There was perhaps also a danger of inward insincerity, in the fact that it
refused to admit to itself and others that it maintained its affirmation
of the world in opposition to the sayings of Jesus, simply because it
could not do otherwise.
For that reason it is a good thing that the true historical Jesus should
overthrow the modern Jesus, should rise up against the modern spirit and
send upon earth, not peace, but a sword. He was not teacher, not a
casuist; He was an imperious ruler. It was because He was so in His inmost
being that He could think of Himself as the Son of Man. That was only the
temporally conditioned expression of the fact that He was an authoritative
ruler. The names in which men expressed their recognition of Him as such,
Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God, have become for us historical parables.
We can find no designation which expresses what He is for us.
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake‐
side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same
word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil
for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise
or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the
sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an
ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
INDEX OF AUTHORS AND WORKS
(Including Reference To English Translations)
Ammon, Christoph Friedrich von. Fortbildung des Christentums (Leipzig,
1840);
Die Geschichte des Lebens Jesu mit steter Rücksicht auf die vorhandenen
Quellen (1842‐1847), 11, 97, 104 f., 117 f.
Anonymous Works—
Das Leben Napoleons kritisch geprüft. Aus dem Englischen (see under
Whateley) nebst einigen Nutzanwendungen auf das Leben‐Jesu
von Strauss (1836), 112
Did Jesus live 100 B.C.? (London and Benares, Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1903), 327
Dr. Strauss und die Züricher Kirche (Basle, 1839), 103
Wichtige Enthüllungen über die wirkliche Todesart Jesu (5th ed.,
Leipzig, 1849);
Historische Enthüllungen über die wirklichen Ereignisse der Geburt und
Jugend Jesu (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1849), 161 f.
Zwei Gespräche über die Ansicht des Herrn Dr. Strauss von der
evangelischen Geschichte (Jena, 1839), 100
Baader, Franz. Über das Leben‐Jesu von Strauss (Munich, 1836), 100
Bahrdt, Karl Friedrich. Briefe über die Bibel im Volkston (1782);
Ausführung des Plans und Zwecks Jesu (1784‐1792);
Die sämtlichen Reden Jesu aus den Evangelien ausgezogen (1786), 4, 5,
38, 39 f., 46, 53, 59, 299, 313
Baldensperger, Wilhelm. Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der
messianischen Hoffnungen seiner Zeit (Strassburg, 1888, 2nd
ed. 1892, 3rd ed. pt. i. 1903), 12, 233‐237, 250, 266, 278 f.,
365, 366
Barth, Fritz. Die Hauptprobleme des Lebens Jesu (1st ed. 1899, 2nd ed.
1903), 301
Bauer, Bruno. Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes (Bremen,
1840);
Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (Leipzig, 1841‐1842);
Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs (Berlin,
1850‐1851);
Kritik der Apostelgeschichte (1850);
Kritik der Paulinischen Briefe (Berlin, 1850‐1852);
Philo, Strauss, Renan und das Urchristentum (Berlin, 1874);
Christus und die Cäsaren (Berlin, 1877);
Die gute Sache der Freiheit und meine eigene Angelegenheit (Zurich,
1843), 5, 9, 10, 12, 137‐160, 186 f., 221, 231, 256‐258, 305
f., 312, 315, 328, 332, 335 f., 338, 342, 346, 358, 368, 388
Baumer, Friedrich. Schwarz, Strauss, Renan (Leipzig, 1864), 191
Baur, Ferdinand Christian. Kritische Untersuchungen über die kanonischen
Evangelien (Tübingen, 1847), 25, 58, 68, 87, 89, 124, 182,
195, 201, 229
Bergh van Eysinga, Van den. Indische Einflüsse auf evangelische
Erzählungen (Göttingen, 1904), 290
Bernhard ter Haar (Utrecht). Zehn Vorlesungen über Renans “Leben‐Jesu”
(German by H. Doermer, Gotha, 1864), 191
Beyschlag, Willibald. Über das Leben‐Jesu von Renan (Berlin, 1864);
Das Leben‐Jesu (pt. i. 1885, pt. ii. 1886, 2nd ed. 1887‐1888), 6, 10,
190, 215 f., 218
Binder, 68, 69
Bleby, H. W. The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth considered as a Judicial Act
(1880), 391
Bleek, 229, 231
Böklen, E. Die Verwandtschaft der jüdisch‐christlichen und der parsischen
Eschatologie (1902), 287
Bolten, Johann Adrian. Der Bericht des Matthäus von Jesu dem Messias
(Altona, 1792), 271, 276
Bosc, Ernest. La Vie ésotérique de Jésus de Nazareth et les origines
orientales du christianisme (Paris, 1902), 294, 327
Bousset, Wilhelm. Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judentum. Ein
religionsgeschichtlicher Vergleich (Göttingen, 1892);
Die jüdische Apokalyptik in ihrer religionsgeschichtlichen Herkunft und
ihrer Bedeutung für das Neue Testament (Berlin, 1903);
Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (1902);
Was wissen wir von Jesus? Vorträge im Protestantenverein zu Bremen
(Halle, 1904);
Jesus (Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher, herausgegeben von Schiele,
Halle, 1904) (English translation, _Jesus_, by J. P.
Trevelyan, London, 1906), 241‐249, 255 f., 262, 264, 267,
280, 300, 359, 398
Brandt, Wilhelm. Die evangelische Geschichte und der Ursprung des
Christentums auf Grund einer Kritik der Berichte über das
Leiden und die Auferstehung Jesu (Leipzig, 1893), 241,
256‐261, 267, 301, 309, 312, 313, 391
Bretschneider, Karl Gottlob, 85, 118
Brunner, Sebastian. Der Atheist Renan und sein Evangelium (Regensburg,
1864), 190
Bugge, Chr. A. Die Hauptparabeln Jesu. (From the Norwegian) (Giessen,
1903), 263
Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias, Ritter von. Das Leben Jesu, vol. ix. of
Bunsen’s “Bibelwerk” (published by Holtzmann, 1865), 200
Cairns, John. Falsche Christi und der wahre Christus, oder Verteidigung
der evangelischen Geschichte gegen Strauss und Renan. Aus dem
Englischen übersetzt (Hamburg, 1864) (_False Christ and the
True_, A sermon delivered before the National Bible Society of
Scotland, Edinburgh, 1864), 191
Capitaine, W. Jesus von Nazareth (Regensburg, 1905), 294
Cassel, Paulus. Bericht über Renans Leben‐Jesu (Berlin, 1864), 191
“Casuar.” Das Leben Luthers kritisch bearbeitet. Herausgegeben von Jul.
Ferd. Wurm (“Mexiko, 2836”), 112
Chamberlain, H. S. Worte Christi (1901), 310
Charles, R. H. “The Son of Man” (Expos. Times, 1893), 267
Colani, Timothée. Examen de la vie de Jésus de M. Renan (Strassburg,
1864);
Jésus‐Christ et les croyances messianiques de son temps (Strassburg,
1864), 182, 189, 209, 221 f., 226, 229, 233, 248, 372
Cone, Orello. “Jesus’ Self‐designation in the Synoptic Gospels” (The New
World, 1893), 266
Coquerel, Athanase (jun.), 189, 209
Credner, 89
Dalman, Gustaf. Grammatik des jüdisch‐palästinensischen Aramäisch
(Leipzig, 1894);
Die Worte Jesu. Mit Berücksichtigung des nachkanonischen Schrifttums und
der aramäischen Sprache, I. (Leipzig, 1898) (authorised
English translation by D. M. Kay, _The Words of Jesus_,
Edinburgh, 1902), 269, 271, 273‐275, 278, 279‐281, 286‐289,
363, 391 f.
Darboy, Georges. Lettre pastorale de Monseigneur l’Archevêque de Paris sur
la divinité de Jésus‐Christ, et mandement pour le carême de
1864, 188
Delff, Hugo. Geschichte des Rabbi Jesus von Nazareth (Leipzig, 1889), 11,
323
Delitzsch, Franz, 273, 285
Deutlinger, Martin. Renan und das Wunder. Ein Beitrag zur christlichen
Apologetik (Munich, 1864), 190
Didon, Le Père, de l’ordre des frères prêcheurs. Jésus Christ (Paris,
1891, 2 vols., German, 1895) (English translation, _Jesus
Christ_, 2 vols., 1891), 295
Dieu, Louis de, 14
Dillmann, 223
Diodati, Dominicus, 271
Döderlein. Fragmente und Antifragmente (Nuremberg, 1778), 25
Dulk, Albert. Der Irrgang des Lebens Jesu. In geschichtlicher Auffassung
dargestellt (pt. i. 1884, pt. ii. 1885), 294, 324
Dupanloup, Félix Antoine Philibert, Évêque d’Orléans. Avertissement à la
jeunesse et aux pères de famille sur les attaques dirigées
contre la religion par quelques écrivains de nos jours (Paris,
1864), 188
Ebrard, August. Wissenschaftliche Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte
(Frankfort, 1842), 97, 116 f.
Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (London, 1st
ed. 1883, 3rd ed. 1886, 2 vols.), 233
Eerdmanns, B. E. “De Oorsprong van de uitdrukking ’Zoon des Menschen’ als
evangelische Messiastitel” (Theol. Tijdschr., 1894), 276
Ehrhardt. Der Grundcharakter der Ethik Jesu in Verhältnis zu den
messianischen Hoffnungen seines Volkes und zu seinem eigenen
Messiasbewusstsein (Freiburg, 1895);
Le Principe de la morale de Jésus (Paris, 1896), 249
Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried, 78, 89
Emmerich, Anna Katharina. Das bittere Leiden unseres Herrn Jesu Christi.
Herausgegeben von Brentano (1858‐1860, new ed. 1895) (English
translation, _The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ_,
London, 1862);
Das Leben Jesu, 3 vols. (1858‐1860), 109 f., 295
Ewald, Georg Heinrich August. “Geschichte Christus’ und seiner Zeit,” vol.
v. of the “Geschichte des Volkes Israel” (Göttingen, 1855, 2nd
ed. 1857), English translation of the _Life of Jesus Christ_,
by Octavius Glover (London, 1865);
Die drei ersten Evangelien (1850), 97, 117, 124, 135
Fiebig, Paul. Der Menschensohn (Tübingen, 1901);
Altjüdische Gleichnisse und die Gleichnisse Jesu (Tübingen, 1904), 278,
286
Frantzen, Wilhelm. Die “Leben‐Jesu‐” Bewegung seit Strauss (Dorpat, 1898),
12
Frenssen, Gustav. Hilligenlei (Berlin, 1905), pp. 462‐593: “Die
Handschrift” (English translation, _Holy Land_, by M. A.
Hamilton, London, 1906), 293, 307‐309, 398
Freppel, Charles Emile. Examen critique de la vie de Jesus de M. Renan
(Paris, 1864) (German by Kollmus, Vienna, 1864), 188, 190
Frick, Otto. Mythus und Evangelium (Heilbronn, 1879), 112
Furrer, Konrad. Vorträge über das Leben Jesu Christi (1902), 301
Gabler, 78
Gardner, P. Exploratio Evangelica. A Brief Examination of the Basis and
Origin of Christian Belief (1899, 2nd ed. 1907), 217
Gerlach, Hermann. Gegen Renans Leben‐Jesu 1864 (Berlin), 191
Gfrörer, August Friedrich. Kritische Geschichte des Urchristentums (vol.
i. 1st ed. 1831, 2nd ed. 1835, vol. ii. 1838), 161, 163‐166,
195
Ghillany, Friedrich Wilhelm (“Richard von der Alm”). Theologische Briefe
an die Gebildeten der deutschen Nation (3 vols. 1863);
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Das Leben Jesu. Reden gehalten im prot. Reformverein zu Berlin (1880);
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FOOTNOTES
1 _Quoted by Dr. Inge in the Hibbert Journal for Jan. 1910, p. 438
(from __“__Jesus or Christ,__”__ p. 32)._
2 _“__Quest,__”__ p. 4._
3 An order founded in 1776 by Professor Adam Weishaupt of Ingolstadt
in Bavaria. Its aim was the furtherance of rational religion as
opposed to orthodox dogma; its organisation was largely modelled on
that of the Jesuits. At its most flourishing period it numbered over
2000 members, including the rulers of several German
States.—TRANSLATOR.
4 D. Fr. Strauss, _Gespräche von Ulrich von Hutten_. Leipzig, 1860.
5 W. Wrede, _Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien_. (The Messianic
Secret in the Gospels.) Göttingen, 1901, pp. 280‐282.
6 In the author’s usage “the Marcan hypothesis” means the theory that
the Gospel of Mark is not only the earliest and most valuable source
for the facts, but differs from the other Gospels in embodying a
more or less clear and historically intelligible view of the
connexion of events. See Chaps. X. and XIV. below.—TRANSLATOR.
7 Dr. Christoph Friedrich von Ammon, _Fortbildung des Christentums_,
Leipzig, 1840, vol. iv. p. 156 ff.
8 Hase, _Geschichte Jesu_, Leipzig, 1876, pp. 110‐162. The second
edition, published in 1891, carries the survey no further than the
first.
9 _Das Leben Jesu in seinen neueren Darstellungen_, 1892, five
lectures.
10 W. Frantzen, _Die __“__Leben‐Jesu__”__ Bewegung seit Strauss_,
Dorpat, 1898.
11 _Theol. Rundschau_, ii. 59‐67 (1899); iii. 9‐19 (1900).
12 Von Soden’s study, _Die wichtigsten Fragen im Leben Jesu_, 1904,
belongs here only in a very limited sense, since it does not seek to
show how the problems have gradually emerged in the various Lives of
Jesus.
13 Hase, _Geschichte Jesu_, 1876, pp. 112, 113.
14 _Historia Christi persice conscripta simulque multis modis
contaminata a Hieronymo Xavier, lat. reddita et animadd, notata a
Ludovico de Dieu._ Lugd. 1639.
15 Johann Jakob Hess, _Geschichte der drei letzten Lebensjahre Jesu_.
(History of the Last Three Years of the Life of Jesus.) 3 vols. 1768
ff.
16 D. F. Strauss, _Hermann Samuel Reimarus und seine Schutzschrift für
die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes_. (Reimarus and his Apology for the
Rational Worshippers of God.) 1862.
17 The quotations inserted without special introduction are, of course,
from Reimarus. It is Dr. Schweitzer’s method to lead up by a
paragraph of exposition to one of these characteristic
phrases.—TRANSLATOR.
18 Otto Schmiedel, _Die Hauptprobleme der Leben‐Jesu‐Forschung_.
Tübingen, 1902.
19 Döderlein also wrote a defence of Jesus against the Fragmentist:
_Fragmente und Antifragmente_. Nuremberg, 1778.
20 This is perhaps the place to mention the account of the life of
Jesus which is given in the first part of Plank’s _Geschichte des
Christentums_. Göttingen, 1818.
21 _Briefe das Studium der Theologie betreffend_, 1st ed., 1780‐1781;
2nd ed., 1785‐1786; _Werke_, ed. Suphan, vol. x.
22 A Life of Jesus which is completely dependent on the Commentaries of
Paulus is that of Greiling, superintendent at Aschersleben, _Das
Leben Jesu von Nazareth Ein religiöses Handbuch für Geist und Herz
der Freunde Jesu unter den Gebildeten._ (The Life of Jesus of
Nazareth, a religious Handbook for the Minds and Hearts of the
Friends of Jesus among the Cultured.) Halle, 1813.
23 Paulus prided himself on a very exact acquaintance with the physical
and geographical conditions of Palestine. He had a wide knowledge of
the literature of Eastern travel.—TRANSLATOR.
24 This interpretation, it ought to be remarked, seems to be implied by
the ancient reading. “Few things are needful, or one,” given in the
margin of the Revised Version.—TRANSLATOR.
25 Associations of students, at that time of a political
character.—TRANSLATOR.
26 The ground of the inference is that, according to this theory, they
did not attach much importance to the keeping of the Feasts at
Jerusalem. Dr. Schweitzer reminds us in a footnote that a certain
want of clearness is due to the fact of this work having been
compiled from lecture‐notes.
27 See Theobald Ziegler, “Zur Biographie von David Friedrich Strauss”
(Materials for the Biography of D. F. S.), in the _Deutsche Revue_,
May, June, July 1905. The hitherto unpublished letters to Binder
throw some light on the development of Strauss during the formative
years before the publication of the Life of Jesus.
Binder, later Director of the Board of Studies at Stuttgart, was the
friend who delivered the funeral allocution at the grave of Strauss.
This last act of friendship exposed him to enmity and calumny of all
kinds. For the text of his short address, see the _Deutsche Revue_,
1905, p. 107.
28 _Deutsche Revue_, May 1905, p. 199.
29 _Ibid._ p. 201.
30 _Deutsche Revue_, p. 203.
31 Assistant lecturer.
32 _Ibid._, June 1905, p. 343 ff.
33 See Hase, _Leben Jesu_, 1876, p. 124. The “text‐book” referred to is
Hase’s first Life of Jesus.
34 He to whom my plaint is
Knows I shed no tear;
She to whom I say this
Feels I have no fear.
Time has come for fading,
Like a glimmering ray,
Or a sense‐evading
Strain that floats away.
May, though fainter, dimmer,
Only, clear and pure,
To the last the glimmer
And the strain endure.
The persons alluded to in the first verse are his son, who, as a
physician, attended him in his illness, and to whom he was deeply
attached, and a very old friend to whom the verses were
addressed.—TRANSLATOR.
35 2 Kings iv. 42‐44.
36 _Probabilia de evangelii et epistolarum Ioannis Apostoli indole et
origine eruditorum iudiciis modeste subjecit C. Th. Bretschneider._
Leipzig, 1820.
37 Dr. Fr. Schleiermacher, _Über die Schriften des Lukas. Ein
kritischer Versuch._ (The Writings of Luke. A critical essay.) C.
Reimer, Berlin, 1817.
38 Koppe, _Marcus non epitomator Matthäi_, 1782.
39 Storr, _De Fontibus Evangeliorum Mt. et Lc._, 1794.
40 Gratz, _Neuer Versuch, die Entstehung der drei ersten Evangelien zu
erklären_, 1812.
41 _V. sup._ p. 35 f. For the earlier history of the question see F. C.
Baur, _Krit. Untersuch. über die kanonischen Evangelien_, Tübingen,
1847, pp. 1‐76.
42 So called because largely based on the reference in Luke i. 1, to
the “many” who had “taken in hand to draw up a narrative
(δεήγησις).”—TRANSLATOR.
43 We take the translation of this striking image from Sanday’s “Survey
of the Synoptic Question,” _The Expositor_, 4th ser. vol. 3, p. 307.
44 For general title see above. First part: “Herr Dr. Steudel, or the
Self‐deception of the Intellectual Supernaturalism of our Time.” 182
pp. Second part: “Die Herren Eschenmayer und Menzel.” 247 pp. Third
part: “_Die evangelische Kirchenzeitung_, _die Jahrbücher für
wissenschaftliche Kritik_ und _Die theologischen Studien und
Kritiken_ in ihrer Stellung zu meiner Kritik des Lebens Jesu.” (The
attitude taken up by ... in regard to my critical Life of Jesus.)
179 pp. In the _Studien und Kritiken_ two reviews had appeared: a
critical review by Dr. Ullmann (vol. for 1836, pp. 770‐816) and that
of Müller, written from the standpoint of the “common faith” (vol.
for 1836, pp. 816‐890). In the _Evangelische Kirchenzeitung_ the
articles referred to are the following: _Vorwort_ (Editorial
Survey), 1836, pp. 1‐6, 9‐14, 17‐23, 25‐31, 33‐38, 41‐45; “The
Future of our Theology” (1836, pp. 281 ff.); “Thoughts suggested by
Dr. Strauss’s essay on ‘The Relation of Theological Criticism and
Speculation to the Church’ ” (1836, pp. 382 ff.); Strauss’s essay
had appeared in the _Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung_ for 1836, No. 39.
“_Die kritische Bearbeitung des Lebens Jesu von D. F. Strauss nach
ihrem wissenschaftlichen Werte beleuchtet_” (An Inquiry into the
Scientific Value of D. F. Strauss’s Critical Study of the Life of
Jesus.) By Prof. Dr. Harless. Erlangen, 1836.
45 “Everything turns to the advantage of the elect, even to the
obscurities of scripture, for they treat them with reverence because
of its perspicuities; everything turns to the disadvantage of the
reprobate, even to the perspicuities of scripture, for they
blaspheme them because they cannot understand its obscurities.” For
the title of Harless’s essay, see end of previous note.
46 _Das Leben‐Jesu kritisch bearbeitet von Dr. D. F. Strauss. Geprüft
für Theologen und Nicht‐Theologen_, von Wilhelm Hoffmann. 1836.
(Strauss’s Critical Study of the Life of Jesus examined for the
Benefit of Theologians and non‐Theologians.)
47 _Apologie des Lebens Jesu gegenüber dem neuesten Versuch, es in
Mythen aufzulösen._ (Defence of the Life of Jesus against the latest
attempt to resolve it into myth.) By Joh. Ernst Osiander, Professor
at the Evangelical Seminary at Maulbronn.
48 _Über das Leben‐Jesu von Strauss_, von Franz Baader, 1836. Here may
be mentioned also the lectures which Krabbe (subsequently Professor
at Rostock) delivered against Strauss: _Vorlesungen über das Leben‐
Jesu für Theologen und Nicht‐Theologen_ (Lectures on the Life of
Jesus for Theologians and non‐Theologians), Hamburg, 1839. They are
more tolerable to non‐theologians than to theologians. The author at
a later period distinguished himself by the fanatical zeal with
which he urged on the deposition of his colleague, Michael
Baumgarten, whose _Geschichte Jesu_, published in 1859, though fully
accepting the miracles, was weighed in the balance by Krabbe and
found light‐weight by the Rostock standard.
49 For the title, see head of chapter. Tholuck was born in 1799 at
Breslau, and became in 1826 Professor at Halle, where he worked
until his death in 1877. With the possible exception of Neander, he
was the most distinguished representative of the mediating theology.
His piety was deep and his learning was wide, but his judgment went
astray in the effort to steer his freight of pietism safely between
the rocks of rationalism and the shoals of orthodoxy.
50 _Stud. u. Krit._, 1836, p. 777. In his “Open letter to Dr. Ullmann,”
Strauss examines this suggestion in a serious and dignified fashion,
and shows that nothing would be gained by such
expedients.—_Streitschriften_, 3rd pt., p. 129 ff.
51 _Das Leben Jesu‐Christi._ Hamburg, 1837. Aug. Wilhelm Neander was
born in 1789 at Göttingen, of Jewish parents, his real name being
David Mendel. He was baptized in 1806, studied theology, and in 1813
was appointed to a professorship in Berlin, where he displayed a
many‐sided activity and exercised a beneficent influence. He died in
1850. The best‐known of his writings is the _Geschichte der
Pflanzung und Leitung der christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel_
(History of the Propagation and Administration of the Christian
Church by the Apostles), Hamburg, 1832‐1833, of which a reprint
appeared as late as 1890. Neander was a man not only of deep piety,
but also of great solidity of character.
Strauss, in his Life of Jesus of 1864, passes the following judgment
upon Neander’s work: “A book such as in these circumstances
Neander’s Life of Jesus was bound to be calls forth our sympathy;
the author himself acknowledges in his preface that it bears upon it
only too clearly the marks of the time of crisis, division, pain,
and distress in which it was produced.”
Of the innumerable “positive” Lives of Jesus which appeared about
the end of the ’thirties we may mention that of Julius Hartmann (2
vols., 1837‐1839). Among the later Lives of Jesus of the mediating
theology may be mentioned that of Theodore Pressel of Tübingen,
which was much read at the time of its appearance (1857, 592 pp.).
It aims primarily at edification. We may also mention the _Leben des
Herrn Jesu Christi_ by Wil. Jak. Lichtenstein (Erlangen, 1856),
which reflects the ideas of von Hofmann.
52 For title see head of chapter.
53 _Aphorismen zur Apologie des Dr. Strauss und seines Werkes._ Grimma,
1838.
54 From the _Xame Xenien_, p. 259 of Goethe’s Works, ed. Hempel.
55 _Die Wissenschaft und die Kirche. Zur Verständigung über die
Straussische Angelegenheit._ (A contribution to the adjustment of
opinion regarding the Strauss affair.) By Daniel Schenkel,
Licentiate in Theology and Privat‐Docent of the University of Basle,
with a dedicatory letter to Herr Dr. Lücke, Konsistorialrat. Basle,
1839.
56 _Dr. Strauss und die Züricher Kirche. Eine Stimme aus
Norddeutschland. Mit einer Vorrede von Dr. W. M. L. de Wette._ (A
voice from North Germany. With an introduction by Dr. W. M. L. de
Wette.) Basle, 1839.
57 _Über theologische Lehrfreiheit und Lehrerwahl für Hochschulen._
Zurich, 1839.
58 For full title see head of chapter. Reference may also be made to
the same author’s _Fortbildung des Christentums zur Weltreligion_.
(Development of Christianity into a World‐religion.) Leipzig,
1833‐1835. 4 vols. Ammon was born in 1766 at Bayreuth; became
Professor of theology at Erlangen in 1790; was Professor in
Göttingen from 1794 to 1804, and, after being back in Erlangen in
the meantime, became in 1813 Senior Court Chaplain and
“Oberkonsistorialrat” at Dresden, where he died in 1850. He was the
most distinguished representative of historico‐critical rationalism.
59 He is at one with Strauss in rejecting the explanation of this
miracle on the analogy of an expedited natural process, to which
Hase had pointed, and which was first suggested by Augustine in
_Tract viii. in Ioann._: “That Christ changed water into wine is
nothing wonderful to those who consider the works of God. What was
there done in the water‐pots, God does yearly in the vine.”
[Augustine’s words are: Miraculum quidem Domini nostri Jesu Christi,
quo de aqua vinum fecit, non est mirum eis qui noverunt quia Deus
fecit (_i.e._ that He who did it was God). Ipse enim fecit vinum
illo die ... in sex hydriis, qui omni anno facit hoc in vitibus.]
Nevertheless the poorest naturalistic explanation is at least better
than the resignation of Lücke, who is content to wait “until it
please God through the further progress of Christian thought and
life to bring about the solution of this riddle in its natural and
historical aspects.” Lücke, _Johannes‐Kommentar_, p. 474 ff.
60 Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg was born in 1802 at Fröndenberg in the
“county” (_Grafschaft_) of Mark, became Professor of Theology in
Berlin in 1826, and died there in 1869. He founded the _Evangelische
Kirchenzeitung_ in 1827.
61 _Bericht über des Herrn Dr. Strauss’ historische Bearbeitung des
Lebens Jesu._
62 _Dr. Strauss’ Leben‐Jesu aus dem Standpunkt des Catholicismus
betrachtet._
63 Johann Leonhard Hug was born in 1765 at Constance, and had been
since 1791 Professor of New Testament Theology at Freiburg, where he
died in 1846. He had a wide knowledge of his own department of
theology, and his Introduction to the New Testament Writings won him
some reputation among Protestant theologians also.
64 Among the Catholic “Leben‐Jesu,” of which the authors found their
incentive in the desire to oppose Strauss, the first place belongs
to that of Kuhn of Tübingen. Unfortunately only the first volume
appeared (1838, 488 pp.). Here there is a serious and scholarly
attempt to grapple with the problems raised by Strauss. Of less
importance is the work of the same title in seven volumes, by the
Munich Priest and Professor of History, Nepomuk Sepp (1843‐1846; 2nd
ed. 1853‐1862).
65 _Über das Leben‐Jesu von Doctor Strauss._ By Edgar Quinet.
Translated from the French by Georg Kleine. Published by J. Erdmann
and C. C. Müller, 1839. In 1840 Strauss’s book was translated into
French by M. Littré. It failed, however, to exercise any influence
upon French theology or literature. Strauss is one of those German
thinkers who always remain foreign and unintelligible to the French
mind. Could Renan have written his Life of Jesus as he did if he had
had even a partial understanding of Strauss?
66 Anna Katharina Emmerich was born in 1774 at Flamske near Coesfeld.
Her parents were peasants. In 1803 she took up her abode with the
Augustinian nuns of the convent of Agnetenberg at Dülmen. After the
dissolution of the convent, she lived in a single room in Dülmen
itself. The “stigmata” showed themselves first in 1812. She died on
the 9th of February 1824. Brentano had been in her neighbourhood
since 1819. _Das bittere Leiden unseres Herrn Jesu Christi_ (The
Bitter Sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ) was issued by Brentano
himself in 1834. The _Life of Jesus_ was published on the basis of
notes left by him—he died in 1842—in three volumes, 1858‐1860, at
Regensburg, under the sanction of the Bishop of Limberg.
First volume.—From the death of St. Joseph to the end of the first
year after the Baptism of Jesus in Jordan. Communicated between May
1, 1821, and October 1, 1822.
Second volume.—From the beginning of the second year after the
Baptism in Jordan to the close of the second Passover in Jerusalem.
Communicated between October 1, 1822, and April 30, 1823.
Third volume.—From the close of the second Passover in Jerusalem to
the Mission of the Holy Spirit. Communicated between October 21,
1823, and January 8, 1824, and from July 29, 1820, to May 1821.
Both works have been frequently reissued, the “Bitter Sufferings” as
late as 1894.
67 _Auszüge aus der Schrift __“__Das Leben Luthers kritisch
bearbeitet.__”_ (Extracts from a work entitled “A Critical Study of
the Life of Luther.”) By Dr. Casuar (“Cassowary”; Strauss =
Ostrich). Mexico, 1836. Edited by Julius Ferdinand Wurm.
68 _Das Leben Napoleons kritisch geprüft._ (A Critical Examination of
the Life of Napoleon.) From the English, with some pertinent
applications to Strauss’s Life of Jesus, 1836. [The English original
referred to seems to have been Whateley’s _Historic Doubts relative
to Napoleon Bonaparte_, published in 1819, and primarily directed
against Hume’s _Essay on Miracles_.—TRANSLATOR.]
69 _La Vie de Strauss. Écrite en l’an 1839._ Paris, 1839.
70 Ch. G. Wilke, _Tradition und Mythe_. A contribution to the
historical criticism of the Gospels in general, and in particular to
the appreciation of the treatment of myth and idealism in Strauss’s
“Life of Jesus.” Leipzig, 1837.
Christian Gottlob Wilke was born in 1786 at Werm, near Zeitz,
studied theology and became pastor of Hermannsdorf in the
Erzgebirge. He resigned this office in 1837 in order to devote
himself to his studies, perhaps also because he had become conscious
of an inner unrest. In 1845 he prepared the way for his conversion
to Catholicism by publishing a work entitled “Can a Protestant go
over to the Roman Church with a good conscience?” He took the
decisive step in August 1846. Later he removed to Würzburg.
Subsequently he recast his famous _Clavis Novi Testamenti
Philologica_—which had appeared in 1840‐1841—in the form of a
lexicon for Catholic students of theology. His _Hermeneutik des
Neuen Testaments_, published in 1843‐1844, appeared in 1853 as
_Biblische Hermeneutik nach katholischen Grundsätzen_ (The Science
of Biblical Interpretation according to Catholic principles). He was
engaged in recasting his Clavis when he died in 1854.
Of later works dealing with the question of myth, we may refer to
Emanuel Marius, _Die Persönlichkeit Jesu mit besonderer Rücksicht
auf die Mythologien und Mysterien der alten Völker_ (The Personality
of Jesus, with special reference to the Mythologies and Mysteries of
Ancient Nations), Leipzig, 1879, 395 pp.; and Otto Frick, _Mythus
und Evangelium_ (Myth and Gospel), Heilbronn, 1879, 44 pp.
71 See p. 89 above.
72 _Streitschriften._ Drittes Heft, pp. 55‐126: _Die Jahrbücher für
wissenschaftliche Kritik_: i. _Allgemeines Verhältnis der
Hegel’schen Philosophie zur theologischen Kritik_: ii. _Hegels
Ansicht über den historischen Wert der evangelischen Geschichte_
(Hegel’s View of the Historical Value of the Gospel History); iii.
_Verschiedene Richtungen innerhalb der Hegel’schen Schule in Betreff
der Christologie_ (Various Tendencies within the Hegelian School in
regard to Christology). 1837.
73 _Wissenschaftliche Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte._ (Scientific
Criticism of the Gospel History.) August Ebrard. Frankfort, 1842;
3rd ed., 1868.
Johannes Heinrich Aug. Ebrard was born in 1818 at Erlangen, was,
first, Professor of Reformed Theology at Zurich and Erlangen,
afterwards (1853) went to Speyer as “Konsistorialrat,” but was
unable to cope with the Liberal opposition there, and returned in
1861 to Erlangen, where he died in 1888.
A characteristic example of Ebrard’s way of treating the subject is
his method of meeting the objection that a fish with a piece of
money in its jaws could not have taken the hook. “The fish might
very well,” he explains, “have thrown up the piece of money from its
belly into the opening of the jaws in the moment in which Peter
opened its mouth.” Upon this Strauss remarks: “The inventor of this
argument tosses it down before us as who should say, ‘I know very
well it is bad, but it is good enough for you, at any rate so long
as the Church has livings to distribute and we Konsistorialrats have
to examine the theological candidates.’ ” Strauss, therefore,
characterises Ebrard’s Life of Jesus as “Orthodoxy restored on a
basis of impudence.” The pettifogging character of this work made a
bad impression even in Conservative quarters.
74 _Chronologische Synopse der vier Evangelien._ (Chronological
Synopsis of the four Gospels.) By Karl Georg Wieseler. Hamburg,
1843. Wieseler was born in 1813 at Altencelle (Hanover), and was
Professor successively at Göttingen, Kiel, and Greifswald. He died
in 1883.
75 Johann Peter Lange, Pastor in Duisburg, afterwards Professor at
Zurich in place of Strauss. _Das Leben Jesu._ 5 vols., 1844‐1847.
76 Georg Heinrich August Ewald, _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_.
(History of the People of Israel.) 7 vols. Göttingen, 1843‐1859; 3rd
ed., 1864‐1870. Fifth vol., _Geschichte Christus’ und seiner Zeit_.
(History of Christ and His Times.) 1855; 2nd ed., 1857.
Ewald was born in 1803 at Göttingen, where in 1827 he was appointed
Professor of Oriental Languages. Having made a protest against the
repeal of the fundamental law of the Hanoverian Constitution he was
removed from his office and went to Tübingen, first as Professor of
philology; in 1841 he was transferred to the theological faculty. In
1848 he returned to Göttingen. When, in 1866, he refused to take the
oath of allegiance to the King of Prussia, he was compulsorily
retired, and, in consequence of imprudent expressions of opinion,
was also deprived of the right to lecture. The town of Hanover chose
him as its representative in the North German and in the German
Reichstag, where he sat among the Guelph opposition, in the middle
of the centre party. He died in 1875 at Göttingen. His contributions
to New Testament studies were much inferior to his Oriental and Old
Testament researches. His Life of Jesus, in particular, is
worthless, in spite of the Old Testament and Oriental learning with
which it was furnished forth. He lays great stress upon making the
genitive of “Christus” not “Christi,” but, according to German
inflection, “Christus’.”
77 Ammon, _Johannem evangelii auctorem ab editore huius libri fuisse
diversum_, Erlangen, 1811.
78 No value whatever can be ascribed to the Life of Jesus by Werner
Hahn, Berlin, 1844, 196 pp. The “didactic presentation of the
history” which the author offers is not designed to meet the demands
of historical criticism. He finds in the Gospels no bare history,
but, above all, the inculcation of the principle of love. He casts
to the winds all attempt to draw the portrait of Jesus as a true
historian, being only concerned with its inner truth and “idealises
artistically and scientifically” the actual course of the outward
life of Jesus. “It is never the business of a history,” he explains,
“to relate only the bare truth. It belongs to a mere planless and
aimless chronicle to relate everything that happened in such a way
that its words are a mere slavish reflection of the outward course
of events.”
79 Hase, _Geschichte Jesu_, 1876, p. 128.
80 _Philosophische Dogmatik oder Philosophie des Christentums._
Leipzig, 1855‐1862.
81 At the end of his preface he makes the striking remark: “I confess I
cannot conceive of any possible way by which Christianity can take
on a form which will make it once more the truth for our time,
without having recourse to the aid of philosophy; and I rejoice to
believe that this opinion is shared by many of the ablest and most
respected of present‐day theologians.”
82 Vol. ii. pp. 438‐543. _Philosophische Schlussbetrachtung über die
religiöse Bedeutung der Persönlichkeit Christi und der evangelischen
Überlieferung._ (Concluding Philosophical Estimate of the
Significance of the Person of Christ and of the Gospel Tradition.)
83 Christian Gottlob Wilke, formerly pastor of Hermannsdorf in the
Erzgebirge. _Der Urevangelist, oder eine exegetisch‐kritische
Untersuchung des Verwandschaftsverhältnisses der drei ersten
Evangelien._ (The Earliest Evangelist, a Critical and Exegetical
Inquiry into the Relationship of the First Three Gospels.) The
subsequent course of the discussion of the Marcan hypothesis was as
follows:—
In answer to Wilke there appeared a work signed Philosophotos
Aletheias, _Die Evangelien, ihr Geist, ihre Verfasser, und ihr
Verhältnis zu einander_. (The Gospels, their Spirit, their Authors,
and their relation to one another.) Leipzig, 1845, 440 pp. The
author sees in Paul the evil genius of early Christianity, and
thinks that the work of scientific criticism must be directed to
detecting and weeding out the Pauline elements in the Gospels. Luke
is in his opinion a party‐writing, biased by Paulinism; in fact Paul
had a share in its preparation, and this is what Paul alludes to
when he speaks in Romans ii. 16, xi. 28, and xvi. 25 of “his”
Gospel. His hand is especially recognisable in chapters i.‐iii.,
vii., ix., xi., xviii., xx., xxi., and xxiv. Mark consists of
extracts from Matthew and Luke; John presupposes the other three.
The Tübingen standpoint was set forth by Baur in his work,
_Kritische Untersuchungen über die kanonischen Evangelien_. (A
Critical Examination of the Canonical Gospels.) Tübingen, 1847, 622
pp. According to him Mark is based on Matthew and Luke. At the same
time, however, the irreconcilability of the Fourth Gospel with the
Synoptists is for the first time fully worked out, and the
refutation of its historical character is carried into detail.
The order Matthew, Mark, Luke is defended by Adolf Hilgenfeld in his
work _Die Evangelien_. Leipzig, 1854, 355 pp.
Karl Reinhold Köstlin’s work, _Der Ursprung und die Komposition der
synoptischen Evangelien_ (Origin and Composition of the Synoptic
Gospels), is rendered nugatory by obscurities and compromises.
Stuttgart, 1853, 400 pp. The priority of Mark is defended by Edward
Reuss, _Die Geschichte der heiligen Schriften des Neuen Testaments_
(History of the Sacred Writings of the New Testament), 1842; H.
Ewald, _Die drei ersten Evangelien_, 1850; A. Ritschl, _Die
Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche_ (Origin of the ancient
Catholic Church), 1850; A. Réville, _Études critiques sur l’Évangile
selon St. Matthieu_, 1862. In 1863 the foundations of the Marcan
hypothesis were relaid, more firmly than before, by Holtzmann’s
work, _Die synoptischen Evangelien_. Leipzig, 1863, 514 pp.
84 Alexander Schweizer, _Das Evangelium Johannis nach seinem inneren
Werte and seiner Bedeutung für das Leben Jesu kritisch untersucht_.
1841. (A Critical Examination of the Intrinsic Value of the Gospel
of John and of its Importance as a Source for the Life of Jesus.)
Alexander Schweizer was born in 1808 at Murten, was appointed
Professor of Pastoral Theology at Zurich in 1835, and continued to
lecture there until his death in 1888, remaining loyal to the ideas
of his teacher Schleiermacher, though handling them with a certain
freedom. His best‐known work is his _Glaubenslehre_ (System of
Doctrine), 2 vols., 1863‐1872; 2nd ed., 1877.
85 The German is _Mirakeln_, the usual word being _Wunder_, which,
though constantly used in the sense of actual “miracles,” has, from
its obvious derivation, a certain ambiguity.
86 “And the glory of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud
covered it six days.”
87 We subjoin the titles of the divisions of this work, which are of
some interest:
Vol. i. Book i. The Sources of the Gospel History.
Vol. i. Book ii. The Legends of the Childhood.
Vol. i. Book iii. General Sketch of the Gospel History.
Vol. i. Book iv. The Incidents and Discourses according to Mark.
Vol. ii. Book v. The Incidents and Discourses according to Matthew
and Luke.
Vol. ii. Book vi. The Incidents and Discourses according to John.
Vol. ii. Book vii. The Resurrection and the Ascension.
Vol. ii. Book viii. Concluding Philosophical Exposition of the
Significance of the Person of Christ and of the Gospel Tradition.
88 _Geschichte Christus’ und seiner Zeit._ (History of Christ and His
Times.) By Heinrich Ewald, Göttingen, 1855, 450 pp.
89 _Kritik der Geschichte der Offenbarung._
90 _Das entdeckte Christentum._ See also _Die gute Sache der Freiheit
und meine eigene Angelegenheit_. (The Good Cause of Freedom, in
Connexion with my own Case.) Zurich, 1843.
91 _Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes._
92 Here and elsewhere Bauer seems to use “Christologie” in the sense of
Messianic doctrine, rather than in the more general sense which is
usual in theology.—TRANSLATOR.
93 We retain the German phrase, which has naturalised itself in
Synoptic criticism as the designation of an assumed primary gospel
lying behind the canonical Mark.
94 _Kritik der Paulinischen Briefe._ (Criticism of the Pauline
Epistles.) Berlin, 1850‐1852.
95 _Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs._ (Criticism
of the Gospels and History of their Origin.) 2 vols., Berlin,
1850‐1851.
96 _Christus und die Cäsaren. Der Ursprung des Christentums aus dem
römischen Griechentum._ Berlin, 1877.
97 Hennell, a London merchant, withdrew himself from his business
pursuits for two years in order to make the preparatory studies for
this Life of Jesus. [He is best known as a friend of George Eliot,
who was greatly interested and influenced by the
“Inquiry.”—TRANSLATOR.] To the same category as Hennell’s work
belongs the _Wohlgeprüfte Darstellung des Lebens Jesu_ (An Account
of the Life of Jesus based on the closest Examination) of the
Heidelberg mathematician, Karl von Langsdorf, Mannheim, 1831.
Supplement, with preface to a future second edition, 1833.
98 Hase seems not to have recognised that the “Disclosures” were merely
a plagiarism from Venturini. He mentions them in connexion with
Bruno Bauer and appears to make him responsible for inspiring them;
at least that is suggested by his formula of transition when he
says: “It was primarily to him that the frivolous apocryphal
hypotheses attached themselves.” This is quite inaccurate. The
anonymous epitomist of Venturini had nothing to do with Bauer, and
had probably not read a line of his work. Venturini, whom he had
read, he does not name.
99 One of the most ingenious of the followers of Venturini was the
French Jew Salvator. In his _Jésus‐Christ et sa doctrine_ (Paris, 2
vols., 1838), he seeks to prove that Jesus was the last
representative of a mysticism which, drawing its nutriment from the
other Oriental religions, was to be traced among the Jews from the
time of Solomon onwards. In Jesus this mysticism allied itself with
Messianic enthusiasm. After He had lost consciousness upon the cross
He was succoured by Joseph of Arimathea and Pilate’s wife, contrary
to His own expectation and purpose. He ended His days among the
Essenes.
Salvator looks to a spiritualised mystical Mosaism as destined to be
the successful rival of Christianity.
100 The reference should be Micah iv. 8.—F. C. B.
101 “Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint.”—Mephistopheles in _Faust_.
102 _Aus der Jordanwiege nach Golgatha; vier Bücher über das Evangelium
und die Evangelien._
103 _Die Geschichte Jesu auf Grund freier geschichtlicher Untersuchungen
über das Evangelium and die Evangelien._
104 For Noack’s reconstruction of it see Book iii. pp. 196‐225.
105 For the reconstruction see Book iii. pp. 326‐386.
106 _Tharraqah und Sunamith._ The Song of Solomon in its historical and
topographical setting. 1869.
107 _La Vie de Jésus de D. Fr. Strauss._ Traduite par M. Littré, 1840.
108 Bruno Bauer in _Philo, Strauss, und Renan_.
109 Renan does not hesitate to apply this tasteless parallel.
110 Charles Émile Freppel (Abbé), Professeur d’éloquence sacrée à la
Sorbonne. _Examen critique de la vie de Jésus de M. Renan._ Paris,
1864. 148 pp.
Henri Lasserre’s pamphlet, _L’Évangile selon Renan_ (The Gospel
according to Renan), reached its four‐and‐twentieth edition in the
course of the same year.
111 _Lettre pastorale de Monseigneur l’Archevêque de Paris (Georges
Darboy) sur la divinité de Jésus‐Christ, et mandement pour le carême
de 1864._
112 See, for example, Félix Antoine Philibert Dupanloup, Bishop of
Orléans, _Avertissement à la jeunesse et aux pères de famille sur
les attaques dirigées contre la religion par quelques écrivains de
nos jours._ (Warning to the Young, and to Fathers of Families,
concerning some Attacks directed against Religion by some Writers of
our Time.) Paris, 1864. 141 pp.
113 Amadée Nicolas, _Renan et sa vie de Jésus sous les rapports moral,
légal, et littéraire. Appel à la raison et la conscience du monde
civilisé._ Paris‐Marseille, 1864.
114 Ernest Havet, Professeur au Collège de France, _Jésus dans
l’histoire_. _Examen de la vie de Jésus par M. Renan._ Extrait de la
_Revue des deux mondes_. Paris, 1863. 71 pp.
115 _Zwei französische Stimmen über Renans Leben‐Jesu, von Edmond
Scherer und Athanase Coquerel, d.J. Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis des
französischen Protestantismus._ Regensburg, 1864. (Two French
utterances in regard to Renan’s Life of Jesus, by Edmond Scherer and
Athanase Coquerel the younger. A contribution to the understanding
of French Protestantism.)
116 E. de Pressensé, _L’École critique et Jésus‐Christ, à propos de la
vie de Jésus de M. Renan_.
117 E. de Pressensé, _Jésus‐Christ, son temps, sa vie, son œuvre_.
Paris, 1865. 684 pp. In general the plan of this work follows
Renan’s. He divides the Life of Jesus into three periods: i. The
Time of Public Favour; ii. The Period of Conflict; iii. The Great
Week. Death and Victory. By way of introduction there is a long
essay on the supernatural which sets forth the supernaturalistic
views of the author.
118 _La Vie de Jésus de Renan devant les orthodoxes et devant la
critique._ 1864.
119 T. Colani, Pasteur, “Examen de la vie de Jésus de M. Renan,” _Revue
de théologie_. Issued separately, Strasbourg‐Paris, 1864. 74 pp.
120 Lasserre, _Das Evangelium nach Renan_. Munich, 1864.
Freppel, _Kritische Beleuchtung der E. Renan’schen Schrift_.
Translated by Kallmus. Vienna, 1864.
See also Lamy, Professor of the Theological Faculty of the Catholic
University of Louvain, _Renans Leben‐Jesu vor dem Richterstuhle der
Kritik_. (Renan’s Life of Jesus before the Judgment Seat of
Criticism.) Translated by August Rohling, Priest. Münster, 1864.
121 Dr. Michelis, _Renans Roman vom Leben Jesu_. _Eine deutsche Antwort
auf eine französische Blasphemie._ (Renan’s Romance on the Life of
Jesus. A German answer to a French blasphemy.) Münster, 1864.
Dr. Sebastian Brunner, _Der Atheist Renan und sein Evangelium_. (The
Atheist Renan and his Gospel.) Regensburg, 1864.
Albert Wiesinger, _Aphorismen gegen Renans Leben‐Jesu_. Vienna,
1864.
Dr. Martin Deutlinger, _Renan und das Wunder_. (Renan and Miracle. A
contribution to Christian Apologetic.) Munich, 1864. 159 pp.
Dr. Daniel Bonifacius Haneberg, _Ernest Renans Leben‐Jesu_.
Regensburg, 1864.
122 Willibald Beyschlag, Doctor and Professor of Theology, _Über das
Leben‐Jesu von Renan_. A Lecture delivered at Halle, January 13,
1864. Berlin.
123 Chr. Ernst Luthardt, Doctor and Professor of Theology, _Die modernen
Darstellungen des Lebens Jesu_. (Modern Presentations of the Life of
Jesus.) A discussion of the writings of Strauss, Renan, and
Schenkel, and of the essays of Coquerel the younger, Scherer,
Colani, and Keim. A Lecture. Leipzig, 1864.
Of the remaining Protestant polemics we may name:—
Dr. Hermann Gerlach, _Gegen Renans Leben‐Jesu 1864_. Berlin.
Br. Lehmann, _Renan wider Renan_. (Renan _versus_ Renan.) A Lecture
addressed to cultured Germans. Zwickau, 1864.
Friedrich Baumer, _Schwarz, Strauss, Renan_. A Lecture. Leipzig,
1864.
John Cairns, D. D. (of Berwick). _Falsche Christi und der wahre
Christus, oder Verteidigung der evangelischen Geschichte gegen
Strauss und Renan._ (False Christs and the True, a Defence of the
Gospel History against Strauss and Renan.) A Lecture delivered
before the Bible Society. Translated from the English. Hamburg,
1864.
Bernhard ter Haar, Doctor of Theology and Professor at Utrecht,
_Zehn Vorlesungen über Renans Leben‐Jesu_. (Ten Lectures on Renan’s
Life of Jesus.) Translated by H. Doermer. Gotha, 1864.
Paulus Cassel, Professor and Licentiate in Theology, _Bericht über
Renans Leben‐Jesu_. (A Report upon Renan’s Life of Jesus.)
J. J. van Oosterzee, Doctor and Professor of Theology at Utrecht,
_Geschichte oder Roman? Das Leben‐Jesu von Renan vorläufig
beleuchtet._ (History or Fiction? A Preliminary Examination of
Renan’s Life of Jesus.) Hamburg, 1864.
124 Strauss’s second Life of Jesus appeared in French in 1864.
125 “I can now say without incurring the reproach of self‐glorification,
and almost without needing to fear contradiction, that if my Life of
Jesus had not appeared in the year after Schleiermacher’s death, his
would not have been withheld for so long. Up to that time it would
have been hailed by the theological world as a deliverer; but for
the wounds which my work inflicted on the theology of the day, it
had neither anodyne nor dressing; nay, it displayed the author as in
a measure responsible for the disaster, for the waters which he had
admitted drop by drop were now, in defiance of his prudent
reservations, pouring in like a flood.”—From the Introduction to
_The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History_, 1865.
126 “Now that Schleiermacher’s Life of Jesus at last lies before us in
print, all parties can gather about it in heartfelt rejoicing. The
appearance of a work by Schleiermacher is always an enrichment to
literature. Any product of a mind like his cannot fail to shed light
and life on the minds of others. And of works of this kind our
theological literature has certainly in these days no superfluity.
Where the living are for the most part as it were dead, it is meet
that the dead should arise and bear witness. These lectures of
Schleiermacher’s, when compared with the work of his pupils, show
clearly that the great theologian has let fall upon them only his
mantle and not his spirit.”—_Ibid._
127 The lines of Schleiermacher’s work were followed by Bunsen. His Life
of Jesus forms vol. ix. of his _Bibelwerk_. (Edited by Holtzmann,
1865.) He accepts the Fourth Gospel as an historical source and
treats the question of miracle as not yet settled. Christian Karl
Josias von Bunsen, born in 1791 at Korbach in Waldeck, was Prussian
ambassador at Rome, Berne, and London, and settled later in
Heidelberg. He was well read in theology and philology, and
gradually came, in spite of his friendly relations with Friedrich
Wilhelm IV., to entertain more liberal views on religion. The issue
of his _Bibelwerk für die Gemeinde_ was begun in 1858. He died in
1860. (Best known in England as the Chevalier Bunsen.)
128 Ch. H. Weisse, _Die evangelische Geschichte_, Leipzig, 1838. _Die
Evangelienfrage in ihrem gegenwärtigen Stadium._ (The Present
Position of the Problem of the Gospels.) Leipzig, 1856. He regarded
the discourses as historical, the narrative portions as of secondary
origin. Alexander Schweizer, again, wished to distinguish a
Jerusalem source and a Galilaean source, the latter being
unreliable. _Das Evangelium Johannis nach seinem inneren Werte und
seiner Bedeutung für das Leben Jesu_, 1841. (The Gospel of John
considered in Relation to its Intrinsic Value and its Importance as
a Source for the Life of Jesus.) See p. 127 f. Renan takes the
narrative portions as authentic and the discourses as secondary.
129 Karl Heinrich Weizsäcker was born in 1822 at Öhringen in Würtemberg.
He qualified as Privat‐Docent in 1847 and, after acting in the
meantime as Court‐Chaplain and Oberkonsistorialrat at Stuttgart,
became in 1861 the successor of Baur at Tübingen. He died in 1899.
130 The works of a Dutch writer named Stricker, _Jesus von Nazareth_
(1868), and of the Englishman Sir Richard Hanson, _The Jesus of
History_ (1869), were based on Mark without any reference to John.
131 1, Mark i.; 2, Mark ii. 1‐iii. 6; 3, Mark iii. 7‐19; 4, Mark iii.
19‐iv. 34; 5, Mark iv. 35‐vi. 6; 6, Mark vi. 7‐vii. 37; 7, Mark
viii. 1‐ix. 50.
132 Holtzmann, _Kommentar zu den Synoptikern_, 1889, p. 184. The form of
the expression (_Fluchtwege und Reisen_) is derived from Keim.
133 “Thus the course of Jesus’ life hastened forward to its tragic
close, a close which was foreseen and predicted by Jesus Himself
with ever‐growing clearness as the sole possible close, but also
that which alone was worthy of Himself, and which was necessary as
being foreseen and predetermined in the counsel of God. The hatred
of the Pharisees and the indifference of the people left from the
first no other prospect open. That hatred could not but be called
forth in the fullest measure by the ruthless severity with which
Jesus exposed all that it was and implied—a heart in which there was
no room for love, a morality inwardly riddled with decay, an outward
show of virtue, a hypocritical arrogance. Between two such
unyielding opponents—a man who, to all appearance, aimed at using
the Messianic expectations of the people for his own ends, and a
hierarchy as tenacious of its claims and as sensitive to their
infringement as any that has ever existed—it was certain that the
breach must soon become irreparable. It was easy to foresee, too,
that even in Galilee only a minority of the people would dare to
face with Him the danger of such a breach. There was only one thing
that could have averted the death sentence which had been early
determined upon—a series of vigorous, unambiguous demonstrations on
the part of the people. In order to provoke such demonstrations
Jesus would have needed, if only for the moment, to take into His
service the popular, powerful, inflammatory Messianic ideas, or
rather, would have needed to place Himself at their service. His
refusal to enter, by so much as a single step, upon this course,
which from any ordinary point of view of human policy would have
been legitimate, because the only practicable one, was the sole
sufficient and all‐explaining cause of His destruction.”—Holtzmann,
_Die synoptischen Evangelien_, 1863, pp. 485, 486.
134 “Ein innerliches Reich der Sinnesänderung.” “Sinnesänderung”
corresponds more exactly than “repentance” to the Greek μετάνοια
(change of mind, change of attitude), but the _phrase_ is no less
elliptical in German than in English. The meaning is doubtless
“kingdom based upon repentance, consisting of those who have
fulfilled this condition.”
135 Omitted in some of the best texts.—F. C. B.
136 Oskar Holtzmann, _Das Leben Jesu_, 1901.
137 _Die modernen Darstellungen des Lebens Jesu._ (Modern Presentments
of the Life of Jesus.) A discussion of the works of Strauss, Renan,
and Schenkel, and of the Essays of Coquerel the younger, Scherer,
Colani, and Keim. A lecture by Chr. Ernest Luthardt, Leipzig. 1st
and 2nd editions, 1864. Luthardt was born in 1823 at Maroldsweisach
in Lower Franconia, became Docent at Erlangen in 1851, was called to
Marburg as Professor Extraordinary in 1854, and to Leipzig as
Ordinary Professor in 1856. He died in 1902.
138 _Zur Orientierung über meine Schrift __“__Das Charakterbild
Jesu.__”_ (Explanations intended to place my work “A Picture of the
Character of Jesus” in the proper light.) 1864. _Die protestantische
Freiheit in ihrem gegenwärtigen Kampfe mit der kirchlichen
Reaktion._ (Protestant Freedom in its present Struggle with
Ecclesiastical Reaction.) 1865.
139 _Der Schenkel’sche Handel in Baden._ (The Schenkel Controversy in
Baden.) (A corrected reprint from number 441 of the _National‐
Zeitung_ of September 21, 1864.) An appendix to _Der Christus des
Glaubens und der Jesus der Geschichte_. 1865.
140 Theodor Keim, _Die Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, in ihrer Verhaltung
mit dem Gesamtleben seines Volkes frei untersucht und ausführlich
erzählt_. (The History of Jesus of Nazara in Relation to the General
Life of His People, freely examined and fully narrated.) 3 vols.
Zurich, 1867‐1872. Vol. i. The Day of Preparation; vol. ii. The Year
of Teaching in Galilee; vol. iii. The Death‐Passover (_Todesostern_)
in Jerusalem. A short account in a more popular form appeared in
1872, _Geschichte Jesu nach den Ergebnissen heutiger Wissenschaft
für weitere Kreise übersichtlich erzählt_. (The History of Jesus
according to the Results of Present‐day Criticism, briefly narrated
for the General Reader.) 2nd ed., 1875.
Karl Theodor Keim was born in 1825 at Stuttgart, was Repetent at
Tübingen from 1851 to 1855, and after he had been five years in the
ministry, became Professor at Zurich in 1860. In 1873 he accepted a
call to Giessen, where he died in 1878.
141 _Die menschliche Entwicklung Jesu Christi._ See Holtzmann, _Die
synoptischen Evangelien_, 1863, pp. 7‐9. This dissertation was
followed by _Der geschichtliche Christus_. 3rd ed., 1866.
142 _Geschichte Jesu._ 2nd ed., 1875, pp. 228 and 229.
143 The ultimate reason why Keim deliberately gives such prominence to
the eschatology is that he holds to Matthew, and is therefore more
under the direct impression of the masses of discourse in this
Gospel, charged, as they are, with eschatological ideas, than those
writers who find their primary authority in Mark, where these
discourses are lacking.
144 _Geschichte Jesu. Nach akademischen Vorlesungen von Dr. Karl Hase._
1876. Special mention ought also to be made of the fine sketch of
the Life of Jesus in A. Hausrath’s _Neutestamentliche
Zeitgeschichte_ (History of New Testament Times), 1st ed., Munich,
1868 ff.; 3rd ed., 1 vol., 1879, pp. 325‐515; _Die
zeitgeschichtlichen Beziehungen des Lebens Jesu_ (The Relations of
the Life of Jesus to the History of His time).
Adolf Hausrath was born at Karlsruhe. He was appointed Professor of
Theology at Heidelberg in 1867, and died in 1909.
145 _Das Leben Jesu_, von Willibald Beyschlag: Pt. i. Preliminary
Investigations, 1885, 450 pp.; pt. ii. Narrative, 1886, 495 pp. Joh.
Heinr. Christoph Willibald Beyschlag was born in 1823 at Frankfort‐
on‐Main, and went to Halle as Professor in 1860. His splendid
eloquence made him one of the chief spokesmen of German
Protestantism. As a teacher he exercised a remarkable and salutary
influence, although his scientific works are too much under the
dominance of an apologetic of the heart. He died in 1900.
146 Bernhard Weiss, _Das Leben Jesu_. 2 vols. Berlin, 1882. See also
_Das Markusevangelium_, 1872; _Das Matthäusevangelium_, 1876; and
the _Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie_, 5th ed., 1888.
Bernhard Weiss was born in 1827 at Königsberg, where he qualified as
Privat‐Docent in 1852. In 1863 he went as Ordinary Professor to
Kiel, and was called to Berlin in the same capacity in 1877.
Among the distinctly liberal Lives of Jesus of an earlier date, that
of W. Krüger‐Velthusen (Elberfeld, 1872, 271 pp.) might be mentioned
if it were not so entirely uncritical. Although the author does not
hold the Fourth Gospel to be apostolic he has no hesitation in
making use of it as an historical source.
There is more sentiment than science, too, in the work of M. G.
Weitbrecht, _Das Leben Jesu nach den vier Evangelien_, 1881.
A weakness in the treatment of the Johannine question and a want of
clearness on some other points disfigures the three‐volume Life of
Jesus of the Paris professor, E. Stapfer, which is otherwise marked
by much acumen and real depth of feeling. Vol. i. _Jésus‐Christ
avant son ministère_ (Fischbacher, Paris, 1896); vol. ii. _Jésus‐
Christ pendant son ministère_ (1897); vol. iii. _La Mort et la
résurrection de Jésus‐Christ_ (1898).
F. Godet writes of “The Life of Jesus before His Public Appearance”
(German translation by M. Reineck, _Leben Jesu vor seinem
öffentlichen Auftreten_. Hanover, 1897).
G. Längin founds his _Der Christus der Geschichte und sein
Christentum_ (The Christ of History and His Christianity) on a
purely Synoptic basis. 2 vols., 1897‐1898.
The English _Life of Jesus Christ_, by James Stalker, D. D. (now
Professor of Church History in the United Free Church College,
Aberdeen), passed through numberless editions (German, 1898;
Tübingen, 4th ed., 1901).
Very pithy and interesting is Dr. Percy Gardner’s _Exploratio
Evangelica_. _A Brief Examination of the Basis and Origin of
Christian Belief._ 1899; 2nd ed., 1907.
A work which is free from all compromise is H. Ziegler’s _Der
geschichtliche Christus_ (The Historical Christ). 1891. For this
reason the five lectures, delivered in Liegnitz, out of which it is
composed, attracted such unfavourable attention that the
Ecclesiastical Council took proceedings against the author. (See the
_Christliche Welt_, 1891, pp. 563‐568, 874‐877.)
147 Holtzmann, _Neutestamentliche Einleitung_, 2nd ed., 1886. Weizsäcker
declares himself in the _Theologische Literaturzeitung_ for 1882,
No. 23, and _Das apostolische Zeitalter_, 2nd ed., 1890.
Hase and Schenkel accepted this position in principle, but were
careful to keep open a line of retreat.
Towards the end of the ’seventies the rejection of the Fourth Gospel
as an historical source was almost universally recognised in the
critical camp. It is taken for granted in the Life of Jesus by Karl
Wittichen (Jena, 1876, 397 pp.), which might be reckoned one of the
most clearly conceived works of this kind based on the Marcan
hypothesis if its arrangement were not so bad. It is partly in the
form of a commentary, inasmuch as the presentment of the life takes
the form of a discussion of sixty‐seven sections. The detail is very
interesting. It makes an impression of _naïveté_ when we find a
series of sections grouped under the title, “The establishment of
_Christianity_ in Galilee.” No stress is laid on the significance of
Jesus’ journey to the north. Wittichen, also, misled by Luke,
asserts, just as Weisse had done, that Jesus had worked in Judaea
for some time prior to the triumphal entry.
148 H. H. Wendt, _Die Lehre Jesu_, vol. i. _Die evangelischen
Quellenberichte über die Lehre Jesu._ (The Record of the Teaching of
Jesus in the Gospel Sources.) 354 pp. Göttingen, 1886; vol. ii.,
1890; Eng. trans., 1892. Second German edition in one vol., 626 pp.,
1901. See also the same writer’s _Das Johannesevangelium_.
_Untersuchung seiner Entstehung und seines geschichtlichen Wertes_,
1900. (The Gospel of John: an Investigation of its Origin and
Historical Value.) Hans Heinrich Wendt was born in 1853 at Hamburg,
qualified as Privat‐Docent in 1877 at Göttingen, was subsequently
Extraordinary Professor at Kiel and Heidelberg, and now works at
Jena.
149 _Johannis Lightfooti, Doctoris Angli et Collegii S. Catharinae in
Cantabrigiensi Academia Praefecti, Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae in
Quatuor Evangelistas ... nunc secundum in Germania junctim cum
Indicibus locorum Scripturae rerumque ac verborum necessariis editae
e Museo Io. Benedicti Carpzovii. Lipsiae. Anno MDCLXXXIV._
150 The pioneer works in the study of apocalyptic were Dillmann’s
_Henoch_, 1851; and Hilgenfeld’s _Jüdische Apokalyptik_, 1857.
151 _Jesus Nazarenus und die erste christliche Zeit, mit den beiden
ersten Erzählern_, von Gustav Volkmar, Zurich, 1882. To which must
be added: _Markus und die Synopse der Evangelien, nach dem
urkundlichen Text; und das Geschichtliche vom Leben Jesu_. (Mark and
Synoptic Material in the Gospels, according to the original text;
and the historical elements in the Life of Jesus.) Zurich, 1869; 2nd
edition, 1876, 738 pp. Volkmar was born in 1809, and was living at
Fulda as a Gymnasium (High School) teacher, when in 1852 he was
arrested by the Hessian Government on account of his political
views, and subsequently deprived of his post. In 1853 he went to
Zurich, where a new prospect opened to him as a Docent in theology.
He died in 1893.
152 Kienlen, “Die eschatologische Rede Jesu Matt. xxiv. cum Parall.”
(The Eschatological Discourse of Jesus in Matt. xxiv. with the
parallel passages), _Jahrbuch für die Theologie_, 1869, pp. 706‐709.
Analysis of other attempts directed to the same end in Weiffenbach,
_Der Wiederkunftsgedanke_, p. 31 ff.
153 Wilhelm Weiffenbach, Director of the Seminary for Theological
Students at Friedberg, was born in 1842 at Bornheim in Rhenish
Hesse.
154 The English reader will find a constructive analysis of what is
known as the “Little Apocalypse” in _Encyclopaedia Biblica_, art.
“Gospels,” col. 1857. It consists of the verses Matt. xxiv. 6‐8,
15‐22, 29‐31, 34, corresponding to Mark xiii. 7‐9_a_, 14‐20, 24‐27,
30. According to the theory first sketched by Colani these verses
formed an independent Apocalypse which was embedded in the Gospel by
the Evangelist.—F. C. B.
155 _Untersuchungen über die evangelische Geschichte_, 1864, pp.
121‐126.
156 “Über die Komposition der eschatologischen Rede Matt. xxiv. 4 ff.”
(The Composition of the Eschatological Discourse in Matt. xxiv. 4
ff.), _Jahrbuch f. d. Theol._ vol. xiii., 1868, pp. 134‐149.
157 By “Capernaitic” Weiffenbach apparently means literalistic; cf. John
vi. 52 f.
158 Wilhelm Baldensperger, at present Professor at Giessen, was born in
1856 at Mülhausen in Alsace.
159 A new edition appeared in 1891. There is no fundamental alteration,
but in consequence of the polemic against opponents who had arisen
in the meantime it is fuller. The first part of a third edition
appeared in 1903 under the title _Die messianisch‐apokalyptischen
Hoffnungen des Judentums_.
See also the interesting use made of Late‐Jewish and Rabbinic ideas
in Alfred Edersheim’s _The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah_, 2nd
ed., London, 1884, 2 vols.
160 Emil Schürer, _Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu
Christi_. (History of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ.) 2nd
ed., part second, 1886, pp. 417 ff. Here is to be found also a
bibliography of the older literature of the subject. 3rd ed., 1889,
vol. ii. pp. 498 ff.
Emil Schürer was born at Augsburg in 1844, and from 1873 onwards was
successively Professor at Leipzig, Giessen, and Kiel, and is now
(1909) at Göttingen.
The latest presentment of Jewish apocalyptic is _Die jüdische
Eschatologie von Daniel bis Akiba_, by Paul Volz, Pastor in
Leonberg. Tübingen, 1903. 412 pp. The material is very completely
given. Unfortunately the author has chosen the systematic method of
treating his subject, instead of tracing the history of its
development, the only right way. As a consequence Jesus and Paul
occupy far too little space in this survey of Jewish apocalyptic.
For a treatment of the origin of Jewish eschatology from the point
of view of the history of religion see Hugo Gressmann, now Professor
at Berlin, _Der Ursprung der israelitisch‐jüdischen Eschatologie_
(The Origin of the Israelitish and Jewish Eschatology), Göttingen,
1905. 377 pp.
161 Johannes Weiss, now Professor at Marburg, was born at Kiel in 1863.
162 It may be mentioned that this work had been preceded (in 1891) by
two Leiden prize dissertations, _Über die Lehre vom Reich Gottes im
Neuen Testament_ (Concerning the Kingdom of God in the New
Testament), one of them by Issel, the other, which lays especially
strong emphasis upon the eschatology, by Schmoller.
163 Wilhelm Bousset, now Professor in Göttingen, born 1865 at Lübeck
164 _Theol. Rundschau_ (1901), 4, pp. 89‐103.
165 W. Bousset, _Die jüdische Apokalyptik in ihrer
religionsgeschichtlichen Herkunft und ihrer Bedeutung für das Neue
Testament_. (The Origin of Apocalyptic as indicated by Comparative
Religion, and its significance for the understanding of the New
Testament.) Berlin, 1903. 67 pp. See also W. Bousset, _Die Religion
des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter_, 512 pp., 1902. For
the assertion of Parsic influences see also Stave, _Der Einfluss des
Parsismus auf das Judentum_. Haarlem, 1898.
166 _Der Grundcharakter der Ethik Jesu im Verhältnis zu den
messianischen Hoffnungen seines Volkes und zu seinem eigenen
Messiasbewusstsein._ Freiburg, 1895, 119 pp. See also his inaugural
dissertation of 1896, _Le Principe de la morale de Jésus_. Paris,
1896.
A. K. Rogers, _The Life and Teachings of Jesus; a Critical Analysis,
etc._ (London and New York, 1894), regards Jesus’ teaching as purely
ethical, refusing to admit any eschatology at all.
167 Paris, 2 vols., 500 and 512 pp.
168 W. Weiffenbach, _Die Frage der Wiederkunst Jesu_. (The Question
concerning the Second Coming of Jesus.) Friedberg, 1901.
169 A. Titius, _Die neutestamentliche Lehre von der Seligkeit und ihre
Bedeutung für die Gegenwart_. I. Teil: _Jesu Lehre vom Reich
Gottes_. (The New Testament Doctrine of Blessedness and its
Significance for the Present. Pt. I., Jesus’ Doctrine of the Kingdom
of God.) Arthur Titius, now Professor at Kiel, was born in 1864 at
Sensburg.
170 _Die eschatologischen Aussagen Jesu in den synoptischen Evangelien_,
167 pp. Erich Haupt, now Professor in Halle, was born in 1841 at
Stralsund.
171 Cf. the preface to the 2nd ed. of Joh. Weiss’s _Die Predigt Jesu vom
Reiche Gottes_. Göttingen, 1900.
172 Tübingen‐Leipzig, 1901, 410 pp.; 2nd ed., 1904. Paul Wernle, now
Professor of Church History at Basle, was born in Zurich, 1872.
173 _Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte_, 1st ed., 1894, pp. 163‐168;
2nd ed., 1895, pp. 198‐204; 3rd ed., 1897; 4th ed., 1901, pp.
380‐394. See also his _Skizzen_ (Sketches), pp. 6, 187 ff.
See also J. Wellhausen, _Das Evangelium Marci_, 1903, 2nd ed., 1909;
_Das Evangelium Matthäi_, 1904; _Das Evangelium Lucae_, 1904.
Julius Wellhausen, now Professor at Göttingen, was born in 1844 at
Hameln.
174 Emil Schürer, _Das messianische Selbstbewusstsein Jesu Christi_.
(The Messianic Self‐consciousness of Jesus Christ.) 1903, 24 pp.
According to J. Meinhold, too, in _Jesus und das alte Testament_
(Jesus and the Old Testament), 1896, Jesus did not purpose to be the
Messiah of Israel.
175 _Die evangelische Geschichte und der Ursprung des Christentums auf
Grund einer Kritik der Berichte über das Leiden und die Auferstehung
Jesu._ (The Gospel History and the Origin of Christianity considered
in the light of a critical investigation of the Reports of the
Suffering and Resurrection of Jesus.) By Dr. W. Brandt, Leipzig,
1893, 588 pp.
Wilhelm Brandt was born in 1855 of German parents in Amsterdam and
became a pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1891 he resigned
this office and studied in Strassburg and Berlin. In 1893 he was
appointed to lecture in General History of Religion as a member of
the theological faculty of Amsterdam.
176 Ad. Jülicher, _Die Gleichnisreden Jesu_. Vol. i., 1888. The
substance of it had already been published in a different form.
Freiburg, 1886.
Adolf Jülicher, at present Professor in Marburg, was born in 1857 at
Falkenberg.
177 W. Bousset, _Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judentum_.
Göttingen, 1892.
178 Ad. Jülicher, _Die Gleichnisreden Jesu_, 2nd pt. (Exposition of the
Parables in the first three Gospels.) Freiburg, 1899, 641 pp.
Chr. A. Bugge, _Die Hauptparabeln Jesu_ (The most important Parables
of Jesus), German, from the Norwegian, Giessen, 1903, rightly
remarks on the obscure and inexplicable character of some of the
parables, but makes no attempt to deal with it from the historical
point of view.
179 Arnold Meyer, _Jesu Muttersprache_, 1896. P. W. Schmidt, too, in his
_Geschichte Jesu_ (Freiburg, 1899), defends the same interpretation,
and seeks to explain this obscure saying by the other about the
“strait gate.”
180 _Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes_, 2nd ed., 1900, p. 192 ff.
181 _Stud. Krit._, 1836, pp. 90‐122.
182 See also _Die Vorstellungen vom Messias und vom Gottesreich bei den
Synoptikern_. (The Conceptions of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God
in the Synoptic Gospels.) By Ludwig Paul. Bonn, 1895. 130 pp. This
comprehensive study discusses all the problems which are referred to
below. Matt. xi. 12‐14 is discussed under the heading “The Hinderers
of the Kingdom of God.”
183 A. Hilgenfeld, _Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol._, 1888, pp. 488‐498; 1892,
pp. 445‐464.
184 Orello Cone, “Jesus’ Self‐designation in the Synoptic Gospels,” _The
New World_, 1893, pp. 492‐518.
185 H. L. Oort, _Die uitdrukking ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου in het Nieuwe
Testament_. (The Expression Son of Man in the New Testament.)
Leyden, 1893.
186 R. H. Charles, “The Son of Man,” _Expos. Times_, 1893.
187 _Die jüdische Apokalyptik in ihrer religionsgeschichtlichen Herkunft
und ihrer Bedeutung für das Neue Testament._ (Jewish Apocalyptic in
its religious‐historical origin and in its significance for the New
Testament.) 1903.
On the eschatology of Jesus see also Schwartzkoppf, _Die
Weissagungen Jesu Christi von seinen Tode, seiner Auferstehung und
Wiederkunft und ihre Erfüllung_. (The Predictions of Jesus Christ
concerning His Death, His Resurrection, and Second Coming, and their
Fulfilment.) 1895.
P. Wernle, _Die Reichgotteshofnung in den ältesten christlichen
Dokumenten und bei Jesus_. (The Hope of the Kingdom of God in the
most ancient Christian Documents and as held by Jesus.)
188 Arnold Meyer, now Professor of New Testament Theology and Pastoral
Theology at Zurich, and formerly at Bonn, was born at Wesel in 1861.
189 Giambern. de Rossi, _Dissertazione della lingua propria di Christo e
degli Ebrei nazionali della Palestina da’ Tempi de’ Maccabei in
disamina del sentimento di un recente scrittore Italiano_. Parma,
1772.
190 _Der Bericht des Matthäus von Jesu dem Messias._ (Matthew’s account
of Jesus the Messiah.) Altona, 1792. According to Meyer, p. 105 ff.,
this was a very striking performance.
191 The name Chaldee was due to the mistaken belief that the language in
which parts of Daniel and Ezra were written was really the
vernacular of Babylonia. That vernacular, now known to us from
cuneiform tablets and inscriptions, is a Semitic language, but quite
different from Aramaic.—F. C. B.
192 Emil Friedrich Kautzsch was born in 1841 at Plauen in Saxony, and
studied in Leipzig, where he became Privat‐Docent in 1869. In 1872
he was called as Professor to Basle, in 1880 to Tübingen, in 1888 to
Halle.
193 Gustaf Dalman, Professor at Leipzig, was born in 1865 at Niesky. In
addition to the works of his named above, see also _Der leidende und
der sterbende Messias_ (The Suffering and Dying Messiah), 1888; and
_Was sagt der Talmud über Jesum?_ (What does the Talmud say about
Jesus?), 1891.
194 2 Kings xviii. 26 ff.
195 _Studia Biblica_ I. _Essays in Biblical Archæology and Criticism and
Kindred Subjects by Members of the University of Oxford_. Clarendon
Press, 1885, pp. 39‐74. See Meyer, p. 29 ff.
196 Franz Delitzsch, _Die Bücher des Neuen Testaments aus dem
Griechischen ins Hebräische übersetzt_. 1877. (The Books of the N.T.
translated from Greek into Hebrew.) This work has been circulated by
thousands among Jews throughout the whole world.
Delitzsch was born in 1813 at Leipzig and became Privat‐Docent there
in 1842, went to Rostock as Professor in 1846, to Erlangen in 1850,
and returned in 1867 to Leipzig. By conviction he was a strict
Lutheran in theology. He was one of the leading experts in Late‐
Jewish and Talmudic literature. He died in 1890.
197 See Meyer, p. 47 ff.
198 See Meyer, p. 61 ff.
199 Hans Lietzmann, now Professor in Jena, was born in 1875 at
Düsseldorf. Until his call to Jena he worked as a Privat‐Docent at
Bonn. He has done some very meritorious work in the publication of
Early Christian writings.
200 See Meyer, p. 141 ff.
201 “De Oorsprong van de uitdrukking ’Zoon des Menschen’ als
evangelische Messiastitel,” _Theol. Tijdschr._, 1894. (The Origin of
the Expression “Son of Man” as a Title of the Messiah in the
Gospels.)
202 H. Lietzmann, “Zur Menschensohnfrage” (The Son‐of‐Man Problem),
_Theol. Arb. des Rhein. wissenschaftl. Predigervereins_, 1898.
203 N. Schmidt, “Was בן נשא a Messianic title?” _Journal of the Society
for Biblical Literature_, xv., 1896.
204 P. Schmiedel, “Der Name Menschensohn und das Messiasbewusstsein
Jesu” (The Designation Son of Man and the Messianic Consciousness of
Jesus), 1898, _Prot. Monatsh._ 2, pp. 252‐267.
205 H. Gunkel, _Z. w. Th._, 1899, 42, pp. 581‐611.
206 For the last phase of the discussion we may name:
Wellhausen, _Skizzen und Vorarbeiten_ (Sketches and Studies), 1899,
pp. 187‐215, where he throws further light on Dalman’s philological
objections; and goes on to deny Jesus’ use of the expression.
W. Baldensperger, “Die neueste Forschung über den Menschensohn,”
_Theol. Rundschau_, 1900, 3, pp. 201‐210, 243‐255.
P. Fiebig, _Der Menschensohn_. Tübingen, 1901.
P. W. Schmiedel, “Die neueste Auffassung des Namens Menschensohn,”
_Prot. Monatsh._ 5, pp. 333‐351, 1901. (The Latest View of the
Designation Son of Man.)
P. W. Schmidt, _Die Geschichte Jesu_, ii.
(_Erläuterungen_—Explanations). Tübingen, 1904, p. 157 ff.
207 Dalman’s reputation as an authority upon Jewish Aramaic is so
deservedly high, that it is necessary to point out that his solution
did not, as Dr. Schweitzer seems to say, entirely dispose of the
linguistic difficulties raised by Lietzmann as to the meaning and
use of _barnâsh_ and _barnâshâ_ in Aramaic. The English reader will
find the linguistic facts well put in sections 4 and 32 of N.
Schmidt’s article “Son of Man” in _Encyclopædia Biblica_ (cols.
4708, 4723), or he may consult Prof. Bevan’s review of Dalman’s
_Worte Jesu_ in the _Critical Review_ for 1899, p. 148 ff. The main
point is that ὁ ἄνθρωπος and ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου are equally
legitimate translations of _barnâshâ_. Thus the contrast in the
Greek between ὁ ἄνθρωπος and ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου in Mark ii. 27 and
28, or again in Mark viii. 36 and 38, disappears on retranslation
into the dialect spoken by Jesus. Whether this linguistic fact makes
the sayings in which ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου occurs unhistorical is a
further question, upon which scholars can take, and have taken,
opposite opinions.—F. C. B.
208 See _Worte Jesu_, 1898, p. 191 ff. (= E. T. p. 234 ff.).
209 See the classical discussion in J. Weiss, _Die Predigt Jesus vom
Reiche Gottes_, 1892, 1st ed., p. 52 ff.
In the second edition, of 1900, p. 160 ff., he allows himself to be
led astray by the “chiefest apostles” of modern theology to indulge
in the subtleties of fine‐spun psychology, and explain Jesus’ way of
speaking of Himself in the third person as the Son of Man as due to
the “extreme modesty of Jesus,” a modesty which did not forsake Him
in the presence of His judges. This recent access of psychologising
exegesis has not conduced to clearness of presentation, and the
preference for the Lucan narrative does not so much contribute to
throw light on the facts as to discover in the thoughts of Jesus
subtleties of which the historical Jesus never dreamt. If the Lord
always used the term Son of Man when speaking of His Messiahship,
the reason was that this was the only way in which He could speak of
it at all, since the Messiahship was not yet realised, but was only
to be so at the appearing of the Son of Man. For a consistent,
purely historical, non‐psychological exposition of the Son‐of‐Man
passages see Albert Schweitzer, _Das Messianitäts‐ und
Leidensgeheimnis_. (The Secret of the Messiahship and the Passion.)
A sketch of the Life of Jesus. Tübingen, 1901.
210 See Dalman, p. 60 ff.
John Lightfoot, _Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae in quatuor
Evangelistas_. Edited by J. B. Carpzov. Leipzig, 1684.
Christian Schöttgen, _Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae in universum
Novum Testamentum_. Dresden‐Leipzig, 1733.
Joh. Gerh. Meuschen, _Novum Testamentum ex Talmude et antiquitatibus
Hebraeorum illustratum_. Leipzig, 1736.
J. Jakob. Wettstein, _Novum Testamentum Graecum_. Amsterdam, 1751
and 1752.
F. Nork, _Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen zu neutestamentlichen
Schriftstellen_, Leipzig, 1839.
Franz Delitzsch, “Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae,” in the _Luth.
Zeitsch._, 1876‐1878.
Carl Siegfried, _Analecta Rabbinica_, 1875; “Rabbin. Analekten,”
_Jahrb. f. prot. Theol._, 1876.
A. Wünsche, _Neue Beiträge zur Erläuterung der Evangelien aus Talmud
und Midrasch_. (Contributions to the Exposition of the Gospels from
Talmud and Midrash.) Göttingen, 1878.
211 Leipzig, 1880; 2nd ed., 1897.
212 Cf. for what follows, Jülicher, _Die Gleichnisreden Jesu_, i., 1888,
p. 164 ff.
213 Robert Sheringham of Caius College, Cambridge, a royalist divine,
published an edition of the Talmudic tractate _Yoma_. London,
1648.—F. C. B.
214 T. Tal, _Professor Oort und der Talmud_, 1880. See upon this Van
Manen, _Jahrb. f. prot. Theol._, 1884, p. 569. The best collection
of Talmudic parables is, according to Jülicher, that of Prof. Guis.
Levi, translated by L. Seligman as _Parabeln, Legenden und Gedanken
aus Talmud und Midrasch_. Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1877.
215 The question may be said to have been provisionally settled by Paul
Fiebig’s work, _Altjüdische Gleichnisse und die Gleichnisse Jesu_
(Ancient Jewish Parables and the Parables of Jesus), Tübingen, 1904,
in which he gives some fifty Late‐Jewish parables, and compares them
with those of Jesus, the final result being to show more clearly
than ever the uniqueness and absoluteness of His creations.
216 See the explanation by means of the Aramaic of a selection of the
sayings of Jesus in Meyer, pp. 72‐90. A Judaism more under Parsee
influence is assumed as explaining the origin of Christianity by E.
Böklen, _Die Verwandschaft der jüdisch‐christlichen mit der
parsischen Eschatologie_ (The Relation of Jewish‐Christian to
Persian Eschatology), 1902, 510 ff.
217 The same view is expressed by Wellhausen, _Israelitische und
jüdische Geschichte_, 3rd ed., p. 381, note 2; and by Albert
Schweitzer, _Das Messianitäts‐ und Leidensgeheimnis_, 1901.
218 See the Apocalypse of Baruch, and Fourth Ezra.
219 _La Vie inconnue de Jésus‐Christ_, par Nicolas Notowitsch. Paris,
1894.
220 See Jülicher, _Gleichnisreden Jesu_, i., 1888, p. 172 ff.
221 Max Müller, _India, What can it teach us?_ London, 1883, p. 279.
222 Rudolf Seydel, Professor in the University of Leipzig, _Das
Evangelium von Jesu in seinen Verhältnissen zu Buddha‐Sage und
Buddha‐Lehre mit fortlaufender Rücksicht auf andere
Religionskreise_. (The Gospel of Jesus in its relation to the Buddha
Legend and the Teaching of Buddha, with constant reference to other
religious groups.) Leipzig, 1882, p. 337.
Other works by the same author are _Buddha und Christus_. Deutsche
Bücherei No. 33, Breslau, Schottländer, 1884.
_Die Buddha‐Legende und das Leben Jesu nach den Evangelien._ 2nd ed.
Weimar, 1897. (Edited by the son of the late author.) 129 pp.
See also on this question Van den Bergh van Eysinga, _Indische
Einflüsse auf evangelische Erzählungen_. Göttingen, 1904. 104 pp.
According to J. M. Robertson, _Christianity and Mythology_ (London,
1900), the Christ‐Myth is merely a form of the Krishna‐Myth. The
whole Gospel tradition is to be symbolically interpreted.
223 _Das Christentum des Neuen Testaments_, 1905.
224 Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, _Handkommentar_. _Die Synoptiker._ 1st
ed., 1889; 3rd ed., 1901. _Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen
Theologie_, 1896, vol. i.
225 In the Catholic Church the study of the Life of Jesus has remained
down to the present day entirely free from scepticism. The reason of
that is, that in principle it has remained at a pre‐Straussian
standpoint, and does not venture upon an unreserved application of
historical considerations either to the miracle question or to the
Johannine question, and naturally therefore resigns the attempt to
take account of and explain the great historical problems.
We may name the following Lives of Jesus produced by German Catholic
writers:—
Joh. Nep. Sepp, _Das Leben Jesu Christi_. Regensburg, 1843‐1846. 7
vols., 2nd ed., 1853‐1862.
Peter Schegg, _Sechs Bücher des Lebens Jesu_. (The Life of Jesus in
Six Books.) Freiburg, 1874‐1875. c. 1200 pp.
Joseph Grimm, _Das Leben Jesu_. Würzburg, 2nd ed., 1890‐1903. 6
vols.
Richard von Kralik, _Jesu Leben und Werk_. Kempten‐Nürnberg, 1904.
481 pp.
W. Capitaine, _Jesus von Nazareth_. Regensburg, 1905. 192 pp.
How narrow are the limits within which the Catholic study of the
life of Jesus moves even when it aims at scientific treatment, is
illustrated by Hermann Schell’s _Christus_ (Mainz, 1903. 152 pp.).
After reading the forty‐two questions with which he introduces his
narrative one might suppose that the author was well aware of the
bearing of all the historical problems of the life of Jesus, and
intended to supply an answer to them. Instead of doing so, however,
he adopts as the work proceeds more and more the rôle of an
apologist, not facing definitely either the miracle question or the
Johannine question, but gliding over the difficulties by the aid of
ingenious headings, so that in the end his book almost takes the
form of an explanatory text to the eighty‐nine illustrations which
adorn the book and make it difficult to read.
In France, Renan’s work gave the incentive to an extensive Catholic
“Life‐of‐Jesus” literature. We may name the following:—
Louis Veuillot, _La Vie de notre Seigneur Jésus‐Christ_. Paris,
1864. 509 pp. German by Waldeyer. Köln‐Neuss, 1864. 573 pp.
H. Wallon, _Vie de notre Seigneur Jésus‐Christ_. Paris, 1865. 355
pp.
A work which met with a particularly favourable reception was that
of Père Didon, the Dominican, _Jésus‐Christ_, Paris, 1891, 2 vols.,
vol. i. 483 pp., vol. ii. 469 pp. The German translation is dated
1895.
In the same year there appeared a new edition of the “Bitter
Sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ” (see above, p. 109 f.) by
Katharina Emmerich; the cheap popular edition of the translation of
Renan’s “Life of Jesus”; and the eighth edition of Strauss’s “Life
of Jesus for the German People.”
We may quote from the ecclesiastical _Approbation_ printed at the
beginning of Didon’s Life of Jesus. “If the author sometimes seems
to speak the language of his opponents, it is at once evident that
he has aimed at defeating them on their own ground, and he is
particularly successful in doing so when he confronts their
irreligious a priori theories with the positive arguments of
history.”
As a matter of fact the work is skilfully written, but without a
spark of understanding of the historical questions.
All honour to Alfred Loisy! (_Le Quatrième Évangile_, Paris, 1903,
960 pp.), who takes a clear view on the Johannine question, and
denies the existence of a Johannine historical tradition. But what
that means for the Catholic camp may be recognised from the
excitement produced by the book and its express condemnation. See
also the same writer’s _L’Évangile et l’Église_ (German translation,
Munich, 1904, 189 pp.), in which Loisy here and there makes good
historical points against Harnack’s “What is Christianity?”
226 Oskar Holtzmann, Professor of Theology at Giessen, was born in 1859
at Stuttgart.
227 This suggestion reminds us involuntarily of the old rationalistic
Lives of Jesus, which are distressed that Jesus should have injured
the good people of the country of the Gesarenes by sacrificing their
swine in healing the demoniac. A good deal of old rationalistic
material crops up in the very latest Lives of Jesus, as cannot
indeed fail to be the case in view of the arbitrary interpretation
of detail which is common to both. According to Oskar Holtzmann the
barren fig‐tree has also a symbolical meaning. “It is a pledge given
by God to Jesus that His faith shall not be put to shame in the
great work of His life.”
228 Isaiah lxii. 11, “Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy
salvation cometh.”
229 “For Jesus Himself,” Oskar Holtzmann argues, “this discovery”—he
means the antinomy which He had discovered in Psalm cx.—“disposed of
a doubt which had always haunted him. If He had really known Himself
to be descended from the Davidic line, He would certainly not have
publicly suggested a doubt as to the Davidic descent of the
Messiah.”
230 Oskar Holtzmann’s work, _War Jesus Ekstatiker?_ (Tübingen, 1903, 139
pp.) is in reality a new reading of the life of Jesus. By
emphasising the ecstatic element he breaks with the “natural”
conception of the life and teaching of Jesus; and, in so far,
approaches the eschatological view. But he gives a very wide
significance to the term ecstatic, subsuming under it, it might
almost be said, all the eschatological thoughts and utterances of
Jesus. He explains, for instance, that “the conviction of the
approaching destruction of existing conditions is ecstatic.” At the
same time, the only purpose served by the hypothesis of ecstasy is
to enable the author to attribute to Jesus “The belief that in His
own work the Kingdom of God was already beginning, and the promise
of the Kingdom to individuals; this can only be considered
ecstatic.” The opposites which Bousset brings together by the
conception of paradox are united by Holtzmann by means of the
hypothesis of ecstasy. That is, however, to play fast and loose with
the meaning of “ecstasy.” An ecstasy is, in the usual understanding
of the word, an abnormal, transient condition of excitement in which
the subject’s natural capacity for thought and feeling, and
therewith all impressions from without, are suspended, being
superseded by an intense mental excitation and activity. Jesus may
possibly have been in an ecstatic state at His baptism and at the
transfiguration. What O. Holtzmann represents as a kind of permanent
ecstatic state is rather an eschatological fixed idea. With
eschatology, ecstasy has no essential connexion. It is possible to
be eschatologically minded without being an ecstatic, and vice
versa. Philo attributes a great importance to ecstasy in his
religious life, but he was scarcely, if at all, interested in
eschatology.
231 P. W. Schmidt, now Professor in Basle, was born in Berlin in 1845.
232 Otto Schmiedel, Professor at the Gymnasium at Eisenach, _Die
Hauptprobleme der Leben‐Jesu‐Forschung_. Tübingen, 1902. 71 pp.
Schmiedel was born in 1858.
Hermann Freiherr von Soden, _Die wichtigsten Fragen im Leben Jesu_.
Von Soden, Professor in Berlin, and preacher at the Jerusalem
Kirche, was born in 1852.
We may mention also the following works:—
Fritz Barth (born 1856, Professor at Bern), _Die Hauptprobleme des
Lebens Jesu_. 1st ed., 1899; 2nd ed., 1903.
Friedrich Nippold’s _Der Entwicklungsgang des Lebens Jesu im
Wortlaut der drei ersten Evangelien_ (The Course of the Life of
Jesus in the Words of the First Three Evangelists) (Hamburg, 1895,
213 pp.) is only an arrangement of the sections.
Konrad Furrer’s _Vorträge über das Leben Jesu Christi_ (Lectures on
the Life of Jesus Christ) have a special charm by reason of the
author’s knowledge of the country and the locality. Furrer, who was
born in 1838, is Professor at Zurich.
Another work which should not be forgotten is R. Otto’s _Leben und
Wirken Jesu nach historisch‐kritischer Auffassung_ (Life and Work of
Jesus from the Point of View of Historical Criticism). A Lecture.
Göttingen, 1902. Rudolf Otto, born in 1869, is Privat‐Docent at
Göttingen.
233 Schmiedel is not altogether right in making “the Heidelberg
Professor Paulus” follow the same lines as Reimarus, “except that
his works, of 1804 and 1828, are less malignant, but only the more
dull for that.” In reality the deistic Life of Jesus by Reimarus,
and the rationalistic Life by Paulus have nothing in common. Paulus
was perhaps influenced by Venturini, but not by Reimarus. The
assertion that Strauss wrote his “Life of Jesus for the German
people” because “Renan’s fame gave him no peace” is not justified,
either by Strauss’s character or by the circumstances in which the
second Life of Jesus was produced.
234 Von Soden gives on pp. 24 ff. the passages of Mark which he supposes
to be derived from the Petrine tradition in a different order from
that in which they occur in Mark, regrouping them freely. He puts
together, for instance, Mark i. 16‐20, iii. 13‐19, vi. 7‐16, viii.
27‐ix. 1, ix. 33‐40, under the title “The formation and training of
the band of disciples.” He supposes Mark, the pupil of Peter, to
have grouped in this way by a kind of association of ideas “what he
had heard Peter relate in his missionary journeys, when writing it
down after Peter’s death, not connectedly, but giving as much as he
could remember of it”; this would be in accordance with the
statement of Papias that Mark wrote “not in order.” Papias’s
statement, therefore, refers to an “Ur‐Markus,” which he found
lacking in historical order.
But what are we to make of a representative of the early Church thus
approaching the Gospels with the demand for historical arrangement?
And good, simple old Papias, of all people!
But if the Marcan plan was not laid down in “Ur‐Markus,” there is
nothing for it—since the plan was certainly not given in the
collection of Logia—but to ascribe it to the author of our Gospel of
Mark, to the man, that is, who wrote down for the first time these
“Pauline conceptions,” those reflections of experiences of
individual believers and of the community, and inserted them into
the Gospel. It is proposed, then, to retain the outline which he has
given of the life of Jesus, and reject at the same time what he
relates. That is to say, he is to be believed where it is convenient
to believe him, and silenced where it is inconvenient. No more
complete refutation of the Marcan hypothesis could possibly be given
than this analysis, for it destroys its very foundation, the
confident acceptance of the historicity of the Marcan plan.
If there is to be an analysis of sources in Mark, then the Marcan
plan must be ascribed to “Ur‐Markus,” otherwise the analysis renders
the Markan hypothesis historically useless. But if “Ur‐Markus” is to
be reconstructed on the basis of assigning to it the Marcan plan,
then we cannot separate the natural from the supernatural, for the
supernatural scenes, like the feeding of the multitude and the
transfiguration, are among the main features of the Marcan outline.
No hypothetical analysis of “Ur‐Markus” has escaped this dilemma;
what it can effect by literary methods is historically useless, and
what would be historically useful cannot be attained nor “presented”
by literary methods.
235 Von Soden, for instance, germanises Jesus when he writes, “and this
nature is sound to the core. In spite of its inwardness there is no
trace of an exaggerated sentimentality. In spite of all the
intensity of prayer there is nothing of ecstasy or vision. No
apocalyptic dream‐pictures find a lodging‐place in His soul.”
Is a man who teaches a world‐renouncing ethic which sometimes soars
to the dizzy heights such as that of Matt. xix. 12, according to our
conceptions “sound to the core”? And does not the life of Jesus
present a number of occasions on which He seems to have been in an
ecstasy?
Thus, von Soden has not simply read his Jesus out of the texts, but
has added something of his own, and that something is Germanic in
colouring.
236 _i.e._ the MS. Life of Jesus written by Kai Jans, one of the
characters of the novel. The way in which the whole life‐experience
of this character prepares him for the writing of the Life is
strikingly—if not always acceptably—worked out.—TRANSLATOR.
237 Frenssen’s Kai Jans professes to have used the “results of the whole
range of critical investigation” in writing his work. Among the
books which he enumerates and recommends in the after‐word, we miss
the works of Strauss, Weisse, Keim, Volkmar, and Brandt, and,
generally speaking, the names of those who in the past have done
something really great and original. Of the moderns, Johannes Weiss
is lacking. Wrede is mentioned, but is virtually ignored.
Pfleiderer’s remarkable and profound presentation of Jesus in the
_Urchristentum_ (E. T. “Primitive Christianity,” vol. ii., 1909) is
non‐existent so far as he is concerned.
238 _Heimatkunst_, the ideal that every production of German art should
be racy of the soil. It has its relative justification as a protest
against the long subservience of some departments of German art to
French taste.—TRANSLATOR.
239 The Jesus of H. S. Chamberlain’s _Worte Christi_, 1901, 286 pp., is
also modern. But the modernity is not so obtrusive, because he
describes only the teaching of Jesus, not His life.
240 Born in 1839 at Stettin. Studied at Tübingen, was appointed
Professor in 1870 at Jena and in 1875 at Berlin. (Died 1908.)
241 _Das Urchristentum, seine Schriften und Lehren in geschichtlichem
Zusammenhang beschrieben._ 2nd ed. Berlin, 1902. Vol. i. (696 pp.),
615 ff.: _Die Predigt Jesu und der Glaube der Urgemeinde_ (English
Translation, “Primitive Christianity,” chap. xvi.). Pfleiderer’s
latest views are set forth in his work, based on academic lectures,
_Die Entstehung des Urchristentums_. (How Christianity arose.)
Munich, 1905. 255 pp.
242 Albert Kalthoff, _Das Christusproblem_. _Grundlinien zu einer
Sozialtheologie._ (The Problem of the Christ: Ground‐plan of a
Social Theology.) Leipzig, 1902. 87 pp.
_Die Entstehung des Christentums. Neue Beiträge zum
Christusproblem._ (How Christianity arose.) Leipzig, 1904. 155 pp.
Albert Kalthoff was born in 1850 at Barmen, and is engaged in
pastoral work in Bremen.
243 _Das Leben Jesu._ Lectures delivered before the Protestant Reform
Society at Berlin. Berlin, 1880. 173 pp.
244 If Kalthoff would only have spoken of the conception of the
resurrection instead of the conception of immortality! Then his
subjective knowledge would have been more or less tolerable.
245 Against Kalthoff: Wilhelm Bousset, _Was wissen wir von Jesus?_ (What
do we know about Jesus?) Lectures delivered before the
Protestantenverein at Bremen. Halle, 1904. 73 pp. In reply: Albert
Kalthoff, _Was wissen wir von Jesus?_ A settlement of accounts with
Professor Bousset. Berlin, 1904. 43 pp.
A sound historical position is set forth in the clear and trenchant
lecture of W. Kapp, _Das Christus‐ und Christentumsproblem bei
Kalthoff_. (The problem of the Christ and of Christianity as handled
by Kalthoff.) Strassburg, 1905. 23 pp.
246 Eduard von Hartmann, _Das Christentum des Neuen Testaments_. (The
Christianity of the N.T.) 2nd, revised and altered, edition of the
“Letters on the Christian Religion.” Sachsa‐in‐the‐Harz, 1905. 311
pp.
247 Eduard von Hartmann ought, therefore, to have given his assistance
to the others who have made this assertion in proving that there
really existed Messianic claimants before and at the time of Jesus.
248 “Jesus,” by Jülicher, in _Die Kultur der Gegenwart_. (An
encyclopaedic publication which is appearing in parts.) Teubner,
Berlin, 1905, pp. 40‐69.
See also W. Bousset, “Jesus,” _Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher_.
(A series of religious‐historical monographs.) Published by Schiele,
Halle, 1904.
Here should be mentioned also the thoughtful book, following very
much the lines of Jülicher, by Eduard Grimm, entitled _Die Ethik
Jesu_, Hamburg, 1903, 288 pp. The author, born in 1848, is the chief
pastor at the Nicolaikirche in Hamburg.
Another work which deserves mention is Arno Neumann, _Jesu wie er
geschichtlich war_ (Jesus as he historically existed), Freiburg,
1904, 198 pp. (New Paths to the Old God), a Life of Jesus
distinguished by a lofty vein of natural poetry and based upon solid
theological knowledge. Arno Neumann is headmaster of a school at
Apolda.
249 _Jeschua. Der klassische jüdische Mann. Zerstörung des kirchlichen,
Enthüllung des jüdischen Jesus‐Bildes._ Berlin, 1904, 112 pp.
Earlier studies of the Life of Jesus from the Jewish point of view
had been less ambitious. Dr. Aug. Wünsche had written in 1872 on
“Jesus in His attitude towards women” from the Talmudic standpoint
(146 pp.), and had described Him from the same standpoint as a Jesus
who rejoiced in life, _Der lebensfreudige Jesus der synoptischen
Evangelien im Gegensatz zum leidenden Messias der Kirche_. Leipzig,
1876, 444 pp. The basis is so far correct, that the eschatological,
world‐renouncing ethic which we find in Jesus was due to temporary
conditions and is therefore transitory, and had nothing whatever to
do with Judaism as such. The spirit of the Law is the opposite of
world‐renouncing. But the Talmud, be its traditions never so
trustworthy, could teach us little about Jesus because it has
preserved scarcely a trace of that eschatological phase of Jewish
religion and ethics.
250 Wolfgang Kirchbach, _Was lehrte Jesus? Zwei Urevangelien_. Berlin,
1897, 248 pp.; second greatly enlarged and improved edition, 1902,
339 pp. By the same author, _Das Buch Jesus_. _Die Urevangelien. Neu
nachgewiesen, neu übersetzt, geordnet und aus der Ursprache
erklärt_. (The Book of Jesus. The Primitive Gospels. Newly traced,
translated, arranged, and explained on the basis of the original.)
Berlin, 1897.
251 Before him, Hugo Delff, in his _History of the Rabbi Jesus of
Nazareth_ (Leipzig, 1889, 428 pp.), had confined himself to the
Fourth Gospel, and even within that Gospel he drew some critical
distinctions. His Jesus at first conceals His Messiahship from the
fear of arousing the political expectations of the people, and
speaks to them of the Son of Man in the third person. At His second
visit to Jerusalem He breaks with the rulers, is subsequently
compelled, in consequence of the conflict over the Sabbath, to leave
Galilee, and then gives up His own people and turns to the heathen.
Delff explains the raising of Lazarus by supposing him to have been
buried in a state of trance.
252 Albert Dulk, _Der Irrgang des Lebens Jesu_. _In geschichtlicher
Aufassung dargestellt. Erster Teil: Die historischen Wurzeln und die
galiläische Blüte_, 1884. 395 pp. _Zweiter Teil: Der Messiaseinzug
und die Erhebung ans Kreuz_, 1885, 302 pp. (The Error of the Life of
Jesus. Historically apprehended and set forth. Pt. i., The
Historical Roots and the Galilaean Blossom. Pt. ii., The Messianic
Entry and the Crucifixion.) The course of Dulk’s own life was
somewhat erratic. Born in 1819, he came prominently forward in the
revolution of 1848, as a political pamphleteer and agitator. Later,
though almost without means, he undertook long journeys, even to
Sinai and to Lapland. Finally, he worked as a social democratic
reformer. He died in 1884.
253 A scientific treatment of this subject is supplied by Fr. Nippold,
_Die psychiatrische Seite der Heilstätigkeit Jesu_ (The Psychiatric
Side of Jesus’ Works of Healing), 1889, in which a luminous review
of the medical material is to be found. See also Dr. K. Kunz,
_Christus medicus_, Freiburg in Baden, 1905, 74 pp. The scientific
value of this work is, however, very much reduced by the fact that
the author has no acquaintance with the preliminary questions
belonging to the sphere of history and literature, and regards all
the miracles of healing as actual events, believing himself able to
explain them from the medical point of view. The tendency of the
work is mainly apologetic.
254 _Jesus von Nazareth. Described from the Scientific, Historical, and
Social Point of View._ Translated from the French (into German) by
A. Just. Leipzig, 1894. The author, whose real name is P. A.
Desjardin, is a practising physician. De Régla, too, makes the
Fourth Gospel the basis of his narrative.
255 Pierre Nahor (Emilie Lerou), _Jesus_. Translated from the French by
Walter Bloch. Berlin, 1905. Its motto is: The figure of Jesus
belongs, like all mysterious, heroic, or mythical figures, to legend
and poetry. In the introduction we find the statement, “This book is
a confession of faith.” The narrative is based on the Fourth Gospel.
256 _La Vie inconnue de Jésus‐Christ._ Paris, 1894. 301 pp. German,
under the title _Die Lücke im Leben Jesu_ (The Gap in the Life of
Jesus). Stuttgart, 1894. 186 pp. See Holtzmann in the _Theol.
Jahresbericht_, xiv. p. 140.
In a certain limited sense the work of A. Lillie, _The Influence of
Buddhism on Primitive Christianity_ (London, 1893), is to be
numbered among the fictitious works on the life of Jesus. The
fictitious element consists in Jesus being made an Essene by the
writer, and Essenism equated with Buddhism.
Among “edifying” romances on the life of Jesus intended for family
reading, that of the English writer J. H. Ingraham, _The Prince of
the House of David_, has had a very long lease of life. It appeared
in a German translation as early as 1858, and was reissued in 1906
(Brunswick).
A fictitious life of Jesus of wonderful beauty is Peter Rosegger’s
_I.N.R.I. Frohe Botschaft eines armen Sünders_ (The Glad Tidings of
a poor Sinner). Leipzig, 6th‐10th thousand, 1906. 293 pp.
A feminine point of view reveals itself in C. Rauch’s _Jeschua ben
Joseph_. Deichert, 1899.
257 _La Vie ésotérique de Jésu‐Christ et les origines orientales du
christianisme._ Paris, 1902. 445 pp.
That Jesus was of Aryan race is argued by A. Müller, who assumes a
Gaulish immigration into Galilee. _Jesus ein Arier._ Leipzig, 1904.
74 pp.
258 _Did Jesus live 100 __B.C.__?_ London and Benares. Theosophical
Publishing Society, 1903. 440 pp.
A scientific discussion of the “Toledoth Jeshu,” with citations from
the Talmudic tradition concerning Jesus, is offered by S. Krauss,
_Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen_, 1902. 309 pp. According to
him the _Toledoth Jeshu_ was committed to writing in the fifth
century, and he is of opinion that the Jewish legend is only a
modified version of the Christian tradition.
259 William Wrede, born in 1859 at Bücken in Hanover, was Professor at
Breslau. (He died in 1907.)
Wrede names as his real predecessors on the same lines Bruno Bauer,
Volkmar, and the Dutch writer Hoekstra (“De Christologie van het
canonieke Marcus‐Evangelie, vergeleken met die van de beide andere
synoptische Evangelien,” _Theol. Tijdschrift_, v., 1871).
In a certain limited degree the work of Ernest Havet (_Le
Christianisme et ses origines_) has a claim to be classed in the
same category. His scepticism refers principally to the entry into
Jerusalem and the story of the passion.
260 These and the following questions are raised more especially in the
_Sketch of the Life of Jesus_.
261 It would perhaps be more historical to say “as a prophet.”
262 The difficulties which the incident at Caesarea Philippi places in
the way of Wrede’s construction may be realised by placing two of
his statements side by side. P. 101: “From this it is evident that
this incident contains no element which cannot be easily understood
on the basis of Mark’s ideas.” P. 238: “But in another aspect this
incident stands in direct contradiction to the Marcan view of the
disciples. It is inconsistent with their general ‘want of
understanding,’ and can therefore hardly have been created by Mark
himself.”
263 The question of the attitude of pre‐Origenic theology towards the
historical Jesus, and of the influence exercised by dogma upon the
evangelical tradition regarding Jesus in the course of the first two
centuries, is certainly deserving of a detailed examination.
264 Certain of the conceptions with which Wrede operates are simply not
in accordance with the text, because he gives them a different
significance from that which they have in the narrative. Thus, for
example, he always takes the “resurrection,” when it occurs in the
mouth of Jesus, as a reference to that resurrection which as an
historical fact became a matter of apprehended experience to the
apostles. But Jesus speaks without any distinction of His
resurrection and of His Parousia. The conception of the
resurrection, therefore, if one is to arrive at it inductively from
the Marcan text, is most closely bound up with the Parousia. The
Evangelist would thus seem to have made Jesus predict a different
kind of resurrection from that which actually happened. The
resurrection, according to the Marcan text, is an eschatological
event, and has no reference whatever to Wrede’s “historical
resurrection.” Further, if their resurrection experience was the
first and fundamental point in the Messianic enlightenment of the
disciples, why did they only begin to proclaim it some weeks later?
This is a problem which was long ago recognised by Reimarus, and
which is not solved by merely assuming that the disciples were
afraid.
265 P. 33 ff. The prohibitions in Mark i. 43 and 44, v. 43, vii. 36, and
viii. 26 are put on the same footing with the really Messianic
prohibitions in viii. 30 and ix. 9, with which may be associated
also the imposition of silence upon the demoniacs who recognise his
Messiahship in Mark i. 34 and iii. 12.
266 The narrative in Matt. xiv. 22‐33, according to which the disciples,
after seeing Jesus walk upon the sea, hail Him on His coming into
the boat as the Son of God, and the description of the deeds of
Jesus as “deeds of Christ,” in the introduction to the Baptist’s
question in Matt. xi. 2, do not cancel the old theory even in
Matthew, because the Synoptists, differing therein from the fourth
Evangelist, do not represent the demand for a sign as a demand for a
Messianic sign, nor the cures wrought by Jesus as Messianic proofs
of power. The action of the demons in crying out upon Jesus as the
Son of God betokens their recognition of Him; it has nothing to do
with the miracles of healing as such.
267 For further examples of the pressing of the theory to its utmost
limits, see Wrede, p. 134 ff.
268 It is always assumed as self‐evident that Jesus is speaking of the
sufferings and persecutions which would take place after His death,
or that the Evangelist, in making Him speak in this way, is thinking
of these later persecutions. There is no hint of that in the text.
269 That the eschatological school showed a certain timidity in drawing
the consequences of its recognition of the character of the
preaching of Jesus and examining the tradition from the
eschatological standpoint can be seen from Johannes Weiss’s work,
“The Earliest Gospel” (_Das älteste Evangelium_), Göttingen, 1903,
414 pp. Ingenious and interesting as this work is in detail, one is
surprised to find the author of the “Preaching of Jesus” here
endeavouring to distinguish between Mark and “Ur‐Markus,” to point
to examples of Pauline influence, to exhibit clearly the
“tendencies” which guided, respectively, the original Evangelist and
the redactor—all this as if he did not possess in his eschatological
view of the preaching of Jesus a dominant conception which gives him
a clue to quite a different psychology from that which he actually
applies. Against Wrede he brings forward many arguments which are
worthy of attention, but he can hardly be said to have refuted him,
because it is impossible for Weiss to treat the question in the
exact form in which it was raised by Wrede.
270 Wrede certainly goes too far in asserting that even in Mark’s
version the experience at the baptism is conceived as an open
miracle, perceptible to others. The way in which the revelations to
the prophets are recounted in the Old Testament does not make in
favour of this. Otherwise we should have to suppose that the
Evangelist described the incident as a miracle which took place in
the presence of a multitude without perceiving that in this case the
Messianic secret was a secret no longer. If so, the story of the
baptism stands on the same footing as the story of the Messianic
entry: it is a revelation of the Messiahship which has absolutely no
results.
271 The statement of Mark that Jesus, coming out of the north, appeared
for a moment again in Decapolis and Capernaum, and then started off
to the north once more (Mark vii. 31‐viii. 27), may here
provisionally be left out of account since it stands in relation
with the twofold account of the feeding of the multitude. So too the
enigmatic appearance and disappearance of the people (Mark viii.
34‐ix. 30) may here be passed over. These statements make no
difference to the fact that Jesus really broke off his work in
Galilee shortly after the Mission of the Twelve, since they imply at
most a quite transient contact with the people.
272 On the theory of the successful and unsuccessful periods in the work
of Jesus see the “Sketch,” p. 3 ff., “The four Pre‐suppositions of
the Modern Historical Solution.”
273 Weisse found that there was no hint in the sources of the desertion
of the people, since according to these, Jesus was opposed only by
the Pharisees, not by the people. The abandonment of the Galilaean
work, and the departure to Jerusalem, must, he thought, have been
due to some unrecorded fact which revealed to Jesus that the time
had come to act in this way. Perhaps, he adds, it was the waning of
Jesus’ miracle‐working power which caused the change in His
attitude, since it is remarkable that He performed no further
miracles during His sojourn at Jerusalem.
274 The most logical attitude in regard to it is Bousset’s, who proposes
to treat the mission and everything connected with it as a “confused
and unintelligible” tradition.
275 Joel iii. 13, “Put in the sickle for the harvest is ripe!” In the
Apocalypse of John, too, the Last Judgment is described as the
heavenly harvest: “Thrust in thy sickle and reap; for the time is
come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And he
that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the
earth was reaped” (Rev. xiv. 15 and 16).
The most remarkable parallel to the discourse at the sending forth
of the disciples is offered by the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch:
“Behold, the days come, when the time of the world shall be ripe,
and the harvest of the sowing of the good and of the evil shall
come, when the Almighty shall bring upon the earth and upon its
inhabitants and upon their rulers confusion of spirit and terror
that makes the heart stand still; and they shall hate one another
and provoke one another to war; and the despised shall have power
over them of reputation, and the mean shall exalt themselves over
them that are highly esteemed. And the many shall be at the mercy of
the few ... and all who shall be saved and shall escape the before‐
mentioned (dangers) ... shall be given into the hands of my servant,
the Messiah.” (Cap. lxx. 2, 3, 9. Following the translation of E.
Kautzsch.)
The connexion between the ideas of harvest and of judgment was
therefore one of the stock features of the apocalyptic writings. And
as the Apocalypse of Baruch dates from the period about A.D. 70, it
may be assumed that this association of ideas was also current in
the Jewish apocalyptic of the time of Jesus. Here is a basis for
understanding the secret of the Kingdom of God in the parables of
sowing and reaping historically and in accordance with the ideas of
the time. What Jesus did was to make known to those who understood
Him that the coming earthly harvest was the last, and was also the
token of the coming heavenly harvest. The eschatological
interpretation is immensely strengthened by these parallels.
276 With what right does modern critical theology tear apart even the
discourse in Matt. xi. in order to make the “cry of jubilation” into
the cry with which Jesus saluted the return of His disciples, and to
find lodgment for the woes upon Chorazin and Bethsaida somewhere
else in an appropriately gloomy context? Is not all this apparently
disconnected material held together by an inner bond of
connexion—the secret of the Kingdom of God which is imminently
impending over Jesus and the people? Or, is Jesus expected to preach
like one who has a thesis to maintain and seeks about for the most
logical arrangement? Does not a certain lack of orderly connexion
belong to the very idea of prophetic speech?
277 If, therefore, Jesus at a later point predicted to His disciples His
resurrection, He means by that, not a single isolated act, but a
complex occurrence consisting of His metamorphosis, translation to
heaven, and Parousia as the Son of Man. And with this is associated
the general eschatological resurrection of the dead. It is,
therefore, one and the same thing whether He speaks of His
resurrection or of His coming on the clouds of heaven.
278 The title of Baldensperger’s book, _The Self‐consciousness of Jesus
in the Light of the Messianic Hopes of His Time_, really contains a
promise which is impossible of fulfilment. The contemporary
“Messianic hopes” can only explain the hopes of Jesus so far as they
corresponded thereto, not His view of His own Person, in which He is
absolutely original.
279 Even Baldensperger’s book, _Die messianisch‐apokalyptischen
Hoffnungen des Judentums_ (1903), passes at a stride from the Psalms
of Solomon to Fourth Ezra. The coming volume is to deal with the
eschatology of Jesus. That is a “theological,” but not an historical
division of the material. The second volume should properly come in
the middle of the first.
280 The fact that in the Psalms of Solomon the Messiah is designated by
the ancient prophetic name of the Son of David is significant of the
rising influence of the ancient prophetic literature. This
designation has nothing whatever to do with a political ideal of a
kingly Messiah. This Davidic King and his Kingdom are, in their
character and the manner of their coming, every whit as supernatural
as the Son of Man and His coming. The same historical fact was read
into both Daniel and the prophets.
281 Enoch is an offshoot of the Danielic apocalyptic writings. The
earliest portion, the Apocalypse of the Ten Weeks, is independent of
Daniel and of contemporary origin. The Similitudes (capp.
xxxvii.‐lxix.), which, with their description of the Judgment of the
Son of Man, are so important in connexion with the thoughts of
Jesus, may be placed in 80‐70 B.C. They do not presuppose the taking
of Jerusalem by Pompey.
282 The Psalms of Solomon are therefore a decade later than the
Similitudes.
283 The Apocalypse of Baruch seems to have been composed not very long
after the Fall of Jerusalem. Fourth Ezra is twenty to thirty years
later.
284 The Psalms of Solomon form the last document of Jewish eschatology
before the coming of the Baptist. For almost a hundred years, from
60 B.C. until A.D. 30, we have no information regarding
eschatological movements! And do the Psalms of Solomon really point
to a deep eschatological movement at the time of the taking of
Jerusalem by Pompey? Hardly, I think. It is to be noticed in
studying the times of Jesus that the surrounding circumstances have
no eschatological character. The Fall of Jerusalem marks the next
turning‐point in the history of the apocalyptic hope, as Baruch and
Fourth Ezra show.
285 Jesus promises them expressly that at the appearing of the Son of
Man they shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of
Israel (Matt. xix. 28). It is to their part in the judgment that
belong also the authority to bind and to loose which He entrusts to
them—first to Peter personally (Matt. xvi. 19) and afterwards to all
the Twelve (Matt. xviii. 18)—in such a way, too, that their present
decisions will be somehow or other binding at the Judgment. Or does
the “upon earth” refer only to the fact that the Messianic Last
Judgment will be held on earth? “I give unto thee the Keys of the
Kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven” (Matt. xvi. 19). Why should these words not be
historical? Is it because in the same context Jesus speaks of the
“church” which He will found upon the Rock‐disciple? But if one has
once got a clear idea from Paul, a Clement, the Epistle to the
Hebrews, and the Shepherd of Hermas, what the pre‐existing “church”
was which was to appear in the last times, it will no longer appear
impossible that Jesus might have spoken of the church against which
the gates of hell shall not prevail. Of course, if the passage is
given an uneschatological reference to the Church as we know it, it
loses all real meaning and becomes a treasure‐trove to the Roman
Catholic exegete, and a terror to the Protestant.
286 That he could be taken for the Baptist risen from the dead shows how
short a time before the death of the Baptist His ministry had begun.
He only became known, as the Baptist’s question shows, at the time
of the mission of the disciples; Herod first heard of Him after the
death of the Baptist. Had he known anything of Jesus beforehand, it
would have been impossible for him suddenly to identify Him with the
Baptist risen from the dead. This elementary consideration has been
overlooked in all calculations of the length of the public ministry
of Jesus.
287 That had been rightly remarked by Colani. Later, however, theology
lost sight of the fact because it did not know how to make any
historical use of it.
288 Psal. Sol. xv. 8.
289 That the baptism of John was essentially an act which gave a claim
to something future may be seen from the fact that Jesus speaks of
His sufferings and death as a special baptism, and asks the sons of
Zebedee whether they are willing, for the sake of gaining the
thrones on His right hand and His left, to undergo this baptism. If
the baptism of John had had no real sacramental significance it
would be unintelligible that Jesus should use this metaphor.
290 The thought of the Messianic feast is found in Isaiah lv. 1 ff. and
lxv. 12 ff. It is very strongly marked in Isa. xxv. 6‐8, a passage
which perhaps dates from the time of Alexander the Great, “and
Jahweh of Hosts will prepare upon this mountain for all peoples a
feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things
prepared with marrow, of wine on the lees well refined. He shall
destroy, in this mountain, among all peoples, the veil which has
veiled all peoples and the covering which has covered all nations.
He shall destroy death for ever, and the Lord Jahweh shall wipe away
the tears from off all faces; and the reproach of His people shall
disappear from the earth.” (The German follows Kautzsch’s
translation.)
In Enoch xxiv. and xxv. the conception of the Messianic feast is
connected with that of the tree of life which shall offer its fruits
to the elect upon the mountain of the King. Similarly in the
Testament of Levi, cap. xviii. 11.
The decisive passage is in Enoch lxii. 14. After the Parousia of the
Son of Man, and after the Judgment, the elect who have been saved
“shall eat with the Son of Man, shall sit down and rise up with Him
to all eternity.”
Jesus’ references to the Messianic feast are therefore not merely
images, but point to a reality. In Matt. viii. 11 and 12 He
prophesies that many shall come from the East and from the West to
sit at meat with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Matt. xxii. 1‐14 the
Messianic feast is pictured as a royal marriage, in Matt. xxv. 1‐13
as a marriage feast.
The Apocalypse is dominated by the thought of the feast in all its
forms. In Rev. ii. 7 it appears in connexion with the thought of the
tree of life; in ii. 17 it is pictured as a feeding with manna; in
iii. 21 it is the feast which the Lord will celebrate with His
followers; in vii. 16, 17 there is an allusion to the Lamb who shall
feed His own so that they shall no more hunger or thirst; chapter
xix. describes the marriage feast of the Lamb.
The Messianic feast therefore played a dominant part in the
conception of blessedness from Enoch to the Apocalypse of John. From
this we can estimate what sacramental significance a guarantee of
taking part in that feast must have had. The meaning of the
celebration was obvious in itself, and was made manifest in the
conduct of it. The sacramental effect was wholly independent of the
apprehension and comprehension of the recipient. Therefore, in this
also the meal at the lake‐side was a true sacrament.
291 Weisse rightly remarks that the task of the historian in dealing
with Mark must consist in explaining how such “myths” could be
accepted by a chronicler who stood so relatively near the events as
our Mark does.
292 It is to be noticed that the cry of Jesus from the cross, “Eli,
Eli,” was immediately interpreted by the bystanders as referring to
Elias.
293 From this difficulty we can see, too, how impossible it was for any
of them to have “arrived gradually at the knowledge of the
Messiahship of Jesus.”
294 For the hypothesis of the two sets of narratives which have been
worked into one another, see the “Sketch of the Life of Jesus,”
1901, p. 52 ff., “After the Mission of the Disciples. Literary and
historical problems.” A theory resting on the same principle was
lately worked out in detail by Johannes Weiss, _Das älteste
Evangelium_ (The Earliest Gospel), 1903, p. 205 ff.
295 It is typical of the constant agreement of the critical conclusions
in thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology that Wrede
also observes: “The transfiguration and Peter’s confession are
closely connected in content” (p. 123). He also clearly perceives
the inconsistency in the fact that Peter at Caesarea Philippi gives
evidence of possessing a knowledge which he and his fellow‐disciples
do not show elsewhere (p. 119), but the fact that it is Peter, not
Jesus, who reveals the Messianic secret, constitutes a very serious
difficulty for Wrede’s reading of the facts, since this assumes
Jesus to have been the revealer of it.
296 “After these years shall my Son, the Christ, die, together with all
who have the breath of men. Then shall the Age be changed into the
primeval silence; seven days, as at the first beginning so that no
man shall be left. After seven days shall the Age, which now sleeps,
awake, and perishability shall itself perish.”
297 Difficult problems are involved in the prediction of the
resurrection in Mark xiv. 28. Jesus there promises His disciples
that He will “go before them” into Galilee. That cannot mean that He
will go alone into Galilee before them, and that they shall there
meet with Him, their risen Master; what He contemplates is that He
shall return _with_ them, at their head, from Jerusalem to Galilee.
Was it that the manifestation of the Son of Man and of the Judgment
should take place there? So much is clear: the saying, far from
directing the disciples to go away to Galilee, chains them to
Jerusalem, there to await Him who should lead them home. It should
not therefore be claimed as supporting the tradition of the
Galilaean appearances.
We find it “corrected” by the saying of the “young man” at the
grave, who says to the women, “Go, tell His disciples and Peter that
He goeth before you into Galilee. There shall ye see Him as He said
unto you.”
Here then the idea of following in point of time is foisted upon the
words “he goeth before you,” whereas in the original the word has a
purely local sense, corresponding to the καὶ ἦν προάγων αὐτοὺς ὁ
Ιησοῦς in Mark x. 32.
But the correction is itself meaningless since the visions took
place in Jerusalem. We have therefore in this passage a more
detailed indication of the way in which Jesus thought of the events
subsequent to His Resurrection. The interpretation of this
unfulfilled saying is, however, wholly impossible for us: it was not
less so for the earliest tradition, as is shown by the attempt to
give it a meaning by the “correction.”
298 Here it is evident also from the form taken by the prophecy of the
sufferings that the section Mark viii. 34 ff. cannot possibly come
after the revelation at Caesarea Philippi, since in it, it is the
thought of the general sufferings which is implied. For the same
reason the predictions of suffering and tribulation in the Synoptic
Apocalypse in Mark xiii. cannot be derived from Jesus.
299 Weisse and Bruno Bauer had long ago pointed out how curious it was
that Jesus in the sayings about His sufferings spoke of “many”
instead of speaking of “His own” or “the believers.” Weisse found in
the words the thought that Jesus died for the nation as a whole;
Bruno Bauer that the “for many” in the words of Jesus was derived
from the view of the later theology of the Christian community. This
explanation is certainly wrong, for so soon as the words of Jesus
come into any kind of contact with early theology the “many”
disappear to give place to the “believers.” In the Pauline words of
institution the form is: My body for you (1 Cor. xi. 24).
Johannes Weiss follows in the footsteps of Weisse when he interprets
the “many” as the nation (_Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes_, 2nd
ed., 1909, p. 201). He gives however, quite a false turn to this
interpretation by arguing that the “many” cannot include the
disciples, since they “who in faith and penitence have received the
tidings of the Kingdom of God no longer need a special means of
deliverance such as this.” They are the chosen, to them the Kingdom
is assured. But a ransom, a special means of salvation, is needful
for the mass of the people, who in their blindness have incurred the
guilt of rejecting the Messiah. For this grave sin, which is,
nevertheless, to some extent excused as due to ignorance, there is a
unique atoning sacrifice, the death of the Messiah.
This theory is based on a distinction of which there is no hint in
the teaching of Jesus; and it takes no account of the
predestinarianism which is an integral part of eschatology, and
which, in fact, dominated the thoughts of Jesus. The Lord is
conscious that He dies only for the elect. For others His death can
avail nothing, nor even their own repentance. Moreover, He does not
die in order that this one or that one may come into the Kingdom of
God; He provides the atonement in order that the Kingdom itself may
come. Until the Kingdom comes even the elect cannot possess it.
300 One might use it as a principle of division by which to classify the
lives of Jesus, whether they make Him go to Jerusalem to work or to
die. Here as in so many other places Weisse’s clearness of
perception is surprising. Jesus’ journey was according to him a
pilgrimage to death, not to the Passover.
301 “That ye enter not into temptation” is the content of the prayer
that they are to offer while watching with Him.
302 As long ago as 1880, H. W. Bleby (_The Trial of Jesus considered as
a Judicial Act_) had emphasised this circumstance as significant.
The injustice in the trial of Jesus consisted, according to him, in
the fact that He was condemned on His own admission without any
witnesses being called. Dalman, it is true, will not admit that this
technical error was very serious.
But the really important point is not whether the condemnation was
legal or not; it is the significant fact that the High Priest called
no witnesses. Why did he not call any? This question was obscured
for Bleby and Dalman by other problems.
303 That would have been to utter a heresy which would alone have
sufficed to secure His condemnation. It would certainly have been
brought up as a charge against Him.
304 When it is assumed that the Messianic claims of Jesus were generally
known during those last days at Jerusalem there is a temptation to
explain the absence of witnesses in regard to them by supposing that
they were too much a matter of common knowledge to require evidence.
But in that case why should the High Priest not have fulfilled the
prescribed formalities? Why make such efforts first to establish a
different charge? Thus the obscure and unintelligible procedure at
the trial of Jesus becomes in the end the clearest proof that the
public knew nothing of the Messiahship of Jesus.
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