Did Jesus exist?
Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus: Arthur Drews (1912)
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Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus: Arthur Drews (1912)

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The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus

Arthur Drews, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Techn. Hochschule, Karlsruhe

Translated by Joseph McCabe

" Woe unto you, lawyers ! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge :
ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered." --- Luke XI, 52.

Contents

PREFACE -------- i x

THE JEWISH WITNESSES

1. PHILO AND JUSTUS OF TIBERIAS - 2

2. JOSEPHUS - .... 3

3. THE TALMUD - - 10

THE ROMAN WITNESSES

1. PLINY AND SUETONIUS - 18

2. TACITUS - ... 20

(a) Evidential Value of the Passage - 22

(b) Question of the Genuineness of Annals, xv. 44 - 24
I. Arguments for the Genuineness - 25

II. Arguments against the Genuineness - 37

(a) General Observations - 37

(b) The Criticisms of Hochart - 41

(c) Possibility of Various Interpretations of Annals,

xv, 44 - 49

3. "LUCUS A NON LUCENDO" - 56

THE WITNESS OF PAUL

1. PROOFS OF THE HISTORICITY OF JESUS IN PAUL - 65

(a) Simple Proofs - - 69

(b) The Appearances of the Risen Christ - - 77

(c) The Account of the Last Supper - 80

(d) The " Brothers " of the Lord - 84

(e) The " Words of the Lord " - 91

2. PAUL NO WITNESS TO THE HISTORICITY OF JESUS - 98

3. THE QUESTION OF GENUINENESS - 102

(a) Emotional Arguments for Genuineness - - 103

(b) Arguments for Genuineness from the Times - - 106

(c) The Spuriousness of the Pauline Epistles - 116



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

1. THE SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS - 123

2. THE WITNESS OF TRADITION - 130

3. THE METHODS OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM - 134

(a) The Methodical Principles of Theological History - 134

(b) The Methods of J. Weiss - 136

4. THE "UNIQUENESS" AND " UNINVENTD3ILITY " OF

THE GOSPEL PORTRAIT OF JESUS - - 142

5. SCHMIEDEL'S "MAIN PILLARS" - - 144

6. THE METHODS OF "THE CHRIST-MYTH" - 156

(a) The Literary Character of the Gospels - - 156

(b) The Mythical Character of the Gospels - - 161

7. THE MYTHIC-SYMBOLIC INTERPRETATION OF THE

GOSPELS - - 169

(a) The Sufferings and Elevation of the Messiah - - 169

(b) The Character and Miracles of the Messiah - - 174

(c) John the Baptist and the Baptism of Jesus - - 183

(d) The Name of the Messiah - 194

(e) The Topography of the Gospels - - 200

I. Nazareth - - 200

II. Jerusalem - - 205

III. Galilee - 209

(/) The Chronology of the Gospels - - 212

(g) The Pre-Christian Jesus - 216

(h) The Transformation of the Mythical into an Historical

Jesus - - 228

(i) Jesus and the Pharisees and Scribes - - 235
(k) Further Modifications of Prophetical and Historical

Passages - - 245

8. HISTORIANS AND THE GOSPELS - 247



THE WORDS OF THE LORD - 249

(a) The Tradition of the Words of the Lord - 249

(b) The Controversies with the Pharisees - - 253

(c) Sayings of Jesus on the Weak and Lowly - 258

(d) Jesus' s Belief in God the Father - 262

(e) Love of Neighbours and of Enemies - - 266
(/) The Sermon on the Mount 271
(g) Further Parallel Passages - 277

10. THE PARABLES OF JESUS - 280

11. GENERAL RESULT - 288

12. THE " STRONG PERSONALITY " - 290

13. THE HISTORICAL JESUS AND THE IDEAL CHRIST - 296

14. IDEA AND PERSONALITY : SETTLEMENT OF THE RELIGIOUS CRISIS - - 301

APPENDIX - 309

INDEX -------- 317



ERRATA



Page 12, fifth line of first footnote, den should read dem.

Page 25, fifth line from end, "in my opinion" should read "in his
opinion."

Page 27, last two lines of text, " Von der Burgh, Van Eysing," should
read " Van den Bergh van Eysinga."



PREFACE



THE present work is an abbreviated and amended version, for
English readers, of the volume which the author recently
published as the second part of The Christ-Myth (English
translation, 1910, Fisher Unwin). The author described this
part as ' an answer to his opponents, with special reference
to theological methods," and dealt in the early part of it with
the theological critics who had assailed the results and the
methods adopted by him. It will be seen that the fault of
method is entirely on the side of the opponents, and that theo-
logians can maintain the historical reality of Jesus on methodical
arguments only when their methods are pre-arranged to lead
to that result. It is not the author's intention wholly to omit
the points of this controversy, as in this respect there is no
difference between the theologians of Germany and those of
other countries. The chief aim of the work, however, is
to collect, examine, and refute the arguments which are
advanced on the theological side for the historicity of Jesus.
In spite of their arrogant behaviour, the German theologians
have not been able to produce one single decisive reason for
the historicity of Jesus. It remains to be seen whether the
English authorities can adduce better proof of the validity of
the Christian belief than their German colleagues have done.
Besides doing this necessary critical work, it is hoped that the
book may also provide a better explanation of the rise of the
Christian religion than historical theology, as it is called, has
yet afforded. In this respect the author is indebted to the very
stimulating and informing works of Mr. J. M. Robertson
(Christianity and Mythology, Pagan Christs, and A Short History



x PEEFACE

of Christianity), and to the American writer Professor W. B.
Smith, whose works, Der vorchristliche Jesus and Ecce Deus,
ought to be in the hands of every student of the Christian
religion.

The question of the historicity of Jesus is a purely historical
question, and, as such, it must be settled with the resources of
historical research. This procedure is, however, in view of the
close connection of the subject with emotional and religious
elements, not inconsistent with the fact that the final decision
belongs to an entirely different province, that of philosophy,
which also controls subjective feeling. In this sense, the
question whether Jesus was an historical personage coincides
with the question of the significance of personality in the
general order of the world, and of the roots and motives of the
inner religious life generally.

The controversy in regard to the Christ-myth is at the
same time a struggle for the freedom and independence of the
modern mind, and of science and philosophy. Let there be
no mistake about it : as long as the belief in an historical
Jesus survives we shall not succeed in throwing off the yoke
of an alleged historical fact which is supposed to have taken
place two thousand years ago, yet has profoundly affected the
science and philosophy of Europe. What a situation it is
when the deepest thoughts of the modern mind must be
measured by the teaching of Jesus, and referred to a world
of ideas that has nothing to recommend it but the antiquity
of its traditions and the artificially engendered appreciation of
everything connected with it !

At the same time the Christ-myth controversy is a struggle
over religion. Religion is a life that emanates from the
depths of one's innermost self, an outgrowth of the mind and
of freedom. All religious progress consists in making faith
more intimate, in transferring the centre of gravity from the
objective to the subjective world, by a confident surrender to
the God within us. The belief in an historical instrument of



PREFACE xi

salvation is a purely external appreciation of objective facts.
To seek to base the religious life on it is not to regard the
essence of religion, but to make it for ever dependent on a
stage of mental development that has long been passed in the
inner life. Those who cling to an historical Jesus on religious
grounds merely show that they have never understood the
real nature of religion, or what " faith " really means in the
religious sense of the word. They see only the interest of
their Church, which assuredly profits by a confusion of true
religious faith, of a trustful surrender to the God within us
with the intellectual acceptance of certain facts of either a
dogmatic or an historical character ; they only deceive them-
selves and others when they imagine that they are promoting
the interest of religion.

Our science has not hitherto suffered the indignity of being
placed after theology in the hierarchy of culture, and so
being compelled to justify its deepest thoughts and achieve-
ments from the theological point of view, or concern itself
about theology at all. Our philosophy, however, allows faith
to be set above knowledge, in spite of the fact that faith is born
of the thirst for knowledge and consists in a view of the world ;
in this way theology comes to exercise control over the whole
province of philosophical knowledge. A philosophy that thus
comes to terms with theology, a " perfectly safe philosophy "
which seeks to live in peace with theology, is unworthy of the
name. For it is not the work of philosophy merely to prepare
academic theses, and deal with things that have no interest for
any person outside the lecture-hall and the study : its greatest
cultural task is to defend the rights of reason, to extend its
sway over every province of knowledge, and to rationalise
faith. In the words of Hegel, its task is "to disturb as much
as possible the ant-like zeal of the theologians who use critical
methods for the strengthening of their Gothic temple, to make
their work as difficult as possible, to drive them out of every
refuge, until none remains and they must show themselves



xii PEEFACE

openly in the light of day." It is from no accident, but in the
very nature of things, that a philosopher thus came to
denounce the truce which has so long and so artificially
been maintained with theology, and sought to show the
untenability of its central belief in an historical Jesus.

Meantime we may reflect with comfort on the words
of Dupuis : " There are large numbers of men so perversely
minded that they will believe everything except what is
recommended by sound intelligence and reason, and shrink
from philosophy as the hydrophobic shrinks from water.
These people will not read us, and do not concern us ; we
have not written for them. Their mind is the prey of the
priests, just as their body will be the prey of the worms. We
have written only for the friends of humanity and reason.
The rest belong to another world ; even their God tells them
that his kingdom is not of this world that is to say, not of
the world in which people use their judgment and that the
simple are blessed because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Let us, therefore, leave to them their opinions, and not envy
the priests such a possession. Let us pursue our way, without
lingering to count the number of the credulous. When we
have unveiled the sanctuary in which the priest shuts himself,
we can hardly expect that he will press his followers to read
us. We will be content with a happy revolution, and we will
see that, for the honour of reason, it is so complete as to
prevent the clergy from doing any further harm to mankind."

ARTHUR DREWS.



THE WITNESSES TO THE

HISTORICITY OF JESUS



THE NON-CHRISTIAN WITNESSES

IN view of the vagueness, defectiveness, and vulnerability
of the evangelical accounts of Jesus, as far as his historical
reality is concerned, the witnesses in non-Christian litera-
ture have always occupied a prominent place in the
question of his historicity. As early as the first few
centuries of the present era pious Christians searched the
Jewish and pagan writers for references to Jesus, con-
vinced that such references ought to be found in them ;
they regarded with great concern the undeniable defects
of tradition, and, in the interest of their faith, endeavoured
to supply the want by more or less astute " pious frauds,"
such as the Acts of Pilate, the letter of Jesus to King
Abgar Ukkama of Edessa, 1 the letter of Pilate to Tiberius,
and similar forgeries. Greater still was the reliance on
the few passages in profane literature which seemed to
afford some confirmation of the historical truth of the
things described in the gospels. As these so-called non-
Christian witnesses are again brought forward to rebut
the denial of the historicity of Jesus, in the discussion
which has followed the appearance of The Christ Myth,
and are even pressed upon us as decisive testimony, we
must make a comprehensive inquiry into the value of
those references in profane writers which seem to support
the belief in an historical Jesus.

1 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, I, 13.
1



THE JEWISH WITNESSES



1. PHILO AND JUSTUS OF TIBERIAS.

LET us begin with the witnesses in Jewish literature.
Here we at once encounter the singular circumstance
that Philo (30 B.C. to 50 A.D.) makes no reference to
Christ. Philo, the Alexandrian philosopher and contem-
porary of Jesus, was by no means a secluded scholar who
took no interest in the fortunes of his people. As envoy
of the Alexandrian Jews to Caligula, he pleaded the
interests of his co-religionists at Rome, and, in all
probability, himself visited the land of his fathers. He
even in one place makes an incidental reference to Pilate,
who had caused an agitation among the Jews at Jerusalem
by some offence against their religious ideas. 1 We are
further indebted to him for some important information
on the Palestinian sect of the Essenes, who in many
respects closely resembled the Jessenes and Nazarenes, as
the Christians were at first called. His own views, in
fact, have so unmistakable an affinity with those of the
contemporary Jewish-Gnostic sects, 2 and some of these,
such as the Cainites, are so fully described by him 3 that
it is in the highest degree improbable that Philo was
unacquainted with the Nazarenes, on the supposition that
they really were an important body in his time, and
caused as serious an agitation among the Jews as is
commonly believed.

It may be suggested that Philo had no occasion to
speak about them.

How can we explain, then, that the Jewish historian

1 Schiirer, Geschichte des Jild. Volkes, 4th. ed. Ill, p. 678, etc.

2 Gfrorer, Philo und die Jild.-Alex. Theologie, 1835.

8 M. Friedlander, Der vorchristliche Jild. Gnostizismus, 1898, p. 19, etc.



THE JEWISH WITNESSES 3

Justus of Tiberias, another contemporary and a closer
fellow-countryman of the alleged historical Jesus he
lived at Tiberias, not far from Capernaum, where Jesus
is supposed to have been especially active is also silent
about them ? Justus wrote a chronicle of the Jewish
kings down to the time of Agrippa II. The original
work has been lost. We know it only from a reference
in Photius, a patriarch of Constantinople of the ninth
century. Photius assures us, however, that he read
through the Chronicle of Justus in search of references
to Jesus, and found none ; he attributes it to " the
disease " that is to say, the unbelief of the Jews that
such a man as Justus does not mention the appearance of
Christ, the fulfilment of the prophecies by him, and the
miracles he wrought. As, however, we learn from
Photius that the chronicle was merely a brief treatment
of a subject that had no direct connection with the life of
Jesus, we must not lay too much stress on the absence of
any reference. Still the fact remains that Photius himself
believed there ought to be some mention of Jesus, and was
surprised to find none.

2. JOSEPHUS.

We have next to see how we stand in relation to the
Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-100 A.D.), the
contemporary and political opponent of Justus of
Tiberias. He is the first profane writer who can
seriously be quoted for the historicity of Jesus. Josephus
wrote three large works the history of the Jews, the
history of the last Jewish war, and a defence of the
Jewish religion. In these, according to the theological
view, he cannot have had any occasion to deal with the
appearance of Jesus, an episode of no significance in the
history of the Jews, or with Christianity. At the time
w T hen he wrote the body was almost extinct as a Jewish
sect, and in any case of no consequence whatever. More-
over, the theologians say, it would have been very difficult



4 THE JEWISH WITNESSES

for him to deal with it from the point of view of either
side.

But Josephus has mentioned much less important
persons who, like Jesus, set up a messianic movement,
and suffered death for it.

Josephus has left us a luminous portrait of Pilate. He
depicts him in all his brutality and unscrupulousness. 1
Can we suppose that he refrained from telling how, in the
case of Jesus, his compatriots forced the proud Roman to
yield to them ? Or did he know nothing of any such
occurrence ? Is it possible that he never heard of the
exciting events which, as the gospels relate, occurred in
the metropolis of Judaea the triumphant entrance of
Jesus into Jerusalem, while the people acclaim him as
the expected Messiah, the growing anger of the ruling
parties, the taking of Jesus by night, the disturbance
before the Governor's house, the abandonment of one of
their own people by the Sanhedrim to the hated Roman
authorities, the disappearance of the body from the grave,
etc.? It would not be very easy to show that Jesus and
his affairs would seem " insignificant " to Josephus in
writing the history of the Jews, and that the sect brought
into existence by him would seem unworthy of mention.
At that time the Christian movement is supposed to have
reached a prominent place in public life and attracted
general attention. Can it be called an insignificant thing
when a new religious sect enters into such rivalry with
the old religion, from which it has sprung, as is ascribed
to early Christianity in the Acts of the Apostles, 2 and this
a very short time after the death of its founder ? We
have only to recall the three thousand souls who are
supposed to have been baptised in one day at Jerusalem,
in the very heart of the Jewish cult ! It is, of course,
an enormous Christian exaggeration ; but, in any case,
Christianity must have made great progress before the

1 Jeivish Antiquities, xviii, 3, i and 2 ; 4, i, etc. 2 ii, 41.



THE JEWISH WITNESSES 5

destruction of Jerusalem, if we are to put any faith
whatever in the account of its early years given in the
New Testament.

It has been suggested that Josephus concealed the
whole messianic movement among his people from the
Romans, and wished to represent the Jews to them as
extremely harmless, peaceful, and philosophical citizens ;
and that this explains his remarkable conduct. In other
parts of his works, however, Josephus does not make the
least difficulty about the messianic agitations of the people
of Palestine. In the Antiquities, 1 for instance, he gives
the episode of the false Messiah who induced the Samaritans
to go up with him to the holy mountain Gerizim, where he
would show them the sacred vessels which Moses was
supposed to have buried there, and thus he could inflame
them to rise against their Roman masters. He tells of
Judas the Gaulonite, who stirred up the people against
the census of Quirinius. 2 He also relates how Theudas
pretended to be a prophet and said that he could by his
sole word cause the waters of the Jordan to divide, and
so allow those who followed him to cross over in safety. 3
Does anyone seriously believe, in fact, that Josephus
could have concealed from the Romans, who had long
ruled over Palestine and were most accurately informed
as to the disposition of their subjects, the messianic
expectations and agitations of his compatriots, and repre-
sented them as harmless, in works w r hich were especially
concerned with their strained relations to their oppressors ?
It would be much the same as if a Pole, writing the
history of his country, were, in order to avert unkindly
feeling from his compatriots, to say nothing of their
dream of a restoration of the ancient kingdom of Poland,
and represent the Poles as " extremely harmless, peaceful,
and philosophical citizens "!

1 xviii, 4, i.

2 Antiquities, xviii, 1, i ; 1, 6; xx, 5, 2 ; Jewish War, ii, 8, i.
8 Antiquities, xx, 5, i.



6 THE JEWISH WITNESSES

As a matter of fact, it is hardly less ridiculous to make
any such tender feeling for the sensitiveness of Rome the
ground for the remarkable silence of Josephus, as Weinel
and many other theologians do, than for von Soden, another
theologian, to declare that Josephus would have been
" embarrassed " to pass judgment on the Christians and
the head of their sect from either side. 1 What sides
does he mean ? From the Roman side ? But it might
be a matter of complete indifference to them what
judgment a Josephus would pass on what was so von
Soden would have us believe in the eyes of the Jewish
historian, the insignificant sect of the Christians ? Does
he mean from the Jewish side? They would entirely
agree with him if he condemned it. Is it suggested that
he had a favourable opinion of the Christians ? This is,
in point of fact, the view of J. Weiss, and it harmonises
very well with the predilection of Josephus for the
Essenes. It seems to him an indication of " a friendly,
or at least impartial, disposition " that Josephus does not
mention the Christians and their founder. He therefore
rejects the view, put forward by Jiilicher, that Josephus
said nothing about the Christians because their sect
might discredit the Jewish faith. According to Jiilicher,
it is "not difficult to guess " why Josephus omitted the
Christian sect from his narrative : " not from shame and
not from hatred, but because he could not very well at
the same time represent the Jews, in whom he was
primarily interested, as supporters of the Roman monarchy
and of human civilisation, and describe the Christians (of
the first century), who were regarded as enemies of the
whole world, as an outcome of his pacific Jews. To be
silent about them was a cleverer tactic than vigorously to
shake them from his coat-tails" (!). It is remarkable
what astounding things these theologians will say.
Would not Josephus have done better, if he were minded

1 Hat Jesus gelebt ?, 13.



THE JEWISH WITNESSES 7

as Jiilicher says, to have separated himself as widely as
possible from the Christians? " In the same way as he
condemns the zealots," says Weiss, "who were responsible
for all the misfortunes of his country, he would have had
a fitting occasion to brand the fools or fanatics who had
drawn such false conclusions from the sayings of the
prophets ; to him especially the Christians must have
been the fittest lightning-conductor." According to
Weiss, therefore, the silence of Josephus is " no sign of
hatred of the Christians, but rather the reverse. An
enemy of the Christians would certainly have drawn
attention to them in order to relieve Judaism of the
charge of having anything to do with the sect." " His
silence is all the more puzzling" (p. 90). May not the
simple explanation be that in the time of Josephus the
Christians did not differ sufficiently from official Judaism
to require special mention ? Must we not conclude from
this silence of Josephus that he knew nothing about
Jesus, though, if Jesus had really existed and things had
occurred as tradition affirms, he ought certainly to have
heard of and mentioned him, just as he mentions a John
the Baptist and refers to other pretenders to the messiah-
ship and disturbers of the people ? Weinel maintains
that Josephus would only count as a witness against
the historicity of Jesus if he spoke of Christianity and
was silent only about Jesus (p. 107). But what if he had
no occasion to speak of it because our whole modern view
of the rise of Christendom, and the part it played during
the first century, is radically false ?

Josephus, however, is not silent about Jesus. In his
Jewish Antiquities (xviii, 3, 3) we read: "About this
time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed he should be
called man. He wrought miracles and was a teacher of
those who gladly accept the truth, and had a large
following among the Jews and pagans. He was the
Christ. Although Pilate, at the complaint of the leaders
of our people, condemned him to die on the cross, his



8 THE JEWISH WITNESSES

earlier followers were faithful to him. For he appeared
to them alive again on the third day, as god-sent prophets
had foretold this and a thousand other wonderful things
of him. The people [sect ?] of the Christians, which is
called after him, survives until the present day."

Here, it would appear, we have what we seek. Unfor-
tunately, the genuineness of the passage is by no means
admitted. There are two opinions on it. According to
one view, the whole passage is an interpolation ; according
to the other, it has merely been altered by a Christian hand.

Let us examine the words of Josephus which remain
after the expurgation of the supposed possible interpola-
tions. They are as follows : " About this time lived
Jesus, a wise man. He had a large following among
the Jews and pagans. Although Pilate, at the complaint
of the leaders of our people, condemned him to die on
the cross, his earlier followers were faithful to him. The
sect of the Christians, which is called after him, survives
until the present day." Immediately before this Josephus
tells of a rising of the Jews, due to a bitter feeling at the
conduct of Pilate, and its bloody suppression by the ruling
power. The words that immediately follow the passage
are : " Also about this time another misfortune befel the
Jews"; and we are told of the expulsion of the Jews from
Borne by Tiberius on account of the conduct of some of
their compatriots.

What is the connection between the reference to Jesus
and these two narratives ? That there must be some
connection, if Josephus himself has written the passage
about Jesus, goes without saying, in view of the character
of the writer. Josephus is always careful to have a
logical connection between his statements. The repres-
sion of the Jews by Pilate must, naturally, have been
regarded by Josephus as " a misfortune." We likewise
understand the concern of the Jewish historian at the
expulsion of his compatriots from Borne. These two
episodes are directly connected by their very nature.



THE JEWISH WITNESSES 9

But what have the condemnation and crucifixion of Jesus
to do with them? If Josephus really considered the
fate of Jesus as a misfortune of his people, why was he
content to devote to it a couple of meagre and lifeless
sentences ? Why was he silent about the followers of
Jesus ? We have already seen that the reasons usually
advanced for this silence are worthless. From a rational
point of view, Josephus had no occasion whatever to put
the passage about Jesus in the connection in which we
find it. That, on the other hand, the later Christians
had every interest in inserting the passage, and inserting
it precisely at this point, where there is question of events
in the time of Pilate and of the misfortunes of the Jews,
is clear enough ; it must have been to the Christians a
matter of profound astonishment and concern that in
such a connection there was not a word about Jesus,
whose name w r as for them intimately connected with that
of Pilate. And was not the condemnation of Jesus at
the demand of the Jewish leaders really the greatest
misfortune that the Jews had ever incurred ? 1 In the
edition of Origen published by the Benedictines it is said 2
that there was no mention of Jesus at all in Josephus
before the time of Eusebius (about 300 A.D., Ecclesiast.
Hist., I, 11). Moreover, in the sixteenth century Vossius
had a manuscript of the text of Josephus in which there
was not a word about Jesus. It seems, therefore, that
the passage must have been an interpolation, whether it
was subsequently modified or not. We are led to the
same conclusion by the fact that neither Justin, nor
Tertullian, nor Origen, nor Cyprian ever quotes Josephus
as a witness in their controversies with Jews and pagans.
Yet Justin, at least, could have had no better argument
than the testimony of a compatriot in his dialogue with
the Jew Trypho. Indeed, Origen says expressly that
Josephus did not recognise Jesus as the Messiah. 3

1 Cf. Origen, Contra Celsum, I, 47. 2 I, 362. s Contra Celsum, I, 47.



10 THE JEWISH WITNESSES

The same difficulties arise in regard to the other
passage in Josephus, 1 where the Jewish historian tells
how the younger Ananus (Hannas), at the time when the
governor Festus died and his successor Albinus was as
yet on the way, summoned a Council, brought before it
James, the " brother of Jesus, who was called Christ,"
and had him and some others stoned for transgression of
the law (62 A.D.). It is extremely doubtful whether
James is understood by Josephus to be the corporal
brother of Jesus, as brotherhood might very well mean
only that he belonged to the Jesus-sect. In that sense
Josephus would merely be saying that James was a
" brother of Jesus," or leader of those who venerated the
Messiah (Christ) under the name of Jesus. It is more
probable, however, that this passage also is a later inter-
polation, as Credner 2 and Schiirer are disposed to admit.
Weiss also (88) regards this passage in the text as a
Christian interpolation ; and Jiilicher too says, in his
essay on " Religion and the Beginning of Christianity,"
in Hinneberg's Kultur der Gegenwart (2nd ed. 1909),
that Josephus leaves Jesus " unmentioned " (loc. cit., 43).

We understand, therefore, why Origen knows nothing
of the passage. In his polemical work against Celsus he
does not mention it when he comes to speak of James, 8
though he refers to another in which Josephus represents
the destruction of Jerusalem as a punishment of the Jews
for having put James to death ; which certainly does not
accord with the facts.

3. THE TALMUD.

When we have thus excluded Josephus from the
number of witnesses to the historicity of Jesus, there
remains only the question whether there may not be some
evidence in the other Jewish literature of the time : in
the body of Kabbinical writings collected under the name

1 Antiquities, xx, 9, i. 2 Einl. ins N. T., 1836, p. 581. 3 I, 47.



11

of the Talmud, which cover a period from about 200 B.C.
to 600 A.D. The answer is that no information about
Jesus is to be found in the Talmud. One would suppose
that, in works intended solely for a Jewish public, the
Rabbis of the time would not fail to take the opportunity
of attacking Jesus, if he spoke and acted as the gospels
describe. Instead of this, they almost entirely ignore
him, and, when they do mention him, their references
have not the least historical importance. Von Soden
declares that they had no opportunity of dealing seriously
with him, as the oldest collection, entitled " Sayings of
the Fathers," contains only moral sentences. Never-
theless, all these moral aphorisms, definitions of religious
law, and ritual prescriptions are closely connected with
the meaning of the work. They partly relate to the same
subjects as the sayings of Jesus. They bring together
the opposing views of the various famous Rabbis. Why
is the Talmud silent about Jesus in this connection?
Why is there not the slightest definite reference to the
man who expounded the law more subtly than any other
Jewish teacher, and made the most serious attack upon
the orthodox conception ?

It is poor consolation for the supporters of the historicity
of Jesus when an expert on the Talmud, Chwolson, says
that there was no contemporary Rabbinical literature.
In the extant Rabbinical literature of the second century
there is, on his own showing, much material and many
sayings that " belong to the Rabbis of the second and
first centuries of the Christian era." 1 In fact, there are
supposed to be among them three valuable references
of the first and beginning of the second century the
experience, namely, of the Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus,
the brother-in-law of Gamaliel II., with the Judaeo-
Christian James of Kefar-Schechania, of whom it is said
that he was a " pupil " (disciple) of Jesus, and had healed

1 Ueber die Frage ob Jesus gelebt hat, p. 11.



12 THE JEWISH WITNESSES

the sick in the name of Jesus. Then there is the explana-
tion by Jesus of a difficulty in the law, which the said
James put to him, and which Jesus settled by a certain
verse, after the fashion of the Rabbis. Lastly, there is
the doubt of the Rabbi as to the orthodoxy of Jesus and
the disdain he himself incurred by becoming a Christian.
But who doubts for a moment that at the close of the
first century and in the first half of the second sayings
and explanations of the law were current in the name of
Jesus, that the name of Jesus was used in exorcisms, and
that sympathy with the Jesus-sect might in certain
circumstances have very unpleasant consequences for a
Eabbi ?'

There is no room for doubt that after the destruction
of Jerusalem, and especially during the first quarter of
the second century, the hostility of the Jews and
Christians increased, as not only Chwolson himself
(Das letzte Passahmahl Christi) and Joel, 2 but also
Lublinski, has recently shown. 8 Indeed, by the year 130
the hatred of the Jews for the Christians became so fierce
that a Rabbi, whose niece had been bitten by a serpent,
preferred to let her die rather than see her healed " in
the name of Jesus." But when Chwolson says that we
see from these passages that the Rabbis of the second
half of the first century, or the beginning of the second,
were "well acquainted with the person of Christ " (13),
he clearly deceives himself and his readers, if the impres-
sion is given that they had any personal knowledge of
him.

On the other hand, the Rabbis are said to have
possessed, as early as the year 71 A.D., a gospel which,

1 Moreover, it is by no means established that the Jesus whom James
of Kefar followed was the Jesus of the gospels. Neubauer, in his text of
the Talmud, read, instead of Jesus ha-Nozri (the Nazarene), Jesus Pandira,
who was supposed to be a contemporary of the Rabbi Akiba (p. 135). Cf.
K. Lippe, Das Evangelium Matthaei vor den Forum der Bibel und des
Talmud, 1889, p. 26.

2 Blicke in die Religionsgeschiclite, II, 1883, especially p. 73, etc.

8 Die Entstehung des Christenthums aus der antiken Kultur, 1910.



THE JEWISH WITNESSES 13

according to Chwolson, " was probably the original gospel
of Matthew." About that time a judge appointed by the
Eomans, " undoubtedly a Judaeo-Christian of Pauline
tendencies," though he is not expressly described as such,
quotes Mattheiv v, 17, in the Aramaic language, where it
is said that Christ did not wish to abolish, but to supple-
ment, the Mosaic law. In his work Jesus, die Hdretiker
und die Christen nach den dltesten judischen Angaben
(1910, p. 19, etc.), Strach has given us a literal translation
of this passage. 1 It runs :

Imma Salom was the wife of the Eabbi Eliezer, the
sister of Rabban Gamaliel. Among his acquaintances
was a " philosopher " who had the reputation of being
incorruptible. They wished, to make him ridiculous.
Therefore she [Imma] brought to him a golden candle-
stick, and said : " I desire a part of the family property."
He answered them : " Divide it." Then he [B. Gamaliel]
said : " It is written for us 2 that, where there is a son,
the daughter inherits nothing." He answered : " Since
ye were driven from your land the law of Moses is
abolished, and there is Avon-gillajon [Evangelium = the
Gospel] , in which it is written, ' Son and daughter shall
inherit together.' " On the following day he [E. Gamaliel]
on his own part brought him a Libyan ass. Then he
replied : "I have searched further in the Avon-gillajon,
and it is written therein : ' I, Avon-gillajon, have not come
to do away with the Thora, but to add to the Thora of
Moses have I come.' And it is further written therein :
' Where there is a son, the daughter shall not inherit.'"
Then she said : " Thy light shineth like a candle." And
R. Gamaliel said : " The ass has come, and has attached
the candle "

i.e., someone had spoiled the effect of a small bribe by
giving a larger one.

It is possible that we really have here a reference to
the text of Matthew, and this is the more likely when we
consider the play upon the candlestick, in reference to
Matthew v, 14-16. That there is no question of our
Matthew is certain, as there is no such passage in any of

1 Babyl. Talmud Sabbath, p. 116, etc. 2 Numbers xxvii, 8.



14 THE JEWISH WITNESSES

our gospels that the son and daughter shall inherit
together ; Jesus, on the contrary, often expressly dis-
suades from mingling in these quarrels about inheritance. 1
But what right has Chwolson to put the witness of this
" Primitive Matthew," which seems to be referred to in
the anecdote, about the year 71 A.D. ? Chwolson relies
on the fact that R. Gamaliel (died about 124) was the
son of the R. Simeon ben Gamaliel who is known to us
from Acts v, 34, where he cleverly speaks for the
Christians, and Acts xxii, 3, as a teacher of the Apostle
Paul, and who was executed about 70 A.D. with other
Rabbis who had taken part in the rising against the
Romans. He gratuitously assumes that the passage in
the Talmud refers to the quarrel about the property of
the dead father, which would be divided about the year 71.
This is plausible enough if there is question in the passage
of a genuine quarrel about inheritance. But that is
precisely what the text of the passage excludes. It is
expressly stated that they wished to bring ridicule upon
the " philosopher " who had an unmerited repute for
incorruptibility. There is question, therefore, of a purely
fictitious quarrel about inheritance, and there is no reason
to suppose that this would necessarily be about the year 71.
Indeed, the text itself shows that it was not, as the Jews
were not yet expelled in 71 ; so that Chwolson finds himself
compelled to change the expression " driven from your
country " into " lost your country." Hence Chwolson's
statement that there is evidence of a Gospel of Matthew
in 71 A.D. breaks down. Moreover, even if the existence
of such a gospel at that time were proved, it would have
no bearing on the historicity of Jesus. The saying in
Matthew v, 17 is not at all quoted in the Talmud passage
as a saying of Jesus, as one would gather from Chwolson.
" We see," says Chwolson emphatically and in large type,
" from this important reference that not only was there

1 Luke xii, 14.



THE JEWISH WITNESSES 15

a Gospel of Matthew in existence about the year 71 A.D.,
but it was already well known to the Christians of the
time." As you please ; but one would like to know what
this proves in regard to the historicity of Jesus. 1

In addition to the few first-century references quoted
by Chwolson, and regarded by him as "of great historical
value," the Talmud contains a comparatively large number
of references to Jesus, mostly of the third and fourth
centuries. They have, of course, as Chwolson admits,
"no historical value whatever " (p. 11). They are rather
caricatures of Jesus, when they do plainly refer to him ;
though this, on account of the cryptic phrasing of. the
Babbis, does not seem to be the case quite as frequently
as is generally supposed. Derenbourg has shown that
the much-quoted Stada or ben Sat'da is not originally
identical with Jesus, and Strach also admits that the
scanty material in regard to Jesus which earlier students
found in the Talmud shrinks still further on more careful
inquiry. 2 Julicher, however, has pointed out that, as the
caricatures of the Jesus-story are familiar to B. Akiba,
we may conclude that the Christian tradition itself is
much older. Now, Akiba met his end, in old age, on the
occasion of the bloody rising of the Jews under Bar
Kochba, in the year 135. It is not disputed that the
evangelical tradition existed in the first third of the
second century, when the hostility of the Jews and
Christians was at its height. What " proof " is there,
then, of the historicity of Jesus in the fact that Akiba, a
fierce enemy of the Christians, spoke bitterly of Jesus at
that time ? Certainly he regards him as an historical
personage, just as the Talmud generally never doubts that
Jesus had really existed. But Joel has, in this con-
nection, shown that the Talmudists of the second century
were careless about everything except the study of the

1 Compare Steudel, ImKampfum die Christusmythe, 1910, p. 83, etc.

2 There is a complete collection of the relevant passages in H. Laible,
Jesus Christus im Talmud, 1891, 2nd ed. 1900.



16 THE JEWISH WITNESSES

scriptures and the law, and pointed out that it is " one of
the most curious and astonishing consequences " of this
indifference that they were so poorly informed in regard
to events in the time of Jesus. 1 The Talmud derives all
that it knows of the origin of Christianity from the little
that has reached it of the gospel tradition and from the
impression it has of the life of Jesus from the events of
the second century ; and it changes its statements, as
time goes on, in harmony with the changes in the
Christian tradition. Thus Akiba, for instance, followed
the narrative of the Synoptics in regard to the death of
Jesus, and put the execution on the Feast-day. On the
other hand, the somewhat later Mischna iv, 1, and the
Gemara give the later version of the Gospel of John, that
the death was on the Day of Preparation for the Passover.
Hence the Talmud has no independent tradition about
Jesus; all that it says of him is merely an echo of
Christian and pagan legends, which it reproduces accord-
ing to the impressions of the second and later centuries,
not according to historical tradition. 2 That is, moreover,
the view of Jiilicher in Kultur der Gegenwart, where he
says that the Talmud has " borrowed " its knowledge of
Jesus from the gospels. The Talmud is, in fact, so
imperfectly acquainted with the time and the circum-
stances of Jesus that it confuses him with the Rabbi
Josua ben Perachja, or a pupil of his of the same name
(about 100 B.C.), and even makes him a contemporary of
Akiba in the first third of the second century. Can we,
in such circumstances, pretend that there is any evidence
for the historicity of Jesus in the fact that the Talmud
does not question it ?

It is not true, however, as has recently been stated,
that no Jew ever questioned the historical reality of
Jesus, so that we may see in this some evidence for his
existence. The Jew Trypho, whom Justin introduces in

1 Loc. cit., p. 54. 2 Joel, loc. cit., p. 54, etc.



THE JEWISH WITNESSES 17

his Dialogue with Trypho, expresses himself very scepti-
cally about it. " Ye follow an empty rumour," he says,
" and make a Christ for yourselves." "If he was born
and lived somewhere, he is entirely unknown." 1 This
work appeared in the second half of the second century ;
it is therefore the first indication of a denial of the
human existence of Jesus, and shows that such opinions
were current at the time.



1 viii, 3. Compare also K. Lippe, Das Evangelium des Matthaus.



1. PLINY AND SUETONIUS.

WE now come to the Roman witnesses [to the historicity
of Jesus.

Of the younger Pliny it is hardly necessary to speak
further in this connection. He was dragged into the
discussion of the " Christ-myth " at a late stage, merely
to enlarge the list of witnesses to the historicity of Jesus.
No one seriously believes that any such evidence is found
in Pliny. 1 In his correspondence with the Emperor
Trajan, which is believed to have taken place about the
year 113, and which is occupied with the question how
Pliny, as Proconsul of the province of Bithynia in Asia
Minor, was to behave in regard to the Christians, he
informs the Emperor that the adherents of the sect sing
hymns to Christ at daybreak "as if he were a god (quasi
deo)." What this proves as regards the historical reality
of the man Christ we should be pleased to have rationally
explained. 2 What has been said on the subject up to

1 It is characteristic of the tactics of our opponents that certain Catholic
writers have begun to appeal to Porphyry, the Neopla tonic philosopher,
who lived 232-304 A.D. He wrote many works against Christianity,
which we know only indirectly from the refutations of Methodius and
Eusebius. No one can say precisely what they contained, as the Emperor
Theodosius II. prudently ordered them to be burned in public in the year
435. What does that matter to the theologian as long as he can bring
one more name into the field ?

2 Moreover, the genuineness of this correspondence of Pliny and Trajan
is by no means certain. Justin does not mention it on an occasion when
we should expect him to do so, and even Tertullian's supposed reference to
it (Apol., cap. ii) is very doubtful. The tendency of the letters to put the
Christians in as favourable a light as possible is too obvious not to excite
some suspicion. For these and other reasons the correspondence was
declared by experts to be spurious even at the time of its first publication,
at the beginning of the sixteenth century ; and recent authorities, such as
Semler, Aub (Histoire des Persecutions de I'^glise, 1875, p. 215, ,etc.),
Havet (Le Christianisme et ses Origines, 1884, iv, 8), and Hochart (Etudes

18



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 19

the present is merely frivolous, adapted only to an utterly
thoughtless circle of readers or hearers. Yet even a man
like Jiilicher does not hesitate to quote Pliny among the
profane witnesses. He also mentions Marcus Aurelius,
who expresses his anger against the Christians in his
Meditations (about the year 175 !), and assures us that
what is meant there by Christianity is the community of
those who believed in the Jesus of our and their gospels
as their God and Saviour (p. 17). We are grateful for this
" information," but we should have expected that a
scholar like Jiilicher would have something more serious
to tell us on the subject.

There seems to be more significance in the words of
the Roman historian Suetonius (77-140 A.D.), who tells
us in his Life of Claudius (c. 25) that that emperor
" expelled from Rome the Jews because, at the instiga-
tion of Chrestus, they were perpetually making trouble "
(Claudius Judseos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes
Roma expulit). If we only knew precisely who is meant
by this Chrestus ! The name in the text is not
" Christus," but " Chrestus " (and in some manuscripts
Cherestus), which is by no means the usual designation
of Jesus, while it is a common name, especially among
Roman freedmen. Hence the whole passage in Suetonius
may have nothing whatever to do with the question of
Christianity. It may just as well refer to any disturb-
ances whatever caused among the Jews by a man named
Chrestus, and it does not say much for the " scientific "
spirit of theologians when they interpret it in their own
sense without further ado.

An attempt has been made to connect the passage in
Suetonius with the messianic expectation of the Jews,
and to interpret it in the sense of referring either to

au Sujet de la Persecution des Chretiens sous Neron, 1885, pp. 79-143 ;
compare also Bruno Bauer, Christus und die Casaren, 1877, p. 268, etc.,
and the anonymously published work of Edwin Johnson, Antigua Mater,
1887), which have disputed its authenticity, either as a whole or in
material points.



20 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

quarrels in the Jewish community at Home owing to the
belief of those who held that Jesus was the Messiah they
all expected, or to a general agitation of Roman Judaism
on account of its messianic ideas and hostility to the
pagan world. The first alternative, however, is not very
helpful in view of the fact that, when Paul came to
Borne about ten years afterwards to preach the gospel,
the Jews there seem to have known nothing whatever
about Jesus; and, according to the account in Acts, his
arrival led to no disturbance among them. 1 The second
alternative, on the other hand, contains no evidence for
the historicity of Jesus, as, even if we substitute Christus
for Chrestus, " Christus " is merely the Greek-Latin
translation of " Messiah," and the phrase " at the instiga-
tion of Chrestus " would refer to the Messiah generally,
and not at all necessarily to the particular Messiah Jesus
as an historical personality. 2

In any case, however we interpret the passage of
Suetonius, it has no bearing whatever on the question of
the historicity of Jesus. Jiilicher and Weinel admit this
when they omit Suetonius in their enumeration of profane
witnesses. J. Weiss also admits : " The passage in
Suetonius relating to Jewish disturbances at Eome in
the time of Claudius ' impulsore Chresto ' betrays so
inaccurate a knowledge of the facts that it cannot
seriously be regarded as a witness " (p. 88).

2. TACITUS.

The passage in Suetonius leaves it uncertain who
Chrestus is, and cannot, therefore, be advanced as a

1 Acts xxviii, 17, etc.

2 In his Geschichte der R&misclien Kaiserzeit, Bd. I, Abt. I (1883),
p. 447, Hermann Schiller also connects the expulsion of the Jews under
Claudius with their domestic disturbances, and says: "It is time to
desist from the practice of identifying the impulsor Chrestus in Suetonius
with Christ. Words ending in ' tor ' stand for a constant property, or an
act that impresses a definite and permanent stamp on the subject in
question ; in neither case can we refer this to Christ, who had never been
in Rome, and was no longer living ; the activity of the impulsar can relate
only to the assidue tumultuantes referred to."



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 21

proof of the historicity of Jesus. It is very different
with the evidence of Tacitus. In the Annals (xv, 44)
Christ is expressly mentioned as an historical personage.
The historian has related what measures were taken by
Nero to lessen the suffering brought about by the great
fire at Home in the year 64, and to remove the traces of
it. He then continues : "But neither the aid of man, nor
the liberality of the prince, nor the propitiations of the
gods, succeeded in destroying the belief that the fire had
been purposely lit. In order to put an end to this rumour,
therefore, Nero laid the blame on and visited with severe
punishment those men, hateful for their crimes, whom
the people called Christians [Ergo abolendo rumori Nero
subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poanis affecit quos per flagitia
invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat] . He from whom
the name was derived, Christus, was put to death by the
procurator Pontius Pilatus in the reign of Tiberius [autor
nominis ejus Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per procura-
torem Pentium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat] . But the
pernicious superstition, checked for a moment, broke out
again, not only in Judaea, the native land of the mon-
strosity, but also in Rome, to which all conceivable
horrors and abominations flow from every side, and find
supporters. First, therefore, those were arrested who
openly confessed; then, on their information, a great
number, who were not so much convicted of the fire as of
hatred of the human race. Eidicule was poured on them
as they died ; so that, clothed in the skins of beasts, they
were torn to pieces by dogs, or crucified, or committed to
the flames, and when the sun had gone down they were
burned to light up the night [Igitur primum correpti, qui
fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitude ingens, haud
proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis
convicti sunt. Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum
tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent, aut crucibus affixi,
aut flammandi, atque ubi defecisset dies, in usum nocturni
luminis urerentur] . Nero had lent his garden for this



22 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

spectacle, and gave games in the Circus, mixing with the
people in the dress of a charioteer or standing in the
chariot. Hence there was a strong sympathy for them,
though they might have been guilty enough to deserve
the severest punishment, on the ground that they were
sacrificed, not to the general good, but to the cruelty of
one man."

(a) Evidential Value of the Passage. When Tacitus
is assumed to have written, about the year 117, that the
founder of the sect, Christus, was put to death by the
procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, Chris-
tianity was already an organised religion with a settled
tradition. Even the gospels, or at least three of them,
are supposed to have then been in existence. Hence
Tacitus might have derived his information about Jesus,
if not directly from the gospels, at all events indirectly
from them by means of oral tradition. That was the
view of Dupuis, who writes : " Tacitus says what the
legend said. Had he been speaking of the Brahmans, he
would have said, in the same way, that they derived their
name from a certain Brahma, who had lived in India, as
there was a legend about him ; yet Brahma would not on
that account have lived as a man, as Brahma is merely
the name of one of the three manifestations of the
personified god-head. When Tacitus spoke thus in his
account of Nero and the sect of the Christians, he merely
gave the supposed etymology of the name, without caring
in the least whether Christ had really existed or it was
merely the name of the hero of some sacred legend.
Such an inquiry was quite foreign to his work." : Even
J. Weiss observes : " Assuredly there were the general
lines of even a purely fictitious Christian tradition already
laid down about the year 100 ; Tacitus may therefore
draw upon this tradition " (p. 88). It has been said, on the
authority of Mommsen, that Tacitus may have derived his

1 Ursprung der Gottesverehrung , p. 223 ; cf. also p. 227.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 23

information from the Acts of the Senate and the archives
of the State, and it has been suggested that his authority
was Cluvius Eufus, who was consul under Caligula. Weiss
says, however : " That he or any other had seen a report
from Pontius Pilate in the records of the Senate is a
hypothesis I should not care to adopt, as it would be
complicating a simple matter with an improbability."
" Archival studies," we read in the Handbuch der klassi-
schen Altertumswissenschaft, "are not very familiar to
ancient historiography ; and Tacitus has paid very little
attention to the acta diurna and the records of the
Senate." ' In fact, Hermann Schiller says, in his
Geschichte des Romischen Kaiserreichs unter der
Eegierung des Nero (1872) : " We are accustomed to
hearing Tacitus praised as a model historian, and in
many respects it may be true ; but it does not apply to
his criticism of his authorities and his own research, for
these were astonishingly poor in Tacitus. He never
studied the archives." ' It is, moreover, extremely
improbable that a special report would be sent to Home,
and incorporated in the records of the Senate, in regard to
the death of a Jewish provincial, Jesus. " The execution
of a Nazareth carpenter was one of the most insignificant
events conceivable among the movements of Roman
history in those decades ; it completely disappeared
beneath the innumerable executions inflicted by the
Eoman provincial authorities. It would be one of the
most remarkable instances of chance in the world if it
were mentioned in any official report." ! It is the sort of
thing we may expect from a Tertullian, who, in his
Apology for Christianity (c. 21), tells one who doubts the
truth of the gospel story that he will find a special report
of Pilate to Tiberius in the Roman archives. In the
mouth of a modern historian such a statement is frankly
ridiculous.

1 viii, 2 Abt., Heft 2, under "Tacitus."

2 Work quoted, p. 7. 8 Weiss, work quoted, p. 92.



24 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

There is nothing, then, in the records of the Senate,
and of Cluvius Eufus we know next to nothing. As
Bruno Bauer ironically observes : "That the founder 'of
Christianity was put to death under Tiberius by the
procurator Pontius Pilate must have been discovered by
the historian who was not otherwise a very assiduous
searcher of the archives in the same archive which,
according to Tertullian, also gave the fact that the sun
was darkened at midday when Jesus died." 1 In any case
the reference in Tacitus is no proof of the historicity of
Jesus, because it is far too late ; it is almost certain that
the Roman historian simply derived it from the Christian
legend. Tacitus could in 117 know of Christ only what
reached him from Christian or intermediate circles. In
such matters he merely reproduced rumours in whatever
light his subject seemed to him to demand. 2

Here we might close our investigation into the profane
witnesses. We have reached the same result as J. Weiss:
"There is no really cogent witness in profane literature "
(p. 92). Weinel comes to the same conclusion when he
says that not much importance can be attached by either
side to non-Christian witnesses : "As there can be no
doubt that at the time when the Annals of Tacitus, the
letters of Pliny, and even the historical works of Josephus,
appeared, Christianity was widely spread in the Roman
Empire and traced its origin to Jesus, the man of
Nazareth, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate" (p. 104).
Jiilicher also, in the above-mentioned essay in Kultur der
Gegenwart, denies altogether the evidential value of the
Roman profane witnesses.

(b) The Question of the Genuineness of "Annals" xv, 44.
It is, however, not superfluous, perhaps, to consider more
closely what is regarded as the most important profane
witness for the historicity of Jesus that of Tacitus.
Such witnesses still seem to make a great impression on

1 Christus und die COsaren, p. 155. 2 Schiller, work quoted.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 25

the general public. Even theologians who are themselves
convinced of the worthlessness of such witnesses as
regards the problem we are considering do not fail, as a
rule, to repeat them to " the people " as if they gave
some confirmation of their belief in an historical Jesus.
That would be prevented once for all if it could be proved
that the whole passage is not from the pen of Tacitus at
all. However, this statement, which I advanced in the
Christ Myth in accordance with the view of the French
writer Hochart, has been so vehemently attacked, even
by those who, like Weiss and Weinel, admit the worth-
lessness of the passage as far as the historicity of Jesus
is concerned, that it seems necessary to inquire somewhat
closely into the genuineness of Annals, xv, 44.

I. ARGUMENTS FOB THE GENUINENESS.

There can, of course, be no question of any impossibility
of interpolating the passage in the Annals on the ground
of " the inimitable style of Tacitus," as defenders of the
genuineness repeat after Gibbon. 1 There is no " inimit-
able " style for the clever forger, and the more unusual,
distinctive, and peculiar a style is, like that of Tacitus,
the easier it is to imitate it. It would be strange if a
monastic copyist of Tacitus, occupied with his work for
months, if not for years, could not so far catch his style
as to be able to write these twenty or twenty-five lines in
the manner of Tacitus. Teuffel, in his Geschichte der
Rom. Literature (5th ed. 1890, ii, 1137), commends
Sulpicius Severus for his " skill " in imitating Tacitus,
among others, in his composition. Such an imitation is
not, in my opinion, beyond the range of possibility.
Moreover, as far as the historicity of Jesus is concerned,
we are, perhaps, interested only in one single sentence of
the passage, and that has nothing distinctively Tacitan
about it.

1 Decline and Fall, ch. xvi.



26 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

Equally invalid is the claim that the way in which
Tacitus speaks of the Christians excludes all idea of a
Christian interpolation. Von Soden thinks that Christians
" would certainly have put early Christianity in a more
favourable light, as they always did when they falsified
the story of the rise of Christianity in the historical works
they read." He overlooks the fact that the injurious
epithets on the new religion and its adherents would
probably, in the opinion of the forger, tend to strengthen
its chances of passing as genuine. They are just what
one might suppose to be in harmony with the disposition
of Tacitus. The expressions, moreover, are at once
enfeebled by the reference to the sympathy that the
Eomans are supposed to have felt for the victims of
Nero's cruelty. It is a common occurrence in the
accounts of the Christian martyrs for the pagan opponents
of Christianity to find their hostility changed into sym-
pathy, and recognise the innocence of the persecuted
Christians. We need quote only the description of Pilate
in Matthew and Luke his " I find no blame in him "
and " I am innocent of the blood of this just man " and
the supposed words of Agrippa when Paul is charged
before him : " This man doeth nothing worthy of death
or of bonds." 1 So Pliny the younger condemns the
Christians in his letter to Trajan, although he acknow-
ledges their innocence. This, it is true, is not the case
with Tacitus ; he seems rather to regard the Christians
as guilty, whether or no they were the authors of the
fire. But he allows the spectators to be touched with
pity for the executed Christians, and thus awakens a
sympathetic feeling for them in the readers of his
narrative.

It is said, however, that Tacitus, " on account of the
difficulty of his style and his whole attitude, was not
generally read by Christians," so that his text is, "in the

1 Acts xxvi, 31.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 27

general opinion of experts, the freest from corruption of
all the ancient writings." So at least von Soden assures
us (p. 11). In this, however, he is merely repeating the
opinion of Gibbon. As a matter of fact, none of the
works of Tacitus have come down to us without inter-
polations. This supposed " purity of the text of Tacitus
as shown by the oldest manuscripts " exists only in the
imagination of Gibbon and those who follow him. It is,
further, not true that the Christians did not read Tacitus.
We have a number of instances in the first centuries of
Christian writers who are acquainted with Tacitus, such
as Tertullian, Jerome, Orosius, Sidonius Apollinaris,
Sulpicius Severus, and Cassiodorus. It is only in the
course of the Middle Ages that this acquaintance with
the ROMAN historian is gradually lost ; and this not on
account of, but in spite of, the passage in Tacitus on the
Christians. This testimony of the ROMAN historian to
the supposed first persecution of the Christians would be
very valuable to them for many reasons.

Are there, however, no witnesses to the genuineness of
the passages of Tacitus in early Christian literature?
There is the letter of Clement of Rome belonging to the
end of the first century. According to Eusebius, 1 it was
sent by Clement, the secretary of the Apostle Peter, and
the third or fourth bishop of Home, to the community at
Corinth, in the name of the Roman community ; as is
also stated by Hegesippus (c. 150) and Dionysius of
Corinth. 2 The point is so uncertain, nevertheless, that
such distinguished authorities as Semler, Baur, Schwegler,
Zeller, Volkmar, 3 Hausrath, 4 Lornan, 5 Van Manen, Von
der Burgh, Van Eysing, 6 and Steck, 7 have disputed the

1 Eccl. Hist, Ill, 16. 2 Op. cit. iv, 22, 1-3 ; iv, 23.

3 See his essay on "Clement of Rome and the Subsequent Period,"
Tttbinger Tlieol. Jahrb-Ucher, 1856, 287-369.

4 Neutestamentl. Zeitgesch.,111,99, Anm. 5.

6 " Quaestiones Paulinse," in Tlieol. Tijdschrift, 1883, p. 14, etc.

6 Onderzoek naar de aclitlieidvan Clemens' ersten brief aan de Corinthers,
1908.

7 Der Galaterbrief nach seiner Echtlieit unlersucht, 1888, p. 294, etc.



28 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

genuineness of the letter; and it was reserved for the
modern believers in Jesus to discover grounds for regard-
ing it as genuine. Volkmar puts the letter in the year
125 ; Loman, Van Manen, and Steck do not admit its
composition earlier than the year 140. The letter cannot,
therefore, be regarded as a reliable document on that
account.

But what do we learn about the Neronian persecution
from the letter of Clement ? " Out of jealousy and envy,"
he writes to the Corinthians, " the greatest and straightest
pillars were persecuted and fought even to death "; as
in the case of Peter, " who, through the envy of the
wicked, incurred, not one or two, but many dangers, and
so passed to his place in glory after rendering his testi-
mony," and Paul, " who showed the faithful the way to
persevere to the end ; seven times was he imprisoned, he
was banished, stoned, he went as a herald to the east
and the west, and he reaped great glory by his faith.
The whole world has attained to a knowledge of justice ;
he went even to the farthest parts of the west, and gave
his testimony before them that held power. Then was
he taken out of the world and went to the holy place, the
greatest model of patience." 1

It is clear that we have here no reference to the per-
secution of the Christians under Nero. It is not even
stated that the apostles named met with a violent death
on account of their faith, as the word " martyresas "
(" after rendering his testimony ") need not by any means
be understood to mean a testimony of blood, because the
word " martyr " originally means only a witness to the
truth of the Christian faith in the general sense, and is
equivalent to " confessor," and was only later applied to
those who sealed their faith by a violent death. 2 If the
expression in the above text is usually taken to refer to

1 Neutestatamentl. Apokryphen, edited by Hennecke, 1904, ch. v.

2 See Hochart, Etudes au Sujet de la Persecution des Chretiens sous
Neron, 1885.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 29

the execution of the apostles under Nero, it is not because
Clemens says anything about this execution, but merely
because, according to Christian tradition, Peter and Paul
are supposed to have been put to death at the time of the
Neronian persecution. This tradition, however, is not
only relatively late, but extremely doubtful in itself.
That Peter was never in Eome, and so did not meet his
end there under Nero, must be regarded as certain after
the research of Lipsius. 1 As regards Paul, the tradition
is, according to Frey, 2 certainly not earlier than the end
of the fifth century ; before that time it was certainly
said that he and Peter died under Nero, but not that Paul
was a victim of the Neronian persecution. 3 How, then,
could the Roman Clemens about the end of the first
century connect the death of the two apostles with the
Neronian persecution ? That he does so is supposed to
be shown by the succeeding words, in which he says :
" These men were accompanied on the heavenly pil-
grimage by a great number of the elect, who have given
us the noblest example of endurance in ill-treatment and
torment, which they suffered from the envious. On
account of envy women were persecuted, Danaids and
Dirces, and had to endure frightful and shameful ill-
treatment; yet they maintained their faith firmly, and
won a glorious reward, though they were feeble of body."
" These words," says Arnold, in his work Die Neronische
Christenverfolgung (1888), which supports the genuine-
ness of Annals, xv, 44, " are seen at a glance to be a
Christian complement of the description of Tacitus; he
also speaks of ' most exquisite tortures,' of the shame and
derision with which the victims were treated when they
were put to death, and of the satisfaction it gave to the
crowds' lust for spectacles." 4 But would Tacitus, with

1 See his Chronologic der Bom. Bisclujfe, p. 162, and Die Quellen der
Bom. Petrussage, 1872.

2 Die letzten Lebensjahre des Paulus : Bibl. Zeit- u. Streitfragen, 1910.
8 Loc. cit. p. 8 ; see also Neutestamentl. Apokryplien, p. 365.

4 Work quoted, p. 37.



30 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

his well-known taste for spectacular stories of that kind,
have refrained from giving us the ghastly picture of the
Dirces torn on the horns of oxen? And what is the
meaning of these Danaids, in whose form Christian
women are said to have been shamed and put to death ?
Can anyone seriously believe that the patient water-
drawing daughters of Danaos would provide a fitting
spectacle for the satisfaction of the crowd's lust for dis-
play and blood ? Or does the writer of the letter merely
intend by the words " Danaids and Dirces," which
have no connection with what precedes and follows in
the text, to set the Christian women-martyrs in contrast
to the frivolous performers of the ancient myth ? Further,
what does he mean when he says that these numerous
men and women were ill-treated " out of jealousy and
envy," and puts the lot of the Christians in this respect
on the same footing as that of Cain and Abel, Jacob and
Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Moses and the Egyptians,
Aaron and Miriam, Dathan and Abiram, and David and
Saul ? Eenan suggests the hatred of the Jews for the
Christians ; but Joel has successfully defended his co-
religionists against such a charge, and Tacitus does not
give it the least support. Arnold suggests " denuncia-
tions by Christians with party passions." 1 According to
Lactantius, it was Nero's jealousy at the success of their
propaganda that induced the emperor to persecute the
Christians. But is it not possible that the writer of the
letter had seen the Acts of Peter and other apocryphal
writings, according to which Simon the magician, who
had entered upon a struggle with Peter out of jealousy,
may have been the cause of the persecution of the
Christians ? And may not the whole ambiguous passage,
with its rhetorical generalities, not really refer to the
Neronian persecution, but rather throw back upon the
time of Nero the martyrdoms that Christian men and

1 Work quoted, p. 69.



THE BOMAN WITNESSES 31

women had suffered in later persecutions ? In any case,
it does not follow from the letter of Clemens that the
"number of the elect" who "had endured shame and
torture on account of jealousy," and been " added to the
company " of the apostles Peter and Paul, died at the
same time as they. This assumption arises simply from
an association of ideas between the death of the apostles
and the supposed Neronian persecution an association
that in all probability did not exist in the time of Clemens.
How could the supposed Clemens, about the year 95,
make Peter and Paul die under Nero, when the former
had never been in Eome, and the latter did not die until
after 64 ? And how can the very scholars who dispute
the presence of Peter in Eome and do not admit the death
of Paul in the Neronian persecution regard the letter of
Clemens as genuine, and as establishing the Neronian
persecution ?

This, then, is the situation : either the letter of Clemens
was really written about the year 95, and in that case the
supposed reference to the Neronian persecution must, if it
really is such, be regarded as a later interpolation ; or this
reference is an original part of the letter, and in that case
the letter cannot have been written until the tradition as
to the death of the apostles in the Neronian persecution
had taken shape that is to say, not before the middle of
the second century. In either case, the so-called letter of
Clemens is no evidence of the fact of a considerable
persecution of the Christians under Nero. 1

1 As the reference of the part quoted to the Neronian persecution is the
only detail for fixing the date of the letter, if we refuse to admit the
passage the date of the letter is altogether uncertain, and it may belong
to the fourth century just as well as the first the "great century of
literary forgeries" (Antiqua Mater, p. 304). The reference in I, 1, where
there is question of perils and hardships that have suddenly come upon
the Roman community, to the Domitian persecution in the year 93 is
anything but certain. It is by no means proved that the so-called
Domitian persecution was a persecution of the Christians. The text of
Dio Cassius (67, 14) which is relied upon points at the most to a persecution
of those who, like Flavius Clemens, the emperor's cousin, leaned to
" atheism " or the Jewish faith. " If we rely on Roman sources, we find
no persecution of the Christians under Domitian ; if we rely on Christian



32 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

The belief that the Neronian persecution of the Chris-
tians belongs to the realm of fable is further confirmed by
the fact that the other witnesses that are quoted for it are
just as vague and indecisive. What propagandist material
would not the details of this first persecution of their faith
have furnished to the early Christians ! Yet what trace
of it do we find in them ? Let us take the evidence of
Melito of Sardis. In his writing to the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, in which he endeavours to explain to the
Emperor how beneficial Christianity had been to Roman
power, we read : " The only emperors who, seduced by
evil-minded men, sought to bring our religion into evil
repute, were Nero and Domitian, and from their time the
mendacious calumny of the Christians has continued,
according to the habit of people to believe imputations
without proof." In these words, which, moreover, are
only known to us from Eusebius, 1 there is no question of
a general persecution of the Christians under Nero ; it is
merely stated that Nero tried to bring the Christians into
bad repute. Dionysius of Corinth (about 170) also, and
the presbyter Caius, who lived in the time of the Roman
bishop Zephyrinus (about 200), affirm only, according to
the same Eusebius, 2 that Peter and Paul died the death
of martyrs " about the same time " at Rome, 3 which does

sources, the persecution goes far beyond Rome, as, according to Hegesippus,
the grandsons of Judas, being relatives of Christ, were brought from
Palestine to Rome and condemned, and, according to Eusebius and,
possibly, Irenseus, the apostle John was then banished to Patmos. In this
case it cannot be said that Rome alone was affected by the persecution,
and so there is no analogy with the description given in the letter " (Steck,
work quoted, p. 297). It seems, then, that it was the imagination of the
apologists and fathers of the Church, who wanted to make the sufferings
of Christianity begin as early as possible, that deduced from the letter this
persecution of the Christians as such. (Br. Bauer, work quoted, p. 238 ;
also see Joel, work quoted, II, 45.)

1 Ecclesiastical History, VI, 33. 2 Ibid. II, 28.

8 In this connection it may be observed that all these references
in Eusebius must be regarded with the greatest suspicion. This man,
whom Jakob Burckhardt has called " the first thoroughly dishonest
historian of antiquity," acts so deliberately in the interest of the power of
the Church and the creation and strengthening of tradition that far too
much notice is taken of his historical statements. "After the many
falsifications, suppressions, and fictions which have been proved in his



33

not necessarily mean on the same day or the same
occasion, or that the " trophies of their victory " are to
be seen on the Vatican and the road to Ostia. Of the
Neronian persecution they tell us nothing. In Tertullian's
Apologeticum 1 we read that Nero, cruel to all, was the
first to draw the imperial sword against the Christian sect
which then flourished at Borne. He thinks it an honour
to himself and his co-religionists to have been condemned
by such a prince, since everyone who knows him will see
that nothing was condemned by Nero that was not
especially good. But there is nothing in his words to
show that he was thinking of anything besides the death
of the apostles Peter and Paul. Indeed, he says expressly
that the apostles, scattered over the world at the master's
command, after many sufferings at length shed their
blood at Home through the cruelty of Nero, and he urges
the pagans to read the proofs of this in their own
"Commentaries"; which is much the same as when
Tertullian refers to the Roman archives those who doubt
the gospel narrative of the execution of Jesus. 2 We read
much the same in the same writer's Scorp., ch. xv:
" Nero was the first to stain the early faith with blood.
Then was Peter (according to the word of Christ) girded
by another, as he was fixed to the cross. Then did Paul
obtain the Roman right of citizenship in a higher sense,
as he was born again there by his noble martyrdom." !

There remains only the witness of Eusebius and of
Revelation. Eusebius, however, merely reproduces 4 the
statement of Tertullian that Nero was the first of the
emperors to become an open enemy of the divine religion.
He writes : " Thus Nero raged even against the apostles,

work, he has no right to be put forward as a decisive authority ; and to
these faults we must add a consciously perverse manner of expression,
deliberate bombast, and many equivocations, so that the reader stumbles
upon trapdoors and pitfalls in the most important passages." (J. Burck-
hardt, Leben Konstantins, 2nd ed. 1860, pp. 307, 335, 347.)
1 Ch. v. 2 Ch. xxi.

3 See also De Proscriptions, cap. 36, and Adversus Marcion, iv, 5.

4 Ecclesiastical History, ii, 28.

D



34

and so declared himself the first of the arch-enemies of
God. It is recorded that under him Paul was beheaded
at Borne and Peter was crucified under him." In proof
of this he points to the fact that the names of Peter and
Paul have remained until his time on an inscription in
the burying -place at Rome. As to Revelation, the
commonly assumed connection between it and the
Neronian persecution is so little proved that Arnold
speaks of it as " a most unhappy suggestion " to associate
the "great crowd" of Christians executed under Nero,
according to Tacitus, with the vision of John, in which
the seer beholds a vast multitude, whom no man can
count, of all nations, peoples, and tongues, bearing palms
and clothed in white garments before the throne of the
Most High. 1 The Christian parts of the so-called Sybilline
Oracles, which are supposed to have been written in part
shortly after this event, have, as Arnold says, no relation
to the Neronian persecution, even where there would be
the greatest occasion. They speak often enough of the
return of Nero and his cruelties, but he is never repre-
sented, as he is afterwards in Eusebius, as the enemy of
God and Christ and the persecutor of the early community.
It seems very doubtful if the poets knew anything what-
ever of such an occurrence. 2 Hence the idea that
Revelation is the Christian " counter-manifesto to the
Neronian persecution " is of no value. Ecclesiastical
tradition assigns Revelation to the year 96 A.D. When
recent theological scholarship assigns it to the year 65, it
is assuming that the work refers to the burning of Home
in 64. In that case it is clearly a vicious circle to infer
the historicity of the Neronian persecution from the fact
that Revelation was written shortly after 64. How little
was definitely known of such a persecution in the first
Christian centuries may be gathered from the fact that
Eusebius puts it in the year 67. Justin, in spite of his

1 Revelation vii, 9. 2 Work quoted, pp. 75-86.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 35

praise of the courage and steadfastness of the Christians
in their martyrdoms, does not say a word about it. Even
the later Acts of Peter are silent about it, while other
writings go so far as to make Nero a friend of the
Christians, and say that he condemned Pontius Pilate
to death for the execution of Christ. Origen (185-254)
says in his work against Celsus 1 that, instead of the
" multitude ingens " of Tacitus, the number of those who
suffered death for the faith was inconsiderable !

But does not Suetonius speak in his Life of Nero
(ch. xvi) of a chastisement of the Christians by the
emperor as a class of men full of a new and criminal
superstition (genus hominum superstitionis novae ac
inaleficas) ? It is to be noted that he in no way connects
this event with the burning of Rome, but with other
misdeeds that were punished by Nero. Arnold has
pointed out 2 that this biographer does not follow a
chronological order in his work or observe the internal
connection of events, but classes the deeds of the emperor
as good or bad, and so puts the burning among the
latter and the punishment of the Christians among the
former. However that may be, no reason is given why
Nero should punish the Christians on account of their
religion. It is expressly allowed by historians 3 that the
Roman emperors of that time were extremely tolerant of
foreign religions. Suetonius himself says that Nero
showed the utmost indifference, even contempt, in regard
to religious sects. 4 Even afterwards the Christians were
not persecuted for their faith, but for political reasons,
for their contempt of the Roman State and emperor, and
as disturbers of the unity and peace of the empire. 6 What
reason, then, can Nero have had to proceed against the
Christians, hardly distinguishable from the Jews, as a
new and criminal sect ?

1 iii, 8. 2 Work quoted, p. 38.

3 See H. Schiller, Geschichte der Rum. Kaiserzeit, i, 441.

4 Cap. 46. 5 Arnold, work quoted, p. 74.



36 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

Schiller also thinks that the Roman authorities can
have had no reason to inflict special punishment on the
new faith. " How could the non-initiated know what
were the concerns of a comparatively small religious
sect, which was connected with Judaism and must have
seemed to the impartial observer wholly identical with it ?
Apart from Jerusalem, hardly any community at this time
had so pronounced a Judaeo-Christian character as that
of Rome." 1 If, moreover, it were supposed that by the
" Christians " of Suetonius we must understand the Jews
excited by messianic expectations " Messianists " who,
with their belief in the approaching end of the world and
its destruction by fire, made light of the burning of
Rome and so incurred the hatred of the people the
connection between them and the historical Jesus would
be called into question, and the evidential value of the
passage of Suetonius for the existence of Jesus would be
destroyed. In fact, this supposition is negatived by the
complete silence of Josephus as to any such misfortune
of his co-religionists, though he does not otherwise spare
the misdeeds of the emperor. Paulus Orosius also, the
friend and admirer of Augustine, relies expressly on
Suetonius for the expulsion of the Jews from Rome
under Claudius, and even mentions the Neronian perse-
cution, which, according to him, spread over every
province of the empire, 2 but for this does not quote the
witness of either Tacitus or Suetonius. When we further
reflect that neither Trajan nor Pliny mentions the
Neronian persecution of the Christians in his corre-
spondence, although there was every occasion to do so,
since they were discussing the judgment and treatment
of the Bithynian Christians, we can hardly do otherwise
than regard the passage in Suetonius's Life of Nero as
a later interpolation.



Work quoted, p. 585. 2 Adversus Paganos Histories, vii, 4.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 37

II. ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE GENUINENESS.

(a) General Observations. As regards the passage in
Tacitus, the simple credulity with which it had hitherto
been accepted led to a sceptical attitude, not only abroad,
where the Frenchman Hochart, 1 the Dutchman Pierson, 2
the English author of Antiqua Mater, Edwin Johnson,
the American William Benjamin Smith in Ecce Deus
(1911), and others assailed its genuineness, but also in
German science. Besides Bruno Bauer, 3 H. Schiller
has drawn attention to certain difficulties in the
Tacitean tradition that had been overlooked; and even
Arnold acknowledges, though he endeavours to show
the unsoundness of the critical view of the passage,
that "this reference, which had hitherto been regarded
as quite simple and easy to understand, has been very little
understood." 4 According to Hochart the passage contains
as many insoluble difficulties as it does words. 6 This is
especially true of the sentence : " Igitur primum correpti,
qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitude ingens,
haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani
generis convicti sunt." Schiller calls this sentence "one
of the most difficult in this sententious writer," and adds :
" One could almost believe that he deliberately left a
riddle to posterity which he had failed to solve himself." 6
We have first the " multitude ingens " of the Christians.
Even Arnold sees a " rhetorical exaggeration " in these
words ; it is opposed to all that we know of the spread of
the new faith in Rome at the time. 7 The question is,
who exaggerated Tacitus, who would scarcely take any
interest in the number of the Christians, or a later
Christian interpolator, who would naturally have such an

1 Etudes au sujet de la persecution des chretiens sous Nlron, 1885 ; De
I' Authenticity des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite, 1890 ; Nouvelles Con-
siderations au sujet des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite, 1897.

2 Bergrede, p. 87. 3 Christus und die Casaren, p. 150.
4 Work quoted, vi. 5 J&tudes au sujet, etc., p. 220.

6 Work quoted, p. 435.

T Work quoted, p. 40. See also Schiller, work quoted, p. 436, note.



38 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

interest, in order to demonstrate the rapid spread and
marvellous attractiveness of the religion of Jesus ?

Then there is the word " fatebantur." Theological
writers like Benan, Weizsacker, etc., refer the expression
to the belief of those who were captured, and so make
them out to have been persecuted on account of their
Christianity. Von Soden also translates it : " All who
openly confessed Christianity were at once arrested," etc.
(p. 11). Schiller, however, rightly holds that it is not
probable, in view of the close life of the Christians at the
time, that some of them, apart from all the others, " had
openly professed a doctrine that was not yet a peculiar
creed, and would be intelligible to nobody." 1 Others,
therefore, such as Arnold, think that the word " fate-
bantur " refers rather to the crime of setting fire to
Borne. In that case, there would, as many historians,
such as Neumann, admit, be no question of a persecution
of Christians as such, but merely of a police procedure. 9

In the next place, however, the Christians are not
so much " convicted " of the fire as of " hatred of the
human race." Holtzmann (in Sybel's Historischer
Zeitschrift) has translated this phrase as " completely
devoid of any humane and political culture," " so that
they might be relieved of considerations of humanity in
dealing with them." Schiller sees in it a reference to
the custom of the Christians to withdraw from all inter-
course with the world, celebrate forbidden festivals in
secret meetings, and never sacrifice to the genius of the
emperor. 8 Arnold conceives the expression as "an oppo-
sition on principle to the omnipotence of the Boman
State. '" But, as Hochart rightly asks, could Tacitus,
who never took seriously the faith of the Jews, and pre-
sented the Jewish and, according to Tertullian, even the
Christian God to his readers as a deity with an ass's head,

1 Work quoted, p. 485.

2 See also H. Schiller, Gescliichte derrttm. Kaiserzeit, I, 44G-50.
:! Work quoted, p. 436. * Work quoted, p. 23.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 39

regard the existence of a Jewish sect, which differed in
no respect from the Jews in the eyes of the Romans, as
so menacing to the welfare of the empire that he must
call down on it the full anger of the gods of Olympus ?
"It is inconceivable that the followers of Jesus formed a
community in the city at that time of sufficient importance
to attract public attention and the ill-feeling of the people.
It is more probable that the Christians were extremely
discreet in their behaviour, as the circumstances, especially
of early propaganda, required. Clearly we have here a
state of things that belongs to a later date than that of
Tacitus, when the increase and propagandist zeal of the
Christians irritated the other religions against them, and
their resistance to the laws of the State caused the
authorities to proceed against them." 1 The interpolator,
Hochart thinks, transferred to the days of Nero that
general hatred of the Christians of which Tertullian
speaks. Indeed, the French scholar thinks it not impos-
sible that the phrase " odium humani generis " was simply
taken from Tertullian and put in the mouth of Tacitus.
Tertullian tells us that in his time the Christians were
accused of being " enemies of the human race " (paene
omnes cives Christianos habendo sed hostes maluistis
vocare generis humani potius quam erroris humani). 1

1 Hochart, work quoted, p. 214.

2 Apol. 37. How just this charge against the Christians was in the
time of Tertullian may be gathered from Hausrath's excellent essay on
" The Church Fathers of the Second Century " in his Kleine Schriften rcli-
gionsgeschichtlichen Inhalts (1883), especially p. 71. It is enough to recall
the words of a pious Father of the Church in his work On Spectacles (cap. 30) ,
where he addresses a pagan fellow-citizen, in a sweet foretaste of vengeance :
" Spectacles are your chief delight ; wait, then, for the greatest of all
spectacles, the final and eternal judgment of the world. How I shall
admire, how I shall laugh and be delighted, when I hear so many proud
Caesars, whom men had turned into gods, whining in the deepest abyss of
darkness ; so many magistrates, who persecuted the name of the Lord,
melting in a more furious fire than any they had lit for the Christians ;
so many wise philosophers, who taught their pupils that God cared about
nothing, burning in the glowing flames ; so many esteemed poets standing
and shivering before the judgment-seat, not of Rhadamanthus or Minos,
but of Christ ! Then will the tragedians roar louder than on the stage,
and the player coo more seductively when he is softened by the flames,
and the chariot-driver be seen careering red as fire on the flaming wheel.



40 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

And even the " Thyestean meals " and " CEdipodic
minglings," of which Arnold is reminded by the circum-
stance that Tacitus ascribes those horrors and scandals
to the Christians, hardly suit the age of Nero, and have
all the appearance of a projection of later charges against
the Christians into the sixties of the first century sup-
posing, that is to say, that the writer was thinking of them
at all in the expression quoted. It cannot be repeated too
often that charges of this kind, if, as is usually gathered
from similar expressions of Justin and Tertullian, they
were really put forward by the Jews, 1 have no ground or
reason whatever in the historical relations between the
two during the first century, especially before the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem. The schism between Jews and Chris-
tians had not yet taken place, and the hatred of the two
for each other was as yet by no means such as to justify
such appalling accusations. 2 If, on the other hand, they
are supposed to be brought by the pagans against the
Christians, there is a complete absence of motive. 3

But I will not look at these ; rather will I turn my insatiable gaze upon

those who made sport of the person of the Lord From seeing and

rejoicing over these no praetor, no consul, no quaestor, and no priest can
prevent us. These things, by our faith in the spirit and our imagina-
tion, we already have ever present to us." "It must be admitted,"
Hausrath observes on this, " that this kind of ' Christian charity ' has an
unmistakable resemblance to the ' odium humani generis ' with which the
pagans reproached the new sect" (work quoted, p. 92). If Roman justice
proceeded with severity against people of this temper, we can hardly blame
it, any more than we should blame a modern State for its severe punish-
ment of anarchists. In any case, the number of the martyrs has, as
Hausrath shows, been fearfully exaggerated on the ecclesiastical side. It
appears that during the first three Christian centuries there were no more
than 1,500 people put to death on account of their faith (?), whereas Duke
Alba slaughtered more than 100,000 Protestants in the Netherlands, and
the St. Bartholomew massacre was responsible for 2,000 deaths in Paris
and more than 20,000 in the whole of France, to say nothing of the
savagery of the Inquisition and the crusades against heretics, such as the
Albigenses. Moreover, many of these Christians often sought death out
of religious fanaticism, irritated the authorities to proceed against them
when they had no need to do so, and provoked, by their own behaviour,
the cruelties of the persecutors which were afterwards so loudly deplored
by Christian critics. See J. M. Eobertson's Short History of Christianity
(1902), p. 130.

1 See, to the contrary, Joel, work quoted, p. 15.

2 See also Graetz, Gesch. der Jtiden, IV, 104.

8 See Antiqua Mater, p. 23. Bruno Bauer also says: "The picture



41

(b) The Criticisms of Hochart. 1 No one has more
decisively attacked the belief in the persecution of the
Christians than Hochart, and it is therefore advisable to
give a summary here of the critic's arguments.

In the first place, he regards it as wholly improbable
that the charge against Nero, of setting fire to the city
himself, was made at all. The whole conduct of the
emperor during and after the fire, as it is described by
Tacitus, could not possibly have led to such a feeling
among the people. Even Suetonius, who is so bent on
throwing the blame of the fire on Nero, knows nothing
of such a rumour, and, according to the account of
Tacitus, the emperor suffered no loss of popularity with
the people. Then the aristocrats, who were in con-
spiracy against him, did not venture to take any step
against him, and the people were very far from disposed
to take the part of the conspirators when they were
tried. Hence the persecution of the Christians has no
adequate motive, and cannot in any case have been due
to the cause alleged in Tacitus. In this Schiller agrees
with Hochart. In agreement also with Adolph Stahr,

given in Tacitus can only be understood in connection with the influences
of the age in which he wrote his Annals the age of Trajan, the second
decade of the second century. At that time there were Christian
elements in Koine, and he might have heard of Christ and his fate under
Pontius Pilate, and supposed that the unhealthy state of things that was
suppressed by the death of Christ may have broken out again and reached
Rome, the place to which everything unclean went. The same influences
of the time and of Tacitus are seen in Suetonius' s biography of Nero
(cap. 16 and 17), which mentions the punishment of the Christians, as
people having a new and shameful superstition, among the police measures
of the emperor" (p. 155). Lublinski has recently put very clearly the con-
tradiction involved in the passage of Tacitus (Das werdende Dogma vom
Leben Jesu, 1911, p. 59): "The Christians suffered a punishment that
was clearly regarded as a penalty of their crimes ; the murderous incen-
diaries were burned. Nevertheless, they are said to have been condemned,
not on account of the fire, but for hating the human race. Strange to
say, they could not be convicted of complicity in the fire, though they
had made a ' confession.' In other words, people acknowledged them-
selves guilty of arson, yet could not be convicted of it ; but they were
nonetheless executed for arson in order to punish severely their hatred of
the human race. Could anything be more confused and contradictory ?"

1 Etudes au sujet de la persecution des Chretiens sous Neron, 1885 ; De
V Authenticity des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite, 1890 ; Nouvelles Con-
sid&rations au sujet des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite, 1897.



42 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

he regards the rumour that Nero was the author of the
fire as utterly incredible. If any rumour of the kind
arose, it -would, he believes, have been confined to the
members of the aristocratic party, with whom Tacitus
was in sympathy, and would not be found among the
people, who considered him innocent. 1 There was, there-
fore, according to Schiller, with whom even Arnold agrees
on this point, 2 no reason why Nero should accuse the
Christians of causing the fire. 3 In any case there can be
no question of a Neronian " persecution of the Christians,"
even if Tacitus has discovered a statement handed down
that, on the occasion of the fire, a number of Jewish
sectaries, possibly including some Christians, were put to
death on the charge of causing it. 4

The expression " Christians," which Tacitus applies to
the followers of Jesus, was by no means common in the
time of Nero. Not a single Greek or Roman writer of
the first century mentions the name : neither Juvenal
nor Persius, Lucian or Martial, the older Pliny or Seneca.
Even Dio Cassius never uses it, and his abbreviator, the
monk Xiphilinus, sees no reason to break his silence, but
speaks of the Christians who were persecuted under
Domitian as followers of the Jewish religion. 5 The
Christians, who called themselves Jessreans, or Nazoraeans,
the Elect, the Saints, the Faithful, etc., were universally
regarded as Jews. They observed the Mosaic law, and
the people could not distinguish them from the other

1 Work quoted, p. 425. In the same way might be explained the
testimony of the Praetorian leader, Flavius Subrius, who, in order to cut
Nero as deeply as possible, called him, according to Tacitus (Annals,
xv, 67), the murderer of his mother and wife, a charioteer, a comedian,
and an incendiary. Bruno Bauer rightly observes on this: "Is it not
possible that Tacitus, or, rather, his interpolator, merely put these words
into the mouth of the brave officer ? Dio Cassius, who, like Tacitus and
Suetonius, represents the prince as the deliberate author of the fire, has
preserved the answer of Flavius Subrius in what is probably an older and
more reliable form (Ixii, 24) : 'I will not serve a charioteer and zither-
player ' " (work quoted, p. 153).

2 Work quoted, p. 41. s Gescli. dcr rum. Kaiserzait, p. 359.
4 Arnold, work quoted, p. 34 ; Schiller, work quoted, p. 449.

6 See Joel, work quoted, p. 98.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 43

Jews. That Tacitus applied the name, common in his
time, to the Jewish sectaries under Nero, as Voltaire and
Gibbon believe, is very improbable. The Greek word
Christus (" the anointed ") for Messiah, and the derivative
word Christian, first came into use under Trajan, in the
time of Tacitus. Even then, however, the word Christus
could not mean Jesus of Nazareth. All the Jews with-
out exception looked forward to a Christus or Messiah,
and believed that his coming was near at hand. It is,
therefore, not clear how the fact of being a "Christian"
could, in the time of Nero or of Tacitus, distinguish the
followers of Jesus from other believers in a Christus or
Messiah. 1 This could only be at a time when the
memory was lost of the many other persons who had
claimed the dignity of Messiah, and the belief in the
Messiah had become a belief in Jesus, not as one, but the
Messiah, and Christ and Jesus had become equivalent
terms. 2 Not one of the evangelists applies the name
Christians to the followers of Jesus. It is never used in
the New Testament as a description of themselves by the
believers in Jesus, and the relevant passage in Acts

1 On the other hand, Arnold has attempted to ascribe to Tacitus a close
acquaintance with the Christians from the fact that Sulpicius Severus
used him as his authority in his description of the destruction of Jerusalem,
and that his statement that Titus deliberately furthered the destruction of
the temple in order to destroy at once the Christian and the Jewish religion
was taken from the last conclusion of the fifth book of Tacitus' s Histories
(work quoted, p. 46). No less an authority than Jakob Bernays (Uber die
ChroniJ: des -Sif/jncis Severus, 1861, p. 57) has seen in this reference of
Sulpicius a literal agreement with the statement of Tacitus in the Annals
(xv, 44), that Judsea was the birthplace of the Christian religion, and
concluded from this that Sulpicius had Tacitus before his eyes. Bruno
Bauer has, however, observed that the ecclesiastical teachers of the fourth
century were so firmly convinced of the hostility of all the emperors after
Claudius to the Christians that the pupil of the Saint of Tours could easily
penetrate the secret design of Titus without any inspiration from the
Histories of Tacitus (Christus und die Ccesaren, p. 216). Hence the
inference that Sulpicius possibly took the statement from Tacitus is any-
thing but convincing, and thus the idea that Tacitus had any close
acquaintance with the Christians falls to the ground.

2 This general acceptation of the name Christian can, according to
Harnack, only be traced to the end of the reign of Hadrian and that of
Pius (Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christenthums in den ersten drei
Jahrlmnderten, 1902, p. 296).



44 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

(xi, 26), according to which the name was first used at
Antioch, has the appearance of a later interpolation,
belonging to a time when the term had become a name
of honour in the eyes of some and a name of reproach in
the eyes of others. 1 With this is also connected the
peculiar way in which Tacitus speaks of the execution of
Christ under the procurator Pontius Pilate. He does not
know the name Jesus which, we may note incidentally,
would be impossible if he had had before his eyes the
acta of the trial or the protocols of the Senate takes
Christ to be a personal name, and speaks of Pilate as a
person known to the reader, not as an historian would
who seeks to inform his readers, but as a Christian to
Christians, to whom the circumstances of the death of
Christ were familiar.

The Jews at Rome had gone there voluntarily in order
to make their fortune in the metropolis of the empire,
and on the whole they prospered. They may have been
held of little account, or even despised, but no more so
than the other oriental foreigners who endeavoured to
make money at Rome by fortune-telling, domestic service,
or trade. In any case there is so little question of a
general " hatred " of the people for them that the
Jewish historians, especially Josephus, do not make much
complaint of the treatment accorded to their countrymen
at Rome. 2 It is incredible that the Jessaeans or Nazoraeans
amongst them, who must in any case have been few in
number at the time of the fire, were the object of an
especial hatred, and so would be likely to bear the blame
of the fire in the eyes of the people.

Death by fire was not a form of punishment inflicted
at Rome in the time of Nero. It is opposed to the
moderate principles on which the accused were then
dealt with by the State. The use of the Christians as
" living torches," as Tacitus describes, and all the other

1 See also 1 Peter iv, 16, and Acts xxvi, 28.

2 See also Joel, work quoted, p. 106.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 45

atrocities that were committed against them, have little
title to credence, and suggest an imagination exalted by
reading stories of the later Christian martyrs. The often
quoted statements of Juvenal and Seneca have no bearing
on this ; they are not connected with the Christians, and
need not in the least be regarded as references to the
members of the new sect sacrificed by Nero.

The victims cannot possibly have been given to the
flames in the gardens of Nero, as Tacitus says. Accord-
ing to his own account, these gardens were the refuge of
those whose homes had been burned, and were full of
tents and wooden sheds. It is hardly probable that Nero
would incur the risk of a second fire by his "living
torches," and still less probable that he mingled with the
crowd and feasted his eyes on the ghastly spectacle.
Tacitus tells us in his life of Agricola that Nero had
crimes committed, but kept his own eyes off them. The
gardens of Nero (on the present Vatican) seem to have
been chosen as the theatre of the deed merely to
strengthen the legend that the holy of holies of Chris-
tianity, the Church of St. Peter, was built on the spot on
which the first Christian martyrs had shed their blood. 1

Finally, there is the complete silence of profane writers
and the vagueness of the Christian writers on the matter ;
the latter only gradually come to make a definite state-
ment of a general persecution of the Christians under
Nero, whereas at first they make Nero put to death only
Peter and Paul. The first unequivocal mention of the
Neronian persecution in connection with the burning of
Rome is found in the forged correspondence of Seneca
and the apostle Paul, which belongs to the fourth
century. A fuller account is then given in the Chronicle
of Sulpicius Severus (died 403 A.D.), but it is mixed with
the most transparent Christian legends, such as the story
of the death of Simon Magus, the bishopric and sojourn

1 Cf. Hochart, Nouvelles Considerations, 160 f.



46 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

of Peter at Eome, etc. The expressions of Sulpicius
agree, in part, almost word for word with those of
Tacitus. It is, however, very doubtful, in view of the
silence of the other Christian authors who used Tacitus,
if the manuscript of Tacitus which Sulpicius used
contained the passage in question. We are therefore
strongly disposed to suspect that the passage (Annals,
xv, 44) was transferred from Sulpicius to the text of
Tacitus by the hand of a monastic copyist or forger, for
the greater glory of God and in order to strengthen the
truth of the Christian tradition by a pagan witness. 1

But how could the legend arise that Nero was the first
to persecute the Christians ? It arose, says Hochart,
under a threefold influence. The first is the apocalyptic
idea, which saw in Nero the Antichrist, the embodiment
of all evil, the terrible adversary of the Messiah and his
followers. As such he was bound, by a kind of natural
enmity, to have been the first to persecute the Christians ;
as Sulpicius puts it, " because vice is always the enemy
of the good."' 2 The second is the political interest of the
Christians in representing themselves as Nero's victims,
in order to win the favour and protection of his successors
on that account. The third is the special interest of the
Roman Church in the death of the two chief apostles,
Peter and Paul, at Rome. Then the author of the letters
of Seneca to Paul enlarged the legend in its primitive
fqi'm, brought it into agreement with the ideas of this
time, and gave it a political turn. The vague charges of
incendiarism assumed a more definite form, and were
associated with the character of Antichrist, which the

1 In his De V ' AutJtenticiU des Histoires etdcs Annales de Tacite Hochart
points out that, whereas the Life of St. Martin and the Dialogues of
Sulpicius were found in many libraries, there was only one manuscript of
his Chronicle, probably of the eleventh century, which is now in the
Vatican. Hence the work was almost unknown throughout the Middle
Ages, and no one was aware of the reference in it to a Roman persecution
of the Christians. It is noteworthy that Poggio Bracciolini seems by some
lucky chance to have discovered and read this manuscript (work quoted,
p. 225). Cf. Nouvelles Considerations, pp. 142-72.

2 Compare Eusebius, Eccl. Hist., ii, 28.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 47

Church was accustomed to ascribe to Nero on account
of his supposed diabolical cruelty. He was accused of
inflicting horrible martyrdoms on the Christians, and
thus the legend in its latest form reached the Chronicle
of Sulpicius. Finally a clever forger (Poggio ?) smuggled
the dramatic account of this persecution into the Annals
of Tacitus, and thus secured the acceptance as historical
fact of a purely imaginary story.

We need not recognise all Hochart's arguments as
equally sound, yet we must admit that in their entirety
and agreement they are worthy of consideration, and are
well calculated to disturb the ingenuous belief in the
authenticity of the passage of Tacitus. It seems as if
official " science " is here again, as in so many other
cases, under the dominion of a long-continued suggestion,
in taking the narrative of Tacitus to be genuine without
further examination. We must not forget what a close
connection there is between this narrative and the whole
of Christian history, and what interest religious education
and the Church have in preventing any doubt from being
cast on it. Otherwise how can we explain that no one
took any notice during the whole of the Middle Ages of
a passage of such great importance for the history and
prestige of the Church ? No one, in fact, seems to have
had the least suspicion of its existence until it was found
in the sole copy at that time of Tacitus, the Codex
Mediceus II, printed by Johann and his brother Wendelin
von Speyer about 1470 at Venice, of which all the other
manuscripts are copies. 1 Our historians as a rule are
content to reproduce the narrative of Tacitus in some-
what modified terms, without making any close scrutiny
of Annals, xv, 44; thus does Domaszewski, for instance,
in his History of the Roman Empire (1909), to say
nothing of the numerous popular manuals of history.
But our whole science of history is still, as regards the
origin of Christianity, under the mischievous influence of

1 Hochart, De I' Autlienticite , etc., p. 50.



48 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

theology, and is content to reproduce its statements
without inquiry. In regard to the question of the
origin of the Christian religion and the historicity of
Jesus it has almost entirely abdicated its function, and is
actually pleased that it need not deal with this delicate
theme, as Seeck candidly admits when he says in his
Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt (iii, 1900) :
" We have no intention of depicting the human personality
of Jesus and telling the story of his life, since these
problems are, in the present state of tradition, perhaps
insoluble, but at all events not yet solved. Every
question relating to the origin of Christianity is so
difficult that we are glad to avoid it altogether." 1 It is
true that Seeck regards the hesitation in regard to the
genuineness of the writings admitted in theology as " in
most cases without foundation." He accepts tradition in
regard to the Tacitus narrative, and believes in the
Neronian persecution of the Christians. What is the
use of this, however, when he has made no close inquiry
into these things, and therefore gives his verdict solely in
accordance with a general belief which is possibly a mere
prejudice? Assuredly we do not envy the "historical
sense " and the good taste of men who would persuade
themselves and others that it would be just as easy to
deny the historicity of Socrates, Alexander, Luther,
Goethe, Bismarck, etc., as that of Jesus, although this
is shown in a very different way than the historical
existence of the " god-man " of the gospels. 2

1 Work quoted, p. 173.

2 Compare Steudel, Wir Gelehrten vom Fach, etc. (p. 6), and Lublinski,
work quoted, p. 47. In the controversy about the Christ-myth an attempt
has been made even lately to revive the much-ridiculed argument that
there never was such a person as Napoleon, by which Perez fancied he
could refute Dupuis, and the argument of Von der Hagen against Strauss,
" that there was never any such person as Luther," in the year 1837, in
order to show how one may deny the existence of any great man on
"Drews' method." That such arguments rely upon the thoughtlessness
of the majority of people to have any effect throws equal light upon the
general intelligence, and on the frame of mind of men who can make use
of such arguments.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 49

(c) The Possibility of Various Interpretations of
"Annals" xv, 44. So much as to the possible spurious-
ness of Annals, xv, 44. We have now to examine the
evidential value of the passage, supposing it to be
genuine, and apart from all that we have said of its his-
torical value.

In opposition to Hermann Schiller, Neumann, and
other historians, Harnack regards it as "certain" that
the persecution mentioned by Tacitus was really a perse-
cution of the Christians. He believes, nevertheless, that
the passage is " not altogether intelligible " in the sense
that it first ascribes the invention of the name " Chris-
tiani " to the " people," and then goes on to say that " the
author of the name " was Christ. " If that is so, the
people acted quite reasonably in giving the name of
Christians to the followers of Christ. Why, then, does
Tacitus call the title ' Christians ' a ' name imposed by
the people"?" The circumstance is really very curious.
" In order to put an end to the trouble, Nero laid the
blame on those whom, hateful for their crimes, the people
called Christians." However, Andresen has made a fresh
study of the Tacitus manuscript, and shown that the word
was at first " Chrestianos," and was later altered to
" Christianos "; whereas it is written " Christus," not
"Chrestus." "Now it is quite clear," says Harnack,
" Tacitus says that the people call the sect Chrestiani ;
he, however relying on more accurate knowledge, as
Plinius has already written ' Christiani ' quietly corrects
the name, and rightly speaks of the author of the name
as Christ." 1

The expression " Chrestiani " is usually regarded as a
popular version of " Christiani " (compare Vergil and
Virgil), just as, on this account, Suetonius is supposed to
have written Chrestus instead of Christus. But, as we
observed before, Chrestus was not only a familiar personal



Mission und Ausbreitung, p. 296.

E



50 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

name ; it was also a name of the Egyptian Serapis or
Osiris, which had a large following at Eome, especially
among the common people. Hence " Chrestiani " may
be either the followers of a man named Chrestus, or of
Serapis. The word " Chrestus " means " the good."
Thus the Chrestiani were likely to attract the name of
" the good," and it is presumed that the people gave this
name to those whom they detested on account of their
evil deeds. Possibly this name was given to them pre-
cisely because they were hated for their crimes. The
Latin sentence, " quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chris-
tianos appellabat," admits this interpretation, and it is
often found. How came the people to give the name of
" the good " to men who were in their eyes notoriously
bad? Clearly, the expression must, when we examine
their way of thinking, be regarded as ironical ; the ROMAN
people called the followers of Serapis-Chrestus " good "
because they were precisely the contrary. We might
therefore regard the name " Chrestiani " as equivalent to
" the clean brethren," just as it is customary to call the
scum of Paris the " Apaches." 1

We know from history what an evil repute the Egyptian
people, which consisted mainly of Alexandrian elements,
had at Eome. While other foreign cults that had been
introduced into Eome enjoyed the utmost toleration, the
cult of Serapis and Isis was exposed repeatedly to perse-
cution. This was due, as we learn from Cumont, not
merely to political considerations, the hostility of Eome
to Alexandria, but also to moral and police reasons. The
lax morality associated with the worship of the Egyptian
gods and the fanaticism of their worshippers repelled the
Eomans, and excited the suspicion that their cultus might
be directed against the State. " Their secret associations,
which were chiefly recruited from the poorer people,
might easily, under the cover of religion, become clubs

1 Compare Louis Ganeval, Jtsus devant I'histoire n'a jamais vteu,
1875.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 51

of agitators and the resort of spies. These grounds for
suspicion and hatred [!] contributed more, no doubt, to
the rise of the persecution than purely theological con-
siderations. We see how it subsides and flames out again
according to the changes in the condition of general
politics." 1

In the year 48 B.C. the chapels devoted to Isis were
destroyed by order of the Senate, and their images of the
gods broken. In 28 A.D. the Alexandrian divinities were
excluded from the limits of the Pomoarium a proscription
which Agrippa extended seven years afterwards to a sphere
a thousand paces from the city. In fact, in the year 49
the feeling against the Egyptians ran so high, on account
of a scandal in which Egyptian priests were involved,
that the most drastic proceedings were taken against the
followers of Serapis. On this occasion the maltreatment
fell upon the Jews also, because some of their compatriots
had behaved in a similar manner ; this was not due to
any general hatred of the Jews, but to the fact that the
Roman Jews, who mostly came from Egypt and Alex-
andria, were confused with the Alexandrians, and even
with that Alexandrian rabble the " Chrestiani." We
read in Tacitus 2 that at that time the proscription of the
Egyptian and Jewish religious practices was discussed,
and the Senate decided to send four thousand men infected
with their superstitions, of the class of freedmen, to the
island of Sardinia, to fight the bandits, in the hope that
the unhealthy climate of the island would make an end
of them. Josephus also says this in his Antiquities. 3 A
few years later, under Claudius, " the Senate decreed the
expulsion of the mathematicians from Italy, though the
decree was not put in force." 4 The mathematicians
that is to say, astrologists are the Egyptians and Egyptian
Jews, the followers of Chrestus, as we read in Fl. Vopiscus

1 Die orientalisclien Religionen im rOmischen Heidentum, by Gehrich
(1910), p. 98.

2 Annals, ii, 85. 3 xviii, 3, 5. 4 Annals, xii, 52.



52 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

in the letter of the Emperor Hadrian to his brother-in-
law Servius : " Those who worship Serapis are the
Chrestians, and those who call themselves priests of
Chrestus are devoted to Serapis. There is not a high-
priest of the Jews, a Samaritan, or a priest of Chrestus
who is not a mathematician, soothsayer, or quack. Even
the patriarch, when he goes to Egypt, is compelled by
some to worship Serapis, by others to worship Chrestus.
They are a turbulent, inflated, lawless body of men.
They have only one God, who is worshipped by the
Chrestians, the Jews, and all the peoples of Egypt."

It is true that this letter is often regarded as spurious,
a fourth-century forgery, on account of its absurd and
confused expressions on Christianity and the Christians.
In any case, it shows the close connection between the
Alexandrian Jews and the Egyptians, since both are
described as mathematicians and Chrestians. And is it
not possible that the reference to Chrestus and the
Chrestians has been too hastily applied to Christus and
the Christians? And may not the absurdity be due
simply to the fact that the writer of the letter could see
no clear distinction between the two religions and their
deities ? The passage in Tacitus may, in that case, be
due to a similar misunderstanding. The " Chrestiani,"
who were detested by the people for their crimes, and to
whom the historian ascribes all the abominations that
have invaded the metropolis, are not Christians at all,
but followers of Chrestus, the scum of Egypt, the
" apaches " of Borne, a " multitudo ingens," a real " object
of hatred to the human race," people on whom Nero could
very easily cast the suspicion of having set fire to Home,
and whose admission that they had done so is not in the
least unintelligible. Hence the "people" rightly called
them " Chrestians," which was, as we saw, an ambiguous
name, and a not uncommon epithet in Home at the time.
Tacitus, about the year 117, confuses them with the
Christians of his time, just as the Emperor Hadrian does



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 53

in his letter to Servius fourteen years afterwards. Having
done so, he felt compelled to add the explanatory words,
" autor nominis ejus Christus," etc., and describe them
as coming from Judaea, confusing the Alexandrian Jews,
who were identified with them, with the Jews of Pales-
tine. In this way the expression " appellabat " (instead
of "appellat"), which seems to Harnack "remarkable,"
becomes intelligible. Possibly there is question of some
popular phrase used in Nero's time which Tacitus himself
did not understand ; possibly, however, the sentence in
which Christus is said to have been the author of the
name of Christians and the whole reference to Judaea do
not come from the pen of Tacitus at all, but are due to a
later Christian, who identified the Chrestians of Tacitus
with the Christians ; and thus the whole Neronian perse-
cution and the supposed confirmation of the historicity of
Christ by the ROMAN historian are based upon a monstrous
misunderstanding. If that is so, a new light is thrown
also on the " Chresto impulsore " of Sulpicius. Chrestus
was not only the name of the god, but, as frequently
happened in ancient religions, also of his chief priest.
May it not be that the tumults of the "Jews" under
Claudius really refer to rebellious and criminal elements
of the Egyptian rabble in the metropolis, under the
influence of their chief priest, ending in the expulsion of
the Jews from Rome? This, of course, is not the only
plausible explanation of the passage. We need only say
that it is a possible interpretation of what happened. In
that case, the passage of Tacitus might remain substan-
tially unquestioned, without proving what it is generally
supposed to prove namely, the fact of a Neronian perse-
cution and the existence of an historical Jesus. In this
way, at all events, we find the simplest solution of all the
difficulties connected with the passage in Tacitus.

Those who do not find this interpretation of Annals,
xv, 44, plausible have still to solve the problem whether
the Chrestians or Christians of the Roman historian were



54 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

really Christians in our meaning of the word or were
distinct from them. Edwin Johnson regards the Chres-
tians as followers of the "good god" (Chrestus), as the
Gnostics called their god in opposition to Jahveh, whom
they looked upon as the perversely conceived creator of
the Jews. He thus traces the name to a sect, the founder
of which he considers to have been Simon the Magician,
flourishing in Rome in the time of Claudius, whose
members, as representatives of a spiritualised Judaism,
were very obnoxious to the traditional Jew. 1 He supposes
that Tacitus transferred to the time of Nero the hatred of
the Christians which animated the Jews of his own time,
and thus the Chrestians (Gnostics) were confused with
the real Christians. Possibly, however, the name is only
another expression for Messianists, and the Chrestians of
Tacitus are Jews exalted by eschatological ideas, living in
expectation of a speedy end of the world by fire, and so
contracting the suspicion of having set fire to the city.
They may have formed a " multitude ingens " and
incurred " the hatred of the human race " by being led
in their fanaticism to express their satisfaction at the
burning of the metropolis ; possibly they even took part
in it. However that may be, there is not the least proof
in any case of a Neronian persecution of the Christians.
Even in this case, Tacitus's reference to Christ as the
founder of the sect rests on a misunderstanding namely,
a confusion of the most confident of the Jewish Messianists
with the followers of the Christus who, as Tacitus had
heard, had been crucified under Pontius Pilatus. 2

In regard to the significance of Pilate in Tacitus, a
remarkable hypothesis has recently been put forward by
Andrzej Niemojewski in his work, Gott Jesus im LicJite
fremder und eigener Forschungen samt Darstellung der
evangelischen A stralstoffe, A stralszenen, und A stralsysteme

1 Antigua Mater, pp. 279-292.

2 See Joel, work quoted, p. 144 ; also Whittaker, TJie Origins of Chris-
tianity (2nd ed., 1909), p. 21.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 55

(1910). According to this, the Pilate of the Christian
legend was not originally an historical person ; the
whole story of Christ is to be taken in an astral sense,
and Pilate represents the constellation of Orion, the
javelin-man (pilatus, in Latin), with the arrow or lance-
constellation (Sagitta), which is supposed to be very long
in the Greek myth, and appears in the Christian legend
under the name of Longinus, and is in the Gospel of
John the soldier who pierces the side of Jesus with a
spear (longche, in Greek) . In the astral myth, the Christ
hanging on the cross, or world-tree (i.e., the Milky Way),
is killed by the lance of " Pilatus." Hence, according to
Niemojewski, the Christian populace told the legend of a
javelin-man, a certain Pilatus, who was supposed to have
been responsible for the death of the Saviour. This
wholly sufficed for Tacitus to recognise in him the
procurator in the reign of Tiberius, who must have
been known to the Roman historian from the books of
Josephus " On the Jewish War," which were destined
for the imperial house. 1 In point of fact, the procurator
Pontius Pilate plays a part in the gospels so singularly
opposed to the account of the historical Pilate, as Josephus
describes him, that we can very well suspect a later
introduction of an historical personage into the quasi-
historical narrative.

When we take account of these many possible inter-
pretations of Annals, xv, 44, all of which are as probable
as, if not more probable than, the customary Christian
explanation, the narrative of Tacitus cannot be quoted as
a witness to the historicity of Jesus. We may say, indeed,
that history has hitherto treated the passage, in view of
its importance, with an absolutely irresponsible super-
ficialness and levity. " The non-Christian witnesses,"
says von Soden, " can only be quoted in favour of, not
against, the historicity of Jesus" (p. 14). The truth is

1 Work quoted, p. 129.



56 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

that they prove nothing either for or against ; they prove
nothing at all. 1 J. Weiss is perfectly correct when he
says, as we saw previously : " There is no such thing as
a really convincing witness in profane literature." It is
true that he is able to console himself for this. " What,"
he asks, " could Josephus or Tacitus do for us ? They
could at the most merely show that at the end of the first
century not only the Christians, but their tradition and
Christ-mythos, were known at Home. When it originated,
however, and how far it was based on truth, could not be
discovered from Tacitus or Josephus" (p. 91). The
orthodox pastor Kurt Delbriick adds : " What does it
matter whether or no Tacitus wrote it ? He could only
have received the information, a hundred years after the
time, from people who had told it to others. It matters
nothing to us, therefore, whether the passage is genuine
or not. The historical personality of Jesus Christ is
proved only by the fact [?] that the earliest Christian
community recognised its Saviour in him whom it had
once seen alive. We have no further historical documents."

3." LUCUS A NON LUCENDO."

It seems superfluous now to enlarge on the objection
that, if no pagan writer unequivocally proves the existence

1 Characteristic of the conduct of our opponents is the way in which
Otto Schmiedel treats the Roman witnesses. " Tacitus," says this repre-
sentative of historical theology, " mentions in his Annals about the
year 116 the execution of Jesus [?] under Pontius Pilate, and the spread
of his [?] superstitious sect in Judaea and even Rome. A passage in
Suetonius written about the year 120 (' Nero,' ch. xvi) is to the same
effect [! ?] ; and the younger Pliny, Governor of Bithynia, in 112 or 113,
describes in a letter (Ep. x, 96) to the Emperor Trajan the wide spread
of the Christians in his province and the hymns they sing to their Christ
as a god [!] . The violent opponent of Christianity, the philosopher
Celsus, is already [sic] acquainted with the whole literature of the New
Testament before the year 180, and this literature is unintelligible without
the person of Christ, with which it is entirely concerned." (Die Haupt-
probleme der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, 2 Aufl., 1906, p. 13). Notice the
highly-coloured phrases (the execution of Jesus, the person of Christ !) and
the word "already," by means of which he tries to convey the impression
that the witnesses quoted were remarkably early, and therefore deserve
unlimited confidence.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 57

of an historical Jesus, at all events none of them ever
contested it. The objection is futile, because its assump-
tion is false. The Gnostics of the second century really
questioned the historical existence of Jesus by their docetic
conception ; in other words, they believed only in a meta-
physical and ideal, not an historical and real, Christ. 1 The
whole polemic of the Christians against the Gnostics was
based essentially on the fact that the Gnostics denied the
historicity of Jesus, or at least put it in a subordinate
position.

Moreover, how much has survived of the attacks on
Christianity by its opponents ? Has not the Church
been careful from the first to suppress or destroy every-
thing that might endanger its interests ? Did it not burn
the anti-Christian writings of Porphyry ? Was not the
valuable library of Alexandria sacrificed to the zeal of
fanatical monks in the year 391, and were not the
greatest intellectual treasures of antiquity contained in
it ? Who can say what evidences against Christianity
did not perish in it ? Even the work of Celsus, the one
attack on Christianity of which we have much knowledge,
is known to us only from Origen's reply to it. This work,
moreover, belongs to the second half of the second century,
and is, therefore, incapable of proving anything. 2 Would
it be remarkable at all that no pagan should take the trouble
to contest the historicity of Jesus, assuming this to be the
case ? At the time when the pagan reaction against
Christianity began namely, in the second century the
Jesus-story was already firmly rooted in tradition. Like
the Jews, the pagan writers confined themselves in their
polemic to the Christian tradition, as they were bound to
do. To make research in the archives about a subject

1 See Wolfgang Schultz, Dokumente der Gnosis, 1910.

2 Yet Origen himself makes Celsus say : "You feed us with fables, and
cannot give them a shade of plausibility, although some of you, like
drunken men, who lay hands on themselves, have modified the texts of the
gospels three or four or more times, in order to escape the criticisms we
direct against you" (Contra Celsum, II, 26 and 27).



58 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

was not the practice of ancient historical writers. " There
was in ancient times," says the ecclesiastical historian
Hausrath, " hardly any interest in historical truth as
such, but only in ideal truth. There are very few cases
in which an ancient historian put himself the question
what had really happened and what was merely said to
have happened." Even if anyone had desired to inquire
into the truth of the gospel "story" and go deeply into
the subject, he would have been quite unable to do so
after the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of
the Jews.

Finally, was no doubt expressed by pagans as to the
existence of Jesus because it was firmly established, or
because at the time when we look for some doubter no
one really affirmed it ? We await an answer to this
question. Our opponents ask : If Jesus was not an
historical personage, how is it that no one ever doubted
his existence ? We reply with the further question :
Granting that he was an historical personage, how is it
that not only does the Talmud never mention him, but,
apart from the gospels, not a single work belonging to
the early Christian period gives us any intimate detail
about the life of this personage? Examine Paul's
Epistles ! As we shall show in the next chapter, they
do not tell a single special fact about the life of Jesus.
Bead the other Epistles of the New Testament Peter,
John, James, Jude, and the Epistle to the Hebrews and
the letter of Clement to the Corinthians, the letter of
Barnabas, the Pastor of Herrnas, the Acts of the
Apostles, etc. Nowhere in any single one of these early
Christian documents do we find even the slenderest
reference to the mere man Jesus, or to the historical
personality of Jesus as such, from which we might infer
that the author had a close acquaintance with it. His
life, as it is described in the gospels, in all its human

1 Kleine Schriften, p. 124.



THE ROMAN WITNESSES 59

detail, seems to have been entirely unknown to these
authors. His speeches and sayings are hardly ever
quoted, and where this is done, as in the Epistle of
James or Acts, they are not quoted as sayings of Jesus.
We have no feeling whatever that these documents know
anything of an historical Jesus ; the little that could be
quoted to the contrary, such as the passage in the
supposed speech of Peter (Acts, x, 38), is so obviously
due to a later tampering with the text and so absurd that
we cannot pay it any serious attention. The earlier
Christian literature is acquainted with a Jesus-god, a god-
man, a heavenly high-priest and saviour Jesus, a meta-
physical spirit, descending from heaven to earth, assuming
human form, dying, and rising again ; but it knows
nothing whatever about a merely human Jesus, the
amiable author of fine moral sentiments, the " unique "
personality of liberal Protestantism. There is therefore
nothing in the objection that no one at that time
questioned the existence of such a person. Those who
attach importance to such doubts simply assume the
correctness of the liberal-theological view of the origin
of Christianity. If this view is false, if the transforma-
tion of Jesus into an historical person only occurred at a
relatively late stage (the first half of the second century),
the absence of any doubt about the historical existence of
Jesus before that time is quite intelligible. In any case
it is logically absurd (" lucus a non lucendo ") to deduce
from the circumstance that no one, apparently, expressed
any doubt as to the existence of Jesus the fact that he
actually existed.

After this complete rejection of the evidence of profane
literature in regard to an historical Jesus, we need hardly
linger over the arguments that may be drawn from other
supposed relics of his time and environment. There is
still at Treves the holy coat for which the Roman soldiers
cast lots at the foot of the cross. There is still in the
Lateran at Rome the stairway which Jesus ascended on



60 THE ROMAN WITNESSES

entering the palace of Pilate. Then there are the
innumerable fragments of the cross pointing to the
drama of Golgotha, the innumerable holy nails, the
vinegar-sponge, the veil of Veronica, the shroud in which
the Saviour was wrapped, the swaddling-clothes of the
infant Jesus, and, last but not least, the holy prepuce.
There are indeed plenty of " historical documents " for
those who wish to believe. They must be sought,
however, not in literature, but in churches and chapels
and other "holy places," where they prove their authen-
ticity by the " blessing " which flows from them into the
Church's coffers. But we will be content with our survey
of profane witnesses. The improper use that has hitherto
been made by theologians of these witnesses entails a
careful examination. For our part we can only regard
any attempt to prove the existence of an historical Jesus
by these supposed profane witnesses as a sign of intel-
lectual unscrupulousness or lamentable superficiality.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL



THE less evidence we find for the historicity of Jesus in
profane writers, the greater becomes the interest of those
who maintain it in a witness by whom the historical
Jesus is unequivocally affirmed. Such an unequivocal
witness we have, according to the prevailing view, in the
so-called Epistles of the apostle Paul. Hence Paul is
the piece de resistance for the theologian in regard to his
belief in Jesus. He is the "surest foundation," the
" unshakable cornerstone," the " irrefragable witness "
for the fact that a Jesus did really live, and was crucified
and buried, and rose again from the dead. So convinced
indeed is historical theology of the absolute worth of this
witness that it fancies it can silence all scepticism about
the historicity of Jesus by merely pointing to Paul. It
seems to think that no one can seriously dispose of the
testimony of Paul without declaring that the Apostle's
letters are spurious. We read, for instance, in von
Soden's work on the Pauline Epistles : " They afford so
strong a proof of the historicity of Jesus that no one but
Drews has ever ventured to deny this historicity without
contesting the genuineness of the Pauline Epistles "
(p. 29) . The orthodox theologian Beth also observes :
" In this case Drews must really be charged with
negligence before the tribunal of his own theory, since
he admitted the genuineness of some of the Epistles and
found no reason to doubt the historical existence of Paul.
In order to attain his end within the limits of his own
theory and destroy all the evidences for Jesus, he ought
also to have contested the existence of Paul." 1

1 Beth, Hat Jesus gelebt?, p. 35.
61



62 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

Certainly, it would be simplest to say at once that the
Epistles of Paul are spurious, and thus destroy the value
of their testimony to the existence of an historical Jesus.
This the theologians would assuredly like us to do, because,
as things are in Germany, the genuineness of at least the
four chief Epistles (Romans, Galatians, and the two to the
Corinthians) is so firmly held by them that any doubt
about it is at once rejected by them as " not to be taken
seriously." It would thus be an excellent means of
discrediting the whole tendency of the Christ-myth in the
eyes of the general public, and of all who swear on the
word of professors of theology. Who reads to-day Bruno
Bauer's Kritik der Paulinischen Brief e (1852), in which
the first attempt was made to show the spuriousness of
all the Epistles ascribed to Paul ? That inconvenient
scholar has so long been slighted by theologians, who
have frightened readers from him by depreciatory remarks
on his work, that it was thought quite safe to continue to
ignore him. When, moreover, the Swiss scholar Steck
concludes, in a thorough and learned investigation, that
the Epistle to the Galatians is spurious (1888), that is
merely " an extraordinary perversity of criticism," an
" instance of pushing radical criticism too far," an attempt
that one need not linger to refute. On the other hand,
the criticism of English writers (Edwin Johnson,
Robertson, and Whittaker) seemed to be quite devoid
of danger, as few theologians have a command of the
English language. It is true that in Holland a theo-
logical school has endeavoured for thirty years to show
the spuriousness of the Epistles of Paul ; but why should
that trouble people in Germany? Dutch is a language
that one has no occasion to learn at the universities. One
may, therefore, take it for granted that the works of the
Dutch will not be very seriously studied in Germany.
Have not the Dutch, in fact, at a " Congress of free
Christianity and religious progress," thanked German
historical theologians for the distinguished services which



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 63

they have rendered to the whole civilised world ? We
frequently hear that kind of thing. The Dutch savants
may, therefore, be regarded indulgently when they strike
a path of their own in their own country and contest
statements which are taken for granted in Germany.

It is amusing to read German theologians writing on
their Dutch colleagues. According to Beth, " the Amster-
dam writer Loman has very finely shown how one may
manufacture out of air a proof that Paul was merely
invented in the second century as a preacher of univer-
salistic Christianity " (p. 35). According to Jiilicher, it is
a sign of "uncritical temper" to doubt whether Paul
wrote the Epistles to which his name is attached a
temper which, " as soon as it perceives a difficulty, which
may occur in such documents just as well as in a
Babylonian brick, cries ' Spurious ! ' and recognises no
shades of difference"; and he advises it, with equal bad
taste and foolishness, to consign itself to " work in subter-
raneous Acheron" (p. 25). Yet these theologians are
either totally ignorant of, or have only a very superficial
acquaintance with, the work of the Dutch. This is clear
when von Soden writes : " No one has yet attempted to
give us an intelligible account of the origin of these
Epistles in the second century " (p. 29) ; and J. Weiss
says : " The Pauline Epistles are, as is known [! ?] , denied
to the apostle Paul by the Dutch school and by Kalthoff ;
but there is no plausible hypothesis as to their origin in
any other way, no chronology of the various strata of the
Epistles, and no answer to many other questions suggested
by the denial " (p. 97) . Are Weiss and von Soden ignorant
of the work of van Manen, whose Romerbrief has been
excellently translated into German by Schlager (Leipsic,
1906), while Whittaker has given a careful synopsis of
his other books in his Origins of Christianity (2nd ed.,
1909) ? And if they are acquainted with him, how came
they to pen such sentences, seeing that van Manen has
done in a very thorough manner precisely what they say



64

ought to be done by those who deny Paul's authorship ?
The truth is that historical theology in Germany needs a
genuine Paul as an indispensable witness to its historical
Jesus, and it must, therefore, ignore the Dutch and those
must-be uncritical and confused thinkers who venture to
dispute the credibility of their witness.

Historical theology finds the historical Jesus in the
Pauline Epistles, because it is determined to in fact,
must find him there, or else the whole of its artificial
historical construction of the origin of Christianity remains
in the air without any support. It accepts without scrutiny
not only the truth of the evangelical accounts of Jesus, but
whatever Acts says about Paul ; and since it regards Paul
as the author of the Epistles, it naturally finds it easy to
see a confirmation of these things in the Pauline Epistles.
It refers the mentions of Jesus in the Epistles to an
historical Jesus because, anterior to any inquiry, from the
gospels it is convinced of his reality ; and it therefore
never dreams of referring the passages in the Epistles
which deal with Jesus to any other than their own that
is, the supposed historical Jesus of the gospels. It regards
as " unmethodical " any man who would put a different
interpretation on those passages, because the method
employed by themselves, and regarded by them as the
sole correct method, leads to the result that they desire.
They are, therefore, in a vicious circle in their inquiry
into the genuineness of the Pauline Epistles and their
testimony to the historical Jesus.

As a matter of fact, their assertion that the existence
of an historical Jesus is the very foundation of the
Epistles of Paul is not the result, but the assumption, of
their method. As such it originated, quite independently
of their method. In all investigation the method is
directed according to the assumption that is made and
the end to be attained. But if an inquirer is allowed to
postulate the existence of an historical Jesus and confirm
this assumption by his methods, it can hardly be considered



65

a sign of partisanship and prejudice to oppose the
assumption on the ground of facts, and submit that such
methods can hardly lead to a satisfactory result. Historical
theology has hitherto endeavoured to interpret tradition
in the sense of its historical Jesus, and has lost its way in
a labyrinth of difficulties, contradictions, and insoluble
problems. We raise the question whether the documents
may not be better and more simply interpreted in the
opposite sense, and whether there is any need at all to
interpret the tradition historically. On which side the
truth is found cannot be determined by the starting-point
of the inquiry, but only by showing which interpretation
best squares with the facts and which can be most
easily established. In any case our method cannot be
pronounced wrong because, starting from a different
assumption, we reach conclusions other than those of
the theologian ; nor may one charge us with " confusion "
or appeal against us in the name of " sound " investigation
and science when our inquiry into the New Testament
documents leads us to deny the historicity of Jesus, as
long as it is not proved that our assumption is absurd.

1. THE PKOOFS OF THE HISTOEICITY OF
JESUS IN PAUL.

The starting - point and postulate of the Pauline
doctrine of salvation is the attitude of man towards the
law. The law was originally given to men by God for
their good. It is to teach them what is sinful. It is to
quicken their consciousness of evil and show them the
way to become better. It should be to them, as Paul
puts it, a teacher and breeder of righteousness. In reality
it has proved a curse to them, and, instead of saving them,
it has forced them deeper into the slavery of evil and sin.
God therefore took pity on men, and sent to them Christ,
his " son," to take from them the yoke of the law.
Originally a supernatural being, buried in God and

F



66 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

co-operating in the creation of the world, Christ, at the
will of his father, exchanged the glory of heaven for the
poverty and straits of earth, in order to come upon the
earth in the form of a slave, a man among men, for the
redemption of mortals. He gave himself freely, for the
salvation of men, to death on the cross. What no
sacrifice had as yet been able to accomplish (a proof of
the powerlessness of the law), complete delivery from
sin and from death, which had come into the world with
sin was attained by the sacrificial death of him in whom
was concentrated the whole being of humanity. In his
death he died the death of all. By his resurrection he
triumphed over death. By the rejection and casting aside
of his human nature in death the God-man resumed his
essential divinity. In discarding the veil of flesh and
returning to his father in transfigured form, as a pure
spirit and being reunited to him, he set men an example
how they were to attain their true nature by the sacrifice
of their carnal personality. More than this, indeed, he
thereby obtained for them redemption from the bonds of
the flesh, lifted them above the limitations of earth, and
secured for them eternal life in and with the father.
Man has only to put himself in personal relation to him,
to unite intimately with him, to accept and assimilate the
belief in his redeeming death (to crucify himself with
Christ), and show this by a love of his fellow-men, and
he will have a share in Christ's exaltation, and so attain
redemption. The law therefore ceases to prescribe his
conduct. By his union with Christ he is dead to the law
and released from its dominion. The demons, under
whose curse he had hitherto lain, have now no power
over him. The life of which he has but a limited share
here on earth will be enjoyed under better conditions in
heaven. Christ is therefore the " mediator " between
God and man, destroying the barrier between them. He
is the " saviour " who heals the maladies of earthly life,
corporal or spiritual, the " deliverer " from the darkness



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 67

of earthly existence and death, the " God-man," the true
foundation and end of all religious action.

Any man who reflects impartially on this theory will
find it difficult to believe that there is question here of an
external historical process, an historical individual. The
idea comes closest, perhaps, to that of the Gnostics, and
especially close to that of the Alexandrian religious
philosopher Philo, an older contemporary of Paul, and
his principle of the Logos, which we afterwards find
blended with the Christian belief in the gospel of John.
Christ seems to be in Paul another name for the idea of
humanity, a comprehensive expression of the ideal unity
of all men, set forth as a personal being. Just in the
same way Philo conceives the fullness of the divine ideas
personified in the shape of the Logos, the " mediator,"
" son of God," and " light of the world," and blends the
Logos with the ideal man, the idea of man. And just as
Christ is made flesh and assumes human form, so Philo's
Logos descends from his heavenly sphere and enters the
world of sense, to give strength to the good, and save men
from sin, and lead them to their true home, the kingdom
of heaven, and their heavenly father.

This idea of the redemption of men by the " son " of
the most-high God is very ancient, and was widespread
in early times. In the Babylonian religion the redeemer
Marduk is sent upon the earth by his father Ea to save
men from their spiritual maladies and moral perversity.
The Greeks worshipped similar " sons " of God and
benefactors of men in Heracles, Dionysos, and Jason or
Jasios (the Greek name for Jesus), who likewise had a
heavenly commission to redeem men, and were taken
back into the circle of the blessed after a premature and
impressive death. The idea flourished chiefly, however,
in the religions of nearer Asia and North Africa, among
the Phrygians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians, who
worshipped in their Attis, Adonis, and Osiris (respectively)
a god who suffered, died, and rose again for humanity,



68 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

and expressed their belief in mysterious cults which are
known as " mysteries." Among the Mandaeic or Gnostic
sects, which cultivated a peculiar form of piety, apart
from the official religion, about the beginning of the
present era, and to which, in a general sense, the Jewish
sect of the Essenes seems to have belonged, the belief in
a divine saviour and mediator was the very centre of their
religious theory. Moreover, the Jewish apocalyptic of
the time, which expected a speedy end of the world,
leaned towards this view, and combined the form of the
mediating God with its idea of the Messiah, the expected
saviour of Israel from its political and social oppression.
In the prophet Daniel the redeemer is described by the
Gnostic name of "the son of man." Further, this idea
of a suffering and dying saviour was unmistakably con-
nected with the course of nature. It arose from the
sight of the fate of the sun or the moon, as they rose and
sank in their paths, as they waned, disappeared, and rose
again, in conjunction with the experience of the death
and resurrection of nature every year. It was expressed
by a belief in a divine son and saviour, who sacrifices
himself for his fellows, incurs death, descends into the
underworld, struggles against the demons of hell, and
after a time rises again from the tomb and brings a new
life to the world. Even the Israelitic prophets are not
uninfluenced by this idea. In the fifty-third chapter of
Isaiah we encounter the form of the so-called " suffering
servant of God," who is mocked, despised, and sacrificed
in expiation of the sins of his people, but rises again in
glory, and is borne to the splendours of heaven. It is
true that in this the prophet immediately contemplated
the fortune of his people, which he conceived as the
general expiatory victim for the rest of mankind. But,
as Gunkel rightly observes, the figure of a suffering and
dying saviour is discerned in the background in this
passage. Gressmann has even traced the fifty-third
chapter of Isaiah to a " ritual song " derived from the



69

mysteries, which was sung by the initiated on the day of
the death of God, and has clearly pointed out the mystery-
character of the whole passage. 1

(a) Simple Proofs. The "Christ-myth" regards the
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah as the real germ-cell of
Christianity. On it is based the Christian belief that the
Messiah, whom the Jews expected, has already appeared
in human form and servile lowliness, and sacrificed
himself for the sins of his people, in order that thus the
condition might be fulfilled without which the desired
" kingdom of God " could not be established : the
complete fidelity to the law and sinlessness of the
Israelites. 2 In the fact of his previous earthly appearance
they saw a guarantee of the speedy coming of the Messiah
in all his heavenly majesty, and the combination of the
figure of the " servant of God " with that of the " just
man " in Wisdom* confirmed the belief that the judgment
of the world was near, at which the just would be raised
to heaven and the godless thrust into eternal damnation.
Paul enlarged and deepened this idea by introducing it
into a more general frame of ideas and deducing its
metaphysical consequences. He gave greater clearness
to the pagan idea of a suffering, dying, and risen saviour-
god, which must have been familiar to the apostle from
his Cilician home, and gave it life by infusing into it the
spirit of the old mystery-religions. 4 It follows from this
that the supposed historical fact of a crucified Jesus is
not absolutely necessary to explain the origin of the
Paulinian doctrine of redemption, and the question arises
whether the letters which have come down to us under
the name of Paul contain any reference whatever to
an historical Jesus. The negative reply, which the

1 Der Ursprung der israelitisch-jildischen Eschatologie, 1905, p. 322.

2 Isaiah Iviii ; Ix, 21.

3 ii, 12 ; iii, 10 ; iv, 7 ; and xiii, 5.

4 This mystery-character of Paulinism has lately been put beyond
question by Beitzenstein in his essay, Die hellenistiscJien Mysterien-
Religionen, 1910.



70 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

" Christ-myth " gives to this question, has caused great
agitation among the theologians.

What, they cry with one voice, Paul knew nothing of
an historical Jesus ! His Jesus Christ was merely an
"imaginary being," the mere "idea" of a God-man
sacrificing himself ! There is no historical personage, no
real event, behind the fact of the death on the cross and
resurrection of Jesus Christ which is the central part of
the Pauline system ! Is not Christ described by Paul as a
real man? "Does not," von Soden asks, " his theory of
redemption through Christ imply his full humanity?
God sent his son in the form of sinful flesh on account of
sin, and condemned sin in the flesh." 1 The apostle speaks
of the "blood" of Christ, by which men are justified. 2
" In vivid language he represents to the Corinthians the
entrance of Jesus into human existence in order to
stimulate them to contribute generously to the funds of
the early Christians (2 Cor. viii, 9) : ' For ye know the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich,
yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his
poverty might be rich '; and even more vividly he repre-
sents him to the Philippians as the model of humility
(ii, 5) : ' Let this mind be in you, which was also in
Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it
not robbery to be equal with God ; but made himself of
no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant,
and was made in the likeness of man.' How can Drews
say in face of such passages (to which Weiss adds the
allusions to the righteousness [Rom. v, 18, 19], the love
[Gal. ii, 20] , and the obedience [Phil, ii, 8] of Jesus) :
' The whole earthly life of Jesus is entirely immaterial
to Paul'?" (p. 32).

I must, unfortunately, adhere to my view in spite of
the instruction given to me by theologians. What do
the quoted passages prove ? " That Paul is thinking

1 Romans viii, 3. 2 Romans iii, 25.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 71

of the humanity of his Christ, not in the sense of an
ideal humanity, but of a real human existence " (Soden,
p. 31). Certainly. But where and when did I question
this ? It is precisely the essential point of my theory that,
in the early Christian and Pauline view, the real coming of
the Messiah is preceded by his appearance in human shape.
According to Isaiah, it is not due to the powerlessness of
God, but to the sins of the people, that the fulfilment of
the promise of a Messiah is delayed (Is. Iviii; Ixx, 1). In
the fifty-third chapter the prophet had spoken of the
" servant of God " who takes on himself the sins of men,
and thus " justifies " them. If this figure of the servant
of God and just man is associated with that of the
Messiah, and the idea is inspired that the servant of God
is to be understood, not in the sense of the people of
Israel generally, but as a single individual who offers
himself for men, in the same way as in heathenism
originally one individual has to sacrifice himself annually
for all, it would naturally follow that the individual who
thus sacrificed himself would not merely have human
features, but would have to be a real man, otherwise he
could not expiate the sins of men. None but a man
could, according to the general feeling of antiquity, take
on himself the guilt of other men. Only as man was
" the just " in Solomon's Wisdom conceived, and he calls
himself "servant of God" (ii, 13) and represents God as
his " father " (xvi, 18). Indeed, even the suffering servant
of God in Isaiah was so unmistakably described as man
that the most resolute elevation of his figure to the
supernatural and metaphysical world, such as we find in
Paul, could not obliterate his human features. The
question is, whether these features are those of a real,
that is to say historical, man : whether the heavenly
being which must appear as a man according to Paul
came upon the earth at a definite moment in history.

Are the above-mentioned characters of the Christ-figure
such that they necessarily imply an historical personality?



72 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

A man must be absolutely wrapped in theological
prejudice not to recognise that they are wholly borrowed
from the figure of the servant of God in Isaiah : his love,
his righteousness, his humility, 1 his obedience, his poverty,
and even his position under the law (Gal. iv, 4), which
follows at once, in the case of a Jew, from his obedience,
and was for Paul the necessary condition for releasing
from the law the rest of men who were subject to it (v) .
This, as a matter of fact, was pointed out to the
" historical " theologians by their colleague Wrede.
" Only in one contingency," he says, " would the human
personality of Jesus be a model : if the doctrine of Christ
represented an idealising and apotheosis of Jesus in such
wise that the historical reality were visible through it.
This is certainly not the case [!] . Are the humility,
obedience, and love which abound in the son of God,
when he exchanges heaven for the miseries of earth, a
reflection of the compassionate and humble man Jesus ?
Has Paul transferred the various traits of the character
of Jesus to the heavenly form ? This has been affirmed,
but it is not true. Christ is said to be obedient because
he did not oppose the divine will to send him to save the
world, although it cost him his divine existence and
brought him to the cross ; humble, because he stooped to
the lowliness of earth : and love must have been his
motive, since his incarnation and death were the greatest
service to mankind. Such service is naturally inspired
by the desire to serve by love. All these ethical quali-
fications are, therefore, not derived from an expression of
the moral character of Jesus, but originate in the apostle's
own theory of redemption"' 1



1 This is also shown by the first Epistle of Clement, in which the servant
of God of Isaiah is represented as the "prototype " of Christ, and it is said :
" If the Lord [!] was so humble, what ought we, who have been brought by
him under the yoke of his grace, to be ? " (xvi, 17). It is very remarkable
that Clement, instead of appealing to the behaviour of Jesus to show his
humility, relies on the prophet Isaiah.

2 Paulus, Religionsgesch. Volksbtteher (1904), p. 85. Cf. Martin Bruckner :



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 73

But Paul represents Christ as "of the seed of David "
and born " of a woman " (Rom. i, 3). Is not that a plain
reference to an historical individual ? Unfortunately,
descent from David is merely one of the traditional
features of the Messiah, and consequently of his human
appearance ; and, if the Pauline Christ was to be a man
at all, from whom could he have been born if not from
" a woman " ? If Paul seems to lay stress on this trivial
and necessary circumstance, he may have been induced
to do so by Gnostic tendencies, which aimed at dissociating
the figure of the saviour from all earthly limitations, and
turning it into a purely metaphysical conception ; and he
therefore did not merely make use of a familiar Jewish
expression " born of a woman " which occurs more
than once in the Bible. 1 We may add that at least
liberal theologians are, to a great extent, convinced that
the " historical " Jesus did not descend from David, and
that the genealogies in the gospels, which purport to
prove such descent, are later fabrications made with a
view to establishing the Messianic character of the
Christian saviour. Thus Paul would have departed from
the truth if he had sought to represent Christ to the
communities as a descendant of David !

I need not linger to show that the many passages
which mention the death and crucifixion of Jesus do not,
as Weinel affirms, prove the historicity of Christ. When
von Soden emphatically calls attention to the vividness
with which Paul saw the details of the life of Jesus,
pointing to the first Epistle to the Corinthians (xv, 4), in
which he expressly [!] says that Jesus was buried after
death (p. 32), we must say that the procedure of our
opponents becomes rather humorous. Weinel charges
me with saying that theologians based the historicity of
Jesus on the account of the appearances of the risen

Der Apostel Paulns als Zewge wider den Christusbild der Evangelien in
Protest. Mvnatshefte, 1906, 355 /.
1 Job xiv, 1 ; Matthew xi, 11.



74 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

Christ (1 Cor. xv, 5), and concealing the fact that it was
the preceding verses, which speak of the death and burial
of Jesus, that were in question (p. 108). I must admit
that I had had too high an opinion of the theological
method of reasoning. The theologians really base the
historicity of Jesus on his death and burial in spite of
Isaiah liii, 9, where there is question of the grave of the
servant of God. In fact, they even base it on the (equally
historical !) fact of the resurrection, which, according to
Beth, is one of those " features " [sic] of Jesus " which
presuppose his humanity" (p. 36). What idea must
theologians have of the mental level of their readers when
they expect to make an impression on anyone with such
quotations as these from Paul !

All that is shown by these arguments adduced by the
theologians is, as I said before, that they assumed the
existence of the historical Jesus and the truth of the
gospel narrative before they "began their research ; on this
account they at once, in the most uncritical way, refer
every passage in which Paul touches upon the humanity
of Christ to an historical individual, and interpret in the
sense of the gospel narratives everything that is said
about this man. Weiss says that the " impartial reader "
must recognise " the historical fact of the incarnation and
the crucifixion " as the foundation of Paul's creed. The
word " historical " is, however, an addition for which as
yet no justification has been found in the text ; to say
nothing of the circumstance that hitherto no one, except
a theologian, has regarded the incarnation of a god as an
" historical fact." In fact, Paul himself, according to
Weiss, was not in a position to conceive " purely a real
and entire incarnation of the heavenly Christ," and he
rightly points to Phil, ii, 7, where the apostle does not
say : " He became man and was a man in his whole
behaviour," but " he was made in the likeness of a man,
and was found in fashion as a man " an expression that
has really a distinctly docetic colour, and suggests the



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 75

Gnostic conception of the Saviour. 1 Moreover, Paul's
creed portrays not only the man Jesus, but also the man
Adam. These two " men " complete each other, according
to Paul : just as all men sinned in Adam, the first man,
so they will be saved by the second man, Christ. Anyone
who regards Paul as taking the man Christ to have been
an historical fact must consistently also take Adam to
have been an historical reality, as Dupuis rightly observed. 2
When the orthodox hesitate to admit the historicity of
Adam, because it is too much out of harmony with
modern views, they deprive themselves of the second
support on which they base their belief in the historical
Christ and his work of redemption. For Paul one is just
as much a reality as the other. This should be enough
to open the minds of our theologians to the character of
this "reality " and its relation to history.

The " evidence " which we have so far examined from
Paul for the existence of an historical Jesus may be best
described as " simple." We may trust that it is not very
seriously advanced by its supporters, and is rather intended
for the edification of the general public. Probably they
will also not attach much weight to the fact that Paul
reminds the Galatians (iii, 1) how "before their eyes
Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among
them." That we have here nothing more than an
expressive delineation of the dying Christ and the need for
him to die for men, in order to move the hearers, just as
we find commonly done in a modern sermon in order to
turn souls to Christ, or at the most, according to Eobertson,
a scenic or pictorial representation of the crucified God
after the fashion of the ancient mysteries, and not an
historical statement, it is surely unnecessary to prove.
" If I set forth anything before the eyes of anyone," says
Kurt Delbriick, " there can be no question of a super-
natural and ideal being " (p. 15). In that case Delbriick

1 J. Weiss, Christus, die Anfange des Dogmas, Relg. Vplksbilcher, 1909,
p. 62. 2 L'originede tons Us cultes, 1794, ix, 13 ff.



76 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

must regard the paintings of the Last Judgment and
Hell by Michael Angelo and Eubens as reproductions of
concrete realities, or take the ghost of Hamlet's father to
be a real personality. But the most remarkable deduction
from this phrase in Galatians is drawn by J. Weiss in
his work against Wrede, Paulus und Jesus (1909), when
he says in regard to the " cross of Christ " : "As he
[Paul] utters these words, he has before his mind not
merely the concrete image of the crucified but all the
accompanying circumstances, which must have been
known to him. Crucifixion is a Roman punishment ;
he must therefore have known that the higher Roman
authority, the procurator, was involved (!). And as, on
the other hand, he doubtless (!) regarded the Jews as
bearing the guilt of the death (there is no proof!), he
must have had some idea of the course of the trial.
Indeed, the figure of the crucified must (!) have been
before his mind in more than mere outline ; it must have
had colour, expression, vivid features otherwise he could
not have ' set it forth evidently ' [in the Greek text,
" before the eyes "] to the Galatians. The expression un-
deniably (!) implies a living, expressive, pictorial descrip-
tion of the event, not merely an impressive communica-
tion of the fact" (p. 11). That is what I should call
" exegesis." I will permit myself one question : whether
the representation of the suffering just man in Isaiah
(c. liii) would not suffice to enable one to " set before
the eyes " the terrible death of the servant of God ?

Perhaps someone will quote " the twelve " to whom
Paul refers (1 Cor. xv, 5) as a proof that Paul knew some
particular facts about the life of the historical Jesus.
Since the work of Holsten, 1 however, it has been an open
secret in the theological world that " the twelve " is a
later interpolation in the original text. The theologian
Brandt also regards "the twelve" as "a very unsafe

1 Das Evangelium des Paulus, 1880, p. 224 ff.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 77

part of the Pauline text," and believes it to be a " later
addition " ;* and Seufert is convinced that it is possibly a
"very early (?) gloss" which was inserted in the text in
order to support with the authority of the apostle Paul
the later idea of twelve apostles. 2

(6) The Appearances of the Risen Christ. Generally
speaking, Paul's whole account of the appearances of the
risea^ Christ, as we find it in 1 Cor. xv, is not of a
character to afford any evidence of the historicity of
Jesus. Historical theology professes to attach much
importance to this account. It sees in it some confirma-
tion of the theory that in the resurrection we have
merely " visions " on the part of the Saviour's disciples.
In fact it regards it as the earliest account of the resur-
rection that we have, and having great authority because,
in their opinion, Paul relies directly on the testimony of
the " primitive community " for the truth of his state-
ment. That, they say, is what we must understand
when the apostle writes : "I delivered unto you first of
all that which I also received, how that Christ died for
our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was
buried, and that he rose again the third day according to
the Scriptures," etc. But does not the phrase " according
to the Scriptures " point rather to the fact that there
is no question here of an historical reminiscence, but a
belief based on writings namely, Isaiah liii, and possibly
also Jonah ii, 1, and Ho sea vi, 2 ? s The story of Jonah
itself seems to have been originally only an historical
embodiment of the myth of the dead, buried, and risen
Saviour ; in fact, Jesus refers to the prophet Jonah in
this sense (Matt, xii, 40).

1 Die evangel. Geschichte und der Ursprung des Christentums, 1903,
pp. 14, 418, and 421.

2 Der Ursprung und die Bedeutung des Apostolatus in der christl.
KircJie der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, 1887, pp. 46 and 157.

3 " After two days will he revive us : in the third day he will raise us
up, and we shall live in his sight " a passage relating to the people of
Israel, but which may have been taken by Paul to refer to the Messiah.
Compare Hausrath, Jesus u. d. neutestamentl. Schriftsteller, i, p. 103, 1908.



78 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

And even if the apostle was assured by the " primitive
community " of the truth of these writings, what does it
prove as regards the historicity of the person seen in such
visions ? It has been said that his enumeration of the
appearances of Jesus has a documentary and " catalogue -
like " character. But where do we find in this " catalogue "
the women to whom, according to Matthew (xxviii, 9) and
Mar k (xvi, 9), the risen Jesus first appeared? And how
can Paul say that Jesus appeared to the whole of the
twelve apostles, as there were only eleven after the death
of Judas, as Luke (xxiv, 33) assumes ? And how does
James come into the matter, since, according to the
gospels, Jesus is supposed to have had no relations with
his brother, and they do not speak of any such appear-
ance to him? If some of the more exalted religious
folk saw visions and believed they perceived the bodily
presence of the " servant of God," does that give any
proof of historicity ?

Naturally, Weiss says, and for proof he refers us to
the vision of Paul, of which he says : " The appearance
must have shown him features in the heavenly figure by
which he recognised Jesus of Nazareth, or as I should
say in accordance with 2 Cor. v, 16 recognised once
more" (p. 108). Yet Acts says nothing about Paul
perceiving a definite form ; it speaks only of a flash of
light which fell upon the apostle from above, and a voice
which he believed he heard. 1 That is enough to ruin the
deduction which Weiss makes in his book against Wrede
(p. ix) that Paul must have had a personal knowledge
of Jesus. We should have just as much right to regard
the pagan gods, Serapis or Asclepios, which were believed
to appear to their devotees in a state of ecstasy, as
historical personalities because the devotees regarded
them as such. Weiss himself assumes, in fact, that the
transfiguration of Jesus is based upon a statement of

1 ix, 5 ; xxvi, 14.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 79

Peter. Jesus is supposed to have appeared to his
disciples in the company of Moses and Elias. But how
did Peter know that the two were Moses and Elias ?
He had no personal knowledge of them.

Von Soden, however, believes that the visions mentioned
in 1 Cor. xv show that the figure which appeared to the
disciples must have had quite definite and recognisable
features, by which it could be known as that of Jesus.
But Paul does not say that Jesus appeared to them in
bodily form. If the appearance of a light to him was
enough to point to Jesus, may it not have been the same
with the others, as they all hourly expected the coming
of the Saviour ? Von Soden quotes the " more than
500 brethren," who must all have seen him at some
time, and of whom many still lived (1 Cor. xv, 6). It
seems that he has never heard of apparitions of the
Virgin Mary, which have been seen simultaneously by
many of the faithful, though not one of them had
the least personal acquaintance with her. He also
thinks that the apparition to the five hundred may be
brought into line with the Pentecostal occurrence in
Acts. Unfortunately, this Pentecostal phenomenon was
quite certainly not an historical event ; the account of
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is quite understood
from Joel ii, 28, where we read : " And it shall come to
pass that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh ; and
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old
men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see
visions. And also upon the servants and upon the hand-
maids in those days will I pour out my spirit. And I
will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth," etc.
But even if the Pentecostal phenomenon had ever really
taken place, it would not help the opinion of Herr von
Soden, because it would only follow that the five hundred
saw an appearance of light, not a definite figure of Jesus.
That is more probable, it is true, than that a definite
form was seen simultaneously by five hundred men. For



80 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

that reason we might regard the account in Acts as
earlier than, if not the source of, the narrative of Paul.
That would mean that the episode of the five hundred is
not given in its original form in Paul, and we should then
have all the more reason to regard the whole reference to
the appearances of the risen Jesus in the fifteenth chapter
of 1 Corinthians as an interpolation. The effort to put
Paul's vision of Christ on a footing with those of the
other apostles suggests that the whole thing is a fictitious
account inserted in the interest of the apostle of the
Gentiles, or, rather, of a common preaching of the apostle
of the Jews and Paul. 1

At any rate, the proof that Paul owes his account
of the apparition of the risen Christ to the primitive
community does not help at all, as there is no more
guarantee of the historical reality of the figure seen in
a vision by a number than by an individual. It merely
shows the failure of theologians to find any support for
their belief in an historical Jesus in 1 Cor. xv.

(c) The Account of the Last Supper. Now we come
to 1 Cor. xi, 23. Here we find the familiar words : " For
I have received from the Lord that which also I delivered
unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which
he was betrayed took bread," etc. This passage, J. Weiss
assures us, is "fatal" to the whole theory of Drews, "because
in it we not only have the words of the Lord quoted, but
a perfectly definite event in the life of Jesus is described
in all its details, which show a full knowledge of the story
of the passion : the night, the betrayal, and the supper
before the arrest" (p. 105). Certainly ; unless the words
in question were not written by Paul, but are a later
interpolation in the text. I was not the first to suggest
this. The theologians Straatman 2 and Bruins 8 rejected
Paul's account of the Last Supper, and concluded that it

1 C/. W. B. Smith, Ecce Deus (1911), p. 155 ff.

2 Kritiscte Studien, 1863, pp. 38-63.
8 Theol. Tijdschr., xxvi, pp. 397-403.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 81

does not fit the context. Steck 1 describes it as modified
for liturgical use, and Volter 2 regards the whole eleventh
chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians as an inter-
polation. Van Manen also has questioned the passage
relating to the Last Supper in Paul, on account of its
lack of connection with the preceding passage, and has
said that it gives one the impression of being a collection
of sayings from various sources for the purpose of dis-
placing the love-feasts of the community, on account of
the unseemly things that happened, and replacing them
by the festival of the Last Supper. 3 To these we may
add Schlager, the translator of van Manen's JRomerbrief,
who has raised objections to the passage; 4 and Smith also
has recently declared the passage to be an interpolation.
It is not therefore foolish to speak about an interpolation
in 1 Cor. xi, 23.

Historical theology generally regards the passage in
Corinthians as the earliest version we have of the words
used at the institution of the Supper. But a particu-
larly striking reason that prevents us from seeing in
Paul the oldest tradition of the words at the Last
Supper is their obviously liturgical form and the mean-
ing which the apostle puts on the words. It is very
remarkable that Paul and Luke alone represent the
Lord's Supper as instituted by Jesus in "memory" of
him ; Mark and Matthew know nothing of this. They
have a much simpler test than the other two. Hence,
Julicher, against Weizsacker and Harnack, rightly doubts
whether the Supper was " founded " by Jesus. 8 " He did
not institute or found anything ; that remained for the time
when he came again into his father's kingdom. He made
no provision for his memory ; having spoken as he did in
Matthew (xxvi, 29), he had no idea of so long a period

1 Galaterbrief, p. 172.

2 Theol. Tijdschr., xxiii, p. 322.

3 Whittaker, work quoted, p. 168.

i Theol. Tijdschr., 1889, Heft. I, p. 41.
5 Theol. Abhandlungen fttr C. Weizsacker, 1892, p. 232.

G



82 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

of future time" (p. 244). Paul, therefore, according to
Jiilicher, indicates a later stage of the tradition in regard
to the first Eucharist than Mark and Matthew, and the
earliest tradition does not make Jesus show the least sign
that he wishes these material actions to be performed
in future by his followers (p. 238). If this is so, the
words of the institution of the Supper were interpolated
subsequently in the text of Paul, as the liturgical use of
them in the Pauline sense became established in the
Church, in order to support them with the authority of
the apostle, and the words, " For I have received from
the Lord," serve to give further proof of their authentic
character ; or else the first Epistle to the Corinthians
was not written by the apostle Paul, as, in spite of
Jiilicher, it is difficult to believe that Paul could at
so early a stage give a version of the Lord's Supper
that differed so much from that of the " primitive com-
munity."

Or may we believe that Paul had a more reliable
account of the words of Jesus than the evangelists,
and has used it in 1 Cor. xi, 23 ? If so, how came
Matthew and Mark to change the original words of
institution, and how could this alteration be preserved
in their text and received by the Church? Even in
their text the words of institution do not give an
impression of history. Their mystic sense is in
flagrant contradiction to what theologians so appre-
ciatively call the " simplicity " and " straightforward-
ness " of the words of Jesus. " How were the disciples
to understand that they eat the body of Christ who was
about to be put to death, and drank his blood, though
not the blood present in his body, but that about to be
shed soon ? " asks the theologian A. Eichhorn in his
work Das Abendmahl (1898), and he declares that the
whole story of the institution of the supper, as we have
it in the Synoptics and Paul, is an historical impossibility.
" All the difficulties disappear if we adopt the later point



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 83

of view of the community." 1 The mysticism of the
festive supper cannot have been instituted by Jesus, but
is based on the cult of the Christian community, and was
subsequently put in the mouth of its supposed founder. 2

In that case 1 Cor. xi, 23, etc., is of no value as a
proof of the historicity of Jesus.

Let us examine the passage more closely. " The same
night in which he was betrayed" was he betrayed?
The thing is historically so improbable, the whole story
of the betrayal is so absurd historically and psycholo-
gically, that only a few thoughtless Bible-readers can
accept it with complacency. Imagine the ideal man
Jesus knowing that one of his disciples is about to betray
him and thus forfeit his eternal salvation, yet doing
nothing to restrain the miserable man, but rather con-
firming him in it ! Imagine a Judas demanding money
from the high-priest for the betrayal of a man who walks
the streets of Jerusalem daily, and whose sojourn at
night could assuredly be discovered without any treachery !
" For Judas to have betrayed Jesus," Kautsky says, " is
much the same as if the Berlin police were to pay a spy
to point out to them the man named Bebel." 3 More-
over, the Greek word paradidonai does not mean
" betray " at all, but " give up," and is simply taken
from Isaiah liii, 12, where it is said that the servant of
God "gave himself unto death." The whole story of
the betrayal is a late invention founded on that passage
in the prophet, and Judas is not an historical personality,
but, as Robertson believes, a representative of the Jewish
people, hated by the Christians, who were believed to
have caused the death of the Saviour. Further, the
" night," in which the betrayal is supposed to have taken
place, has no historical background. It merely serves to

1 Work quoted, p. 19. See also A. Schweitzer, Von Reimarus zu
Wrede (1906), p. 152.

' 3 See Feigel, Der Einfluss des Weissagungsbeweises und anderer Motive
auf die Leidensgeschichte (1910), p. 50.

3 Der Ursprung des Christentums (1910), p. 388.



84

set in contrast the luminous figure of Jesus and the dark
work of his betrayer. 1 Hence Paul cannot have known
anything of a nocturnal betrayal on the part of Judas,
and one more " proof " of the historicity of Jesus breaks
down.

Theologians humorously comment on the fact that all
passages are rejected as interpolations which do not
square with the theory of those who deny the historicity
of Christ, and say that this is a wilful procedure. It is,
however, quite certain that they themselves would at
once abandon the passages, and find as many arguments
against their genuineness as they now do in favour of it,
if this suited their general system.

This much is certain: If 1 Cor. xi, 23, etc., is not an
interpolation in the text, there are no interpolations at all
in the New Testament. We can understand how difficult
it is for theologians to give up the passage on account of
the very thin thread which unequivocally connects the
teaching of Paul with the gospels, but we cannot think
much of their perspicacity when they find no fault with
the passage. In earlier verses (17-22) of the chapter Paul
is not dealing with the so-called last supper, but with the
love-feast, or agape, which the Christians celebrated in
common. From the twenty-third verse on the apostle
speaks suddenly of the supper, and then in verses 23 and
24 returns to the love-feast.

(d) The "Brothers" of the Lord. We have now to
deal with " the brothers of the Lord " (1 Cor. ix, 5 and
Gal. i, 19). Here the theologians believe that they play
their trump. If Jesus had had corporal brothers, he
must certainly have been an historical individual, and it
is untrue that Paul knew nothing of any individual human
feature of Jesus. " Have we not," says 1 Cor. ix, 5,
" power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other
apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas ? "

1 See Feigel, work quoted, pp. 47 and 114.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 85

If it could only be proved that Paul had in his mind
corporal brothers of Jesus and not merely " brothers " in
the sect ! Weinel contests this on the ground that it is
unlikely that a sect would call itself " brothers " of the
God of the cult. Has he never heard of brothers of
St. Vincent, brothers of Joseph, sisters of Mary, etc. ;
that is to say, religious brotherhoods whose members call
themselves after the saint whose service they have
entered, and who correspond to the heroes of the cult
in the ancient mysteries ? " But in the case of Paul,"
he replies, " we can prove that he does not give that
name to Christians ; he calls them ' brethren ' or ' brethren
in Christ'" (p. 109).

Now, in Romans (viii, 44) those who are impelled by
the spirit of God are called " sons of God." Christ,
as " son of God " in a special sense, is called " the first-
born among many brethren " (29), and his followers are
called "heirs of God" and "co-heirs with Christ" (17),
from which it follows that they must at the same
time be " brothers of Christ." That is, says Weinel, a
figure, not a Christian name. But why should not the
followers of Jesus receive a figurative name from Paul,
when the " brotherhood " of the sect is only figurative, its
heads are figuratively called " fathers," and the members
only figuratively their sons? In Matthew (xxviii, 10)
Jesus himself calls his followers his " brothers," and in
Mark (Hi, 35) he says : " Whoever shall do the will of
God, the same is my brother and my sister and mother."
In John (xx, 17) he so names the disciples because they
have as " father " the same God as he. In fact, in the
second century Justin, in his dialogue with the Jew
Trypho, speaks of the apostles as " brothers of Jesus " in
the highest sense (p. 106). Why, then, should not Paul
have spoken of the followers of Jesus as his " brothers " ?
Because he usually calls them "brothers in Christ"?
But just as, on the one hand, the apostle expresses the
intimate connection with Christ by the continence of the



86 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

faithful (Gal. iii, 26-29), and also by absorption in the
life-atmosphere of the Supreme, so he also speaks, on the
other hand, of Christ living in the faithful and bringing
them into closer relationship, or making brothers of them.
If in one place he does not confine himself to one mode
of expression, why should he do so in another ? Those
who think otherwise must have been convinced before-
hand that Jesus is an historical individual in Paul,
and that his brothers can only be brothers in the flesh.
As a matter of fact, the partisans of the historicity of
Jesus merely reject the figurative interpretation of the
expression " brothers" because they assume that historicity
in advance.

According to Weinel, it follows that a special group of
men must be named here, because in 1 Cor. ix there is
question of the prerogatives of the apostles, and the
brothers of the Lord are associated with them as apostolic
men (p. 109). But was it really a " prerogative" of the
apostles to be married ? Were the other members of the
sect besides the apostles and the corporal brothers of
Jesus forbidden to take a wife ? Might not Paul just as
well have wished to say that in all things he felt himself
in the same position as the other members of the com-
munity, and therefore his apostolic dignity could not be
contested once he had won a right to that name by his
missionary work ? No, says J.Weiss; the "brothers of
the Lord " cannot be ordinary Christians. " Why were
they named between the apostles and Cephas, and why
especially were the apostles not so called? " (p. 106). On
the other hand, why is Cephas mentioned after the
" brothers of the Lord," seeing that he was one of the
apostles ? And were the Corinthians so familiar with the
brothers of Jesus that Paul could appeal to them and
their conjugal relations ? Are we not rather to under-
stand by the " brothers of the Lord," if they do really
mean a special group of men distinct from the twelve
apostles, the seventy disciples whom Jesus is said (Luke x)



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 87

to have sent on missionary journeys ? We might point
to the fact that James, the " brother of the Lord," is
distinct from the twelve apostles according to the apostolic
constitutions, and is counted by Eusebius 1 among the
seventy a view which Hegesippus also seems to hold in
Eusebius. 2 There is no answer to these questions. At
the best the passage remains obscure.

Other students, who do not need the " brothers of
Jesus " in support of their belief in an historical Jesus,
have dropped 1 Cor. ix, 5 altogether, and declared that it
is meaningless or is an interpolation. Schlager, for
instance, considers it spurious because, in his research,
all passages in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, with
one single exception (iv, 4), which speak of Christ as " the
Lord " have proved to be interpolations. " Missionary
journeys of the brothers of Jesus," he says, " are not
known to us from any other source, and are in themselves
improbable." That is undoubtedly correct. Imagine
Simon, Jude, or Joseph (Joses) going out with the
announcement that their brother Jesus was the long-
expected Messiah, and would soon come again in the
clouds of heaven ! Steck also is surprised to hear of mis-
sionary journeys on the part of the brothers of the Lord,
" who, as patriotic Jews, are not easy to imagine away
from Palestine," and he is reminded of Gal. ii, 12, where
it is merely said that Peter went to Antioch, without any
further historical explanations. 8 And Bruno Bauer
exclaims : " What an idea that Peter and the twelve
apostles should be known to the Corinthians as travelling
about ! It was not until the second century that they
were known as such to everybody. And how incongruous
the question is whether they have not the same right to
marry as the apostles, and that Barnabas should be
brought into closest intimacy with the person of Paul
and represented to the Corinthians as co-ordinate with

1 Comment. Is. xvii, 5 ; Eccl. Hist., I, 12 ; II, 1 ; VH, 19.

2 Eccl. Hist., II, 25. 8 Galaterbrief, p. 272.



88 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

Paul ! As if he had gone to Corinth with the apostle of
the Gentiles!" (p. 52).

The partisans of an historical Jesus naturally connect
his " brothers " with Mark vi, 3, where James, Joses,
Juda, and Simon are mentioned as sons of Mary and
brothers of Jesus. But Steudel has rightly called our
attention to Mark xv, 40, where the same Mary, who is
supposed to be the mother of James and Joses, is not
represented as the mother of Jesus, and, consequently,
James and Joses cannot be regarded as his brothers. We
have evidently to deal with two independent accounts, and
there can be no hesitation in saying which was the
earlier ; and, therefore, the belief that Jesus had brothers
in the flesh is seen to be a secondary and legendary
growth. 1

Here we also have the answer to the question about the
brotherhood of James (Gal. i, 19). I have endeavoured
to show that this also is merely brotherhood in the sect,
and that the position of honour which James is supposed
to have had in the community, according to Acts xv, 13
and Gal. i, 19 and ii, 9 and 12, was due to his personal
qualities. " It was reserved for Drews," says von Soden,
" to explain the phrase ' brothers of the Lord ' in the
sense that James was the best Christian, the most like to
the Lord" (p. 31). The learned writer evidently forgets
that Origen had said long ago that James was called the
brother of the Lord, not so much on account of blood-
relationship with Jesus, or because -he had grown up with
him, as because he was faithful and virtuous. 2 It is well
known what an important part James played in the
second century in the Jewish-Christian communities, as
we see especially in Hegesippus (in Eusebius's Ecclesias-
tical History, II, 25), precisely on account of his piety.
He was at the same time the patron of the Ebionitic



1 Steudel, Im Kampf um die Christusmythe, pp. 95 and 114.

2 Contra Celsum, I, 47.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 89

party, which formed a garland of legends about his
head. Is it so improbable that the pious brother in the
sect was early elevated to the position of " brother of
the Lord " in a special sense, and that the name
originally only a title of honour was used by Paul in
that sense ?

On the other hand, it is not impossible that " the
brother of the Lord " is a later interpolation in Gal. i, 19,
whether because a particular group of Christians wished
to bring the venerated saint as close as possible to
Jesus by making him a brother in the flesh, or, as
Schlager (p. 46) thinks, in order to distinguish more
clearly the various individuals who were named James.
As Hegesippus says : " The community distinguished
the apostle James, the brother of the Lord, by the name
of ' the just,' from the time of Christ to our own days,
as there were several with the name James." 1 It
was quite natural, when they began to regard Jesus
generally as a human being, to give him human
features, and convert the inner spiritual relationship
to him of various distinguished brethren into a bodily
relationship ; at times this might be done in order to
vindicate the complete reality of the incarnation of Christ
against the growing Gnostic spiritualism. Lastly, can
it be a mere coincidence that the three " pillars " at
Jerusalem agree in name with the three privileged
disciples of the Lord who are present with him at the
raising of the daughter of Jairus (Mark v, 57; Luke vii,
51), follow him to the mountain of transfiguration (Mark
ix, 2 ; Luke ix, 28) , and are permitted to be the witnesses
of his agony in face of approaching death in Geth-
semane? Was not the " pillar " apostle James originally
identical with James the son of Zebedee and brother of
John, and only afterwards converted into the " brother
of Jesus " ?

1 Eusebius, Eccl. Hist., as above.



90 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

Let it not be said that it is mere " subjective arbitrari-
ness " to find here another interpolation in Paul. No
theologian doubts that the Pauline Epistles have been
greatly interpolated. Which passages have been inserted
later can be decided only by the general theory which one
gathers from the text. And that the theory of the theo-
logians is the only correct one, that the Jesus of the Pauline
Epistles was an historical individual, has not yet been
proved by anything we have found in the Epistles.
What is there to prevent us, then, from interpreting in
our own sense, or excluding, so singular and isolated an
expression as " the brother of the Lord " in Galatians ?

As is well known, much scandal was early occasioned
in Essenian-Ebionitic circles by the statement that Mary
was married to Joseph and had several children, and it
was said that James was not a real brother of Jesus.
Some regarded him as a step-brother a son of Joseph
by an earlier wife; others thought the "brothers of the
Lord " were foster-brothers or cousins of Jesus, or
attempted to explain them away as equal to the apostles.
This led to an identification of James the Just, the
" brother of the Lord," with James the son of Alphaeus,
as he is briefly called in the Synoptics and in Acts, 1 as we
find in Jerome, for instance ; others identified him with
James the son of Zebedee, the brother of John ; and these
views have found representatives among recent theolo-
gians. In the Synoptics the " brothers " have apparently
a purely symbolical significance. They serve the purpose
of emphasising the distinction between spiritual and
bodily relationship, and illustrating the truth that
belonging to Jesus does not depend on external cir-
cumstances and the accident of birth, but simply on
faith. 2 Even in John (vii, 5) the brothers, who do not
believe in him, are opposed to the twelve and their



1 Matt, x, 3 ; Mark iii, 18 ; Luke vi, 15 ; Acts i, 13.

2 Matt, xii, 46; Mark iii, 31 : Luke viii, 19.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 91

unhesitating recognition of his Messiahship (vi, 69),
which also recalls the antithesis of the Jews, who, in
spite of their racial connection, would hear nothing of
Jesus and his intimate followers. It is only in the later
Acts of the Apostles (i, 14) that the brothers of Jesus
appear as followers of him, although not a word is said
in explanation of their sudden conversion. This does not
dispose us to place very much confidence in the references
of the New Testament to the brothers of Jesus, and when
Weinel says in regard to James, " It is all so simple,
intelligible, and straightforward that it needs a good deal
of art to evade the testimony of the connection of Gal. i
and 1 Cor. ix and the terminology" (p. 116), I can only
reply that, in spite of all my efforts to understand James
from the writings of theologians, I have never been able to
get at the real nature of the man. And as I find that
others have had the same experience, it does not seem to
be due to any defect on my part that the James-problem
seems to me hopeless; every attempt to throw light on the
obscure problem fails. 1 To base on an isolated passage
such as the reference to " the brothers of the Lord " in
Paul a belief in the historical character of Jesus seems
to me too "simple"; I am not modest enough to do
it. I can only see in the " brothers of Jesus," as
far as they are supposed to have been brothers in the
flesh, and in his parents, the carpenter Joseph and Mary,
mythical figures ; in the case of Mary especially, because
the name is customary among the saviour-gods of ancient
times, and the other supposed actions of the Biblical Mary
agree with those of the mothers (or sisters) of those
deities. 2

(e) The " Words of the Lord." We now come to
what are called the " Words of the Lord," the introduc-
tion of which into the Pauline Epistles is supposed to



1 See also Steudel, Wir Gelehrten vom Fach, p. 69.

2 See The Christ-Myth and Robertson's Christianity and Mythology.



92 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

prove that the apostle had some knowledge of Jesus.
First there is 1 Cor. vii, 10 : " And unto the married I
command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife
depart from her husband : but and if she depart, let her
remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband ; and
let not the husband put away his wife." The latter part
of this precept agrees in substance (not verbally) with
Matthew v, 32, and xix, 9, and other parallel passages.
But does that mean that it is a quotation of a saying
of the historical Jesus ? The prohibition to part with a
wife is sound Kabbinism. In the Talmud we read : " A
wife must not be dismissed except for adultery "
(Gittin, 90) ; " The altar itself sheds tears over the man
who sends away his wife " (Pessach, 113) ; " The man
who separates from his wife is hateful to God " (Gittin,
90 6). We even read in the prophet Malachi : "Let
none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
For the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth
putting away" (ii, 15). How, if the apostle had this
passage in mind in his prohibition of divorce, and by the
" Lord " in whose name he speaks, are we to understand
" the God of Israel " ? Does not Paul regard the Old
Testament as the word of revelation of the "Lord,"
whose pointing to Christ had hitherto been hidden, but
is now revealed in the eyes of the faithful? 1 And when
the apostle appeals in 1 Cor. ix, 14, to a command of the
" Lord " for the right of the apostles to live by the
gospel, we may be disposed to recall Matthew x, 10 :
" The workman is worthy of his meat "; but we should
have just as much right to think of Deut. xviii, 1, where
it is written : " The priests the Levites, and all the tribe
of Levi, shall have no part nor inheritance with Israel :
they shall eat the offerings of the Lord made by fire, and
his inheritance," and xxv, 4 : " Thou shalt not muzzle
the ox when he treadeth out the corn." Paul himself

1 2 Cor. iii, 14.



93

sometimes (1 Cor. ix, 9) appeals to this word of the law.
In order, therefore, to explain Paul's " Words of the
Lord " we have no need to suppose, as I did previously,
that they are rulSs of the community, which are clothed
with an authoritative significance by ascribing them to
the patron of the religious body ; it is enough to appeal
to the Old Testament.

If, however, we are to understand by the " Lord " in
Paul, not the " God of Israel," but Jesus, there is still no
security whatever that the words in question are not
interpolations. " References to the words and deeds of
the life of the historical Jesus are," says Schlager, " so
infrequent in the Pauline writings that, whenever they
occur, we have to ask ourselves whether it is not the
reflectiveness of a later period, which was accustomed to
rely on the evangelical literature, that introduced the
authority of Jesus into the text" (p. 36). What is to
prevent us from supposing that the reverse often took
place also, and that words and phrases from the Pauline
Epistles were afterwards put in the mouth of the Jesus
of the gospels ?

Von Soden, also, finds it remarkable that the " Words of
the Lord " in Paul are not found, or not found in the same
form, in the gospels. That is especially true of 1 Thessa-
lonians iv, 15 an Epistle which is usually regarded as
genuine by historical theologians : " For this we say unto
you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive
and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent
them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall
descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the
archangel, and with the trump of God ; and the dead in
Christ shall rise first : then we which are alive and
remain shall be caught up together with them in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air ; and so shall we ever
be with the Lord." The passage recalls Mark xiii, 26,
especially in view of the subsequent warning to watch,
but differs from it in important points. Here we have



94 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

an excellent illustration of the way in which " Words of
the Lord" came into existence. For some of the most
distinguished critical representatives of historical theology
(Holtzmann, for instance) are convinced that the thir-
teenth chapter of Mark is in the main an apocalyptic
leaflet of the time of the Jewish War, shortly before the
year 70 ; more probably, as Graetz believes and Lublinski
has recently shown, a leaflet by a Palestinian Christian
of the time of Bar-Kochba. 1 These " Words of the
Lord " are merely the sayings of individuals who felt
the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and believed that their
utterances during the ecstatic condition came directly
from "the Lord"; and sometimes, as in the case we are
discussing, they were introduced afterwards into the New
Testament. 2

Such being the state of things, it is utterly futile to
claim that, because certain words and phrases of the
Pauline Epistles harmonise with others in the gospels,
Paul is repeating the words of the historical Jesus. The
late H. Holtzmann, in his attempt to refute my state-
ment in the Christ Myth that Paul seemed not to be
acquainted with any sayings of Jesus, hastily put together
a number of such words from the apostle's Epistles, and
no doubt others will be found now that attention has
been drawn to them. There is, however, as I said, no
disproof whatever in this, for the simple reason that most
of these words are of such a nature that we cannot say
whether the gospels took them from the Pauline Epistles,
or the Epistles owe them to the gospels. On the one
hand, even according to theologians, the gospels are
repeatedly found to contain Pauline ideas ; on the other,
one can very easily see how it would be to the interest of
the Church to discover the ideas and words of Jesus in



1 Wernle, Die Quellen des Lebens Jesu, 1905, p. 58 ; Das werdende
Dogma vom Leben Jesu, 1910, pp. 76 and 101.

2 Steudel, Wir Gelehrten vom Fach, p. 37 ; Iin Kampf um die Christus-
mythe, p. 56.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 95

Paul, in order to bridge over the remarkable gulf between
the two. Moreover, a great part of these particular words
of Jesus, especially of the more important, have nothing
distinctive about them to show that they were uttered by
Jesus only.

This is true, in the first place, of Romans ii, 1 :
" Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest
thyself" (cf. also xiv, 4). The saying is supposed to
suggest Matthew vii, 1 : " Judge not that ye be not
judged." But the resemblance is so slight and the
saying so commonplace that Paul himself may have
been the author of it. It is written in the Talmud
(Pirke Aboth, i, 6): "Judge only good of thy neigh-
bours," and (Sanhedrim, 100) : "As a man measures,
with the same standard shall he be measured." It is the
same with Romans ii, 19. When the apostle exclaims to
the law-proud Jew, " Thou art confident that thou
thyself art a guide of the blind," there is no necessary
connection with Matthew xv, 14, and xxiii, 16 and 24,
where Jesus pronounces his woes over the Pharisees, as
the figure is too pertinent and familiar to prove anything.
In Romans ix, 33, Paul describes his gospel of justification
by faith as "a stumbling-block and rock of offence."
This at once sends theologians to Matthew xxi, 42, where
it is written : " The stone which the builders rejected,
the same is become the head of the corner." Whereas
in this case Jesus himself appeals to the Scriptures, and
there is no reason whatever why Paul also, when he
reproduced the words, should not have in mind Is. viii, 14,
and xxviii, 16. In Romans xii, 14, we find : " Bless them
which persecute you; bless, and curse not." That, of
course, must be based on the words of Jesus in Matthew
v, 44 : " Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you and persecute you." It is, however,
written in Psalm cix, 28 : " Let them curse, but bless
thou " ; and the Talmud says : " It is better to be wronged



96 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

by others than to wrong " (Sanhedrim, 48) ; " Be rather
with the persecuted than the persecutors" (Babamezia^S) ;
and the oldest manuscripts of the gospels (Sinaiticus and
Vaticanus) do not contain the words of Jesus at all. In
the same way we dispose of Romans xii, 21 : " Be not
overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good " (c/. also
Wisdom, vii, 30).

In Romans xiii, 7, we read : " Bender therefore to all
their dues : tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to
whom custom"; and this is paralleled by Matthew xxii, 21 :
" Bender therefore unto Caesar the things which are
Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's "; but
we also read in the Talmud (Shekalim iii, 2 ; Pirke
Aboth iii, 7) : " Everyone is bound to discharge his obliga-
tions to God with the same conscientiousness as his
obligations to men. Give unto God what belongs to
him." In Romans xiii, 8-10, we have the precept of
mutual charity : " He that loveth another hath fulfilled
the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery,

Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal and if there

be any other commandment, it is all comprehended in
this saying namely : Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour : therefore
love is the fulfilment of the law " (cf. also Galatians v, 14).
Here the source seems to be Matthew xxii, 40, where
Jesus tells the Scribe, who asks him which is the greatest
commandment in the law, that it is the love of God and
one's neighbour, and adds : " On these two command-
ments hang all the law and the prophets." But Hillel
also is said to have told a Gentile who asked him to teach
the whole law while he stood on one leg : " What dis-
pleases thee, do thou not to any fellow-man ; that is the
whole of our teaching " (Shabbat, 31). In Romans xiv, 13,
Paul warns his reader to give no scandal to his weak
brother (also 1 Cor. viii, 7-13). Here we are referred to
Matthew xviii, 6-9, where Jesus pronounces his woes on
those who give scandal : " Whoso shall offend one of these



THE WITNESS Otf PAUL 97

little ones which believe in me, it were better for him
that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he
were drowned in the depth of the sea." But, apart from
the fact that this prohibition of scandal is too natural and
obvious for Paul to need to derive it from the words of
Jesus, it is written in the Talmud : " Better were it for
the evil-minded to have been born blind so that they
might bring no evil into the world " (Tanchuma, 71),
and " Whoso leads his fellow-men into sin acts far worse
than if he took away his own life" (Tanchuma, 74).

In 1 Cor. xiii, 2, Paul speaks of the faith that " moves
mountains." But that he was referring to Matthew

xxi, 22: "If ye have faith, and doubt not ye shall

say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou
cast into the sea; and it shall be done," seems very
doubtful in view of the fact that the phrase about re-
moving mountains was quite common among the rabbis
as an expression of the power of the discourse of a teacher,
and might easily be transferred to express the power of
faith (Berachoth, 64 ; Erubim, 29). The other phrases
that are quoted under this head are of no importance.
If it is objected that a comparison of the parallel passages
shows that the composition of the sayings of Jesus is
more distinguished for "originality" than that of the
words of Paul, such originality proves neither that they
are earlier nor that they were uttered by Jesus. It is just
as conceivable that the words of the apostle received their
greater freshness and force by being afterwards fitted into
the peculiar frame of the gospels as that Paul himself took
them from the gospels, as Steck, for instance, is disposed
to think. 1 Hence, the concordances with the gospels in
Paul prove nothing whatever as regards the historicity of
Jesus, and would not if they were more numerous than
those we have quoted.



1 Pp. 163-72. Cf. E. Hortlein, "Jesusworte bei Paulus?" in the Prot.
Monatshefte, 1909, p. 265, and Bruckner, work quoted.

H



98 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

2. PAUL NO WITNESS TO THE HISTOKICITY
OF JESUS.

We must, therefore, acquiesce in the view of Wrede and
M. Bruckner, which is also presented in the Christ-Myth,
that Paul was not concerned with the earthly life of
Jesus, and his idea of Christ was formed independently
of an historical Jesus. " Of the ' life ' of Jesus," says
Wrede, "one single event was of importance to him : the end
of life, the death. For him, however, even this is not the
moral action of a man ; indeed, it is not an historical fact
at all for him, but a superhistorical fact, an event of the
supersensual world." 1 Wrede therefore doubts whether
the "disciple of Jesus" properly applies to Paul, if it is
meant to express his historical relation to Jesus. " We
need not repeat it : the life-work and living figure of
Jesus are not reflected in the Pauline theology. There
can be no doubt about this fact. He of whom Paul
professed himself the disciple and servant was not the
historical human being Jesus, but another."

This admission on the part of so distinguished an
expert as Wrede is naturally very unwelcome to liberal
theologians. It has brought into play a large number
of theological pens, eager to weaken Wrede's remarks,
represent them as exaggerations, and make them harmless.
" Attempts at reconciliation," J. Weiss rightly calls these
efforts in his work Paulus und Jesus, in which he
emphatically opposes Wrede, and endeavours to find
better arguments to prove the close connection between
Paul and Jesus. Jiilicher also has published a volume
in the " Religionsgeschichtlichen Volksbiicher," entitled
Paulus und Jesus (1907), to correct the heresy of Wrede.
In this he has endeavoured, with more rhetoric than force,
to explain the agreement and the difference between Jesus
and his apostles, and to prove that Paul was not indifferent
to the personality of Jesus. " The ' Lord,' the supreme

1 Paulus, pp. 85 and 95.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 99

master, was not shown to him by the apostles, but by
God alone; but what the Lord had once taught, com-
manded, and instituted on earth could [sic] be learned by
Paul only from men. The friendly co-operation of Paul
with other Evangelists, such as Barnabas and Mark, who
assuredly did not possess such remarkable exclusiveness,
makes it impossible that the gospel-story should have
remained substantially unknown to Paul." Who can fail
to recognise here the method which the liberal theologian
regards as the only " scientific " method namely, to
assume precisely what has to be proved the connection
of Paul and the " primitive community " with an historical
Jesus'? It is, of course, more than improbable that, if
Peter and Barnabas and all the others knew any details
about Jesus, Paul should not have heard them. But the
only fact in the matter is that the apostle's letters show
no trace whatever of such knowledge. What is the value
of an argument which tries to prove the historicity of the
gospels by means of the Pauline Epistles, and the historical
character of the Pauline references to Jesus by similar
references in the gospels ? We ask : Is there anything in
the Pauline Epistles which compels us to infer from them
the existence of an historical Jesus ? Did the writer of
these Epistles know anything in detail of the events which
the gospels describe as historical ? We cannot be put off
with the assurance : Yes, he must have known of them ;
that is to say, if things fell out precisely as the New
Testament writings say that they did which is the thing
to be proved. 1

1 In his pamphlet Hat Jesus gelebt ? Jiilicher seems to deny that there
is any difficulty here at all, and appeals from those who deny Jesus to the
" judicious historian," who must, of course, be a theologian. It is true
that he generally agrees with Wrede : " The nucleus of the gospel is for
Paul the superhistorical element in the appearance and fate of Jesus and
the superhuman in it." "But," he asks, " ought one to expect in him a
lively interest in the details of the historical greatness and the human
personality of Jesus ? " Then we have the pronouncement of the " judicious
historian." " One can only explain the appeal of those who deny Jesus to
Paul and his successors as witnesses against the historicity of Jesus by
their complete inability to get from their own minds into that of a man



100 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

We do not, of course, mean that Paul ought to have
taken all his ideas from the words of Jesus. But we
ought to find the influence of the historical Jesus some-
where in the thoughts and words of Paul, especially as he
often treats of things which are prominent in the teaching
of Jesus. But that he never appeals to any distinctive
acts of " the Lord," that he never quotes the sayings of
Jesus in the gospels as such, and never applies them, even
where the words and conduct of Jesus would be most
useful for strengthening his own views and deductions
for we must ignore what has been said in refutation of
this statement all this is for us a certain proof that Paul
knew nothing of Jesus. We should like to have it
explained how a man who has the authority of " the
Lord " on his side in a heated conflict with his opponents
(on the question of the law, for instance), and for whom
the mere mention of it would suffice to silence his
opponents, instead of doing so, uses the most complicated
arguments from the Scriptures and the most determined
dialectic, when he might have acted so much more
simply. Why, for instance (Gal. iii, 31), does he not
recall that Jesus also had discussed the Jewish laws about
food, in order to convince Peter that he is wrong in
avoiding the tables of the Gentiles ? Why does he not
mention that the Jews crucified Jesus on the Passover,
the chief solemnity, and had thus themselves shown that
the law was not absolutely valid ? He has not himself

who lived 1,900 years ago that is to say, the inability to think, judge,
and reason historically." We reply : It is only the complete inability
to put themselves in the frame of mind of a man who is convinced that
God's son, the second God, wandered on earth in human form and died on
the cross only the complete obsession of theologians in the ancient way
of thinking, which will not permit them to see the wood for the trees, and
suffers them to say that such a man had no interest in the earthly life of
the God. Steudel has said all that need be said on the matter on the
occasion of the Berlin debate, and it is unnecessary to return to it.
"When Paul says," Jiilicher continues, "that Jesus, after a poor human
life, is taken from the circle of disciples to heaven by the death of a
criminal, having given [?] them instructions in regard to the new Church,
has he given up the personality of Jesus in favour of a mystic figure ? "
Who will gauge the depths of that sentence ?



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 101

seen the personal conduct of Jesus, like the disciples at
Jerusalem. He knew his deeds and words only at second
hand, and may therefore not have had them sufficiently
vivid in his mind to quote them frequently. But certain
leading features and fundamental principles of the life of
Jesus such as the above, which affected his own propaganda,
he ought to have known and used. If he knew of an
historical Jesus, it remains the most insoluble of problems
why he made no use of the knowledge.

Let us not be told that Paul's letters are " occasional
papers," and the apostle had no opportunity to speak
more fully about Jesus. This phrase of Deissmann,
"occasional papers," is one of those with which theo-
logians conceal from themselves and others the difficulty
of the problem. These letters, swarming with dogmatic
discussions of the most subtle character, are merely
occasional papers, so that the apostle could not be
expected to betray any acquaintance with the historical
Jesus ! It is the same sort of science as that which, in
order to get out of a difficulty, would persuade us that
Paul had spoken a good deal of Jesus in his oral discourses,
and so did not return to the subject in his letters. This
sort of " psychology " does not impose on us, and we find
it nothing less than pitiful when Weinel sorrowfully
confesses : "I myself once regarded the question in this
false light " (namely, that there is little or nothing about
Jesus in Paul) ; and then adds : " What Paul says about
Jesus and his words is little when measured by the
standard of a gospel, and little also if it is thought that
a Paul ought to base all his thoughts on the words of
Jesus. It is, however, not enough to find the existence
of Jesus convincingly in the Pauline Epistles ; the very
words of Jesus are found in Paul at every important
stage [!] ; and there are not only quite a number of
details which Paul knows and transmits [!] , but all the
prominent features of the preaching and nature of Jesus
are preserved for us in Paul. There is, therefore, a great



102 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

deal, if the Epistles are not approached with the old preju-
dice, and if we remember that they are all occasional papers
and never have reason to speak expressly about Jesus "
(p. 16). 1 This pronouncement is on the same high level
as that of Feine, who says that Paul has " taken great
pains to obtain a clear and comprehensive picture of the
activity and personality of Jesus." 1

We must, therefore, regard the effort of theologians to
disprove any statement that Jesus Christ is not an his-
torical personality in Paul as a complete failure. Any
attempt to find proof of the historical existence of Jesus
in the Pauline Epistles is futile from the mere fact that
the gospels are used to check the contents of the Epistles,
although they are supposed to have been written after the
Epistles. A proof could be found in the Epistles only if
they unequivocally pointed to the Jesus of the gospels.
As this is not the case, and the relevant passages have
first to be interpreted by means of the gospels and
explained in the same sense as they, it is absurd to quote
the Pauline utterances on Christ as evidence for the
gospel Jesus, and pretend that the historicity of Jesus is
proved by the apostle. Such proof runs in a vicious
circle, and is no proof at all. The frantic efforts of
theologians to discover the historical Jesus in the Pauline
Epistles merely show, if they show anything, the impossi-
bility of quoting Paul as a witness to the historicity of
Jesus.

3. THE QUESTION OF GENUINENESS.
The Pauline Christ is a metaphysical principle, and his
incarnation only one in idea, an imaginary element of his
religious system. The man Jesus is in Paul the idealised
suffering servant of God of Isaiah and the just man of
Wisdom an intermediate stage of metaphysical evolu-
tion, not an historical personality. When we admit this,

1 See, on this, Krieck, Die neueste Orthodoxie und das Christusprobkm,
1910, p. 47. a Jesus Christum und Paulus, 1902, p. 229.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 103

we remove the chief obstacle that has hitherto prevented
theologians from studying seriously the question of the
spuriousness of the Pauline Epistles. What they have said
on the subject up to the present shows anything but an
unprejudiced inquiry into the matter. Historical theology
has need of genuine Pauline Epistles, in order to base on
them its belief in an historical Jesus, and therefore they
must not be spurious. But how are they going to prove
that they are genuine ? There are no non-Christian
witnesses. The silence of Philo and Josephus about an
apostle who is supposed to have thrown the Jews into
excitement over the whole earth (Acts xxiv, 5), to have
been persecuted by them with the direst hatred, and to
have been dragged into court more than once, involving
the highest Jewish and ROMAN authorities, has not yet
been explained by our opponents. What about Christian
witnesses ? There are " enough of them," says J. Weiss.
Unfortunately, what the theologians bring forward such
as the letter of Clement to the Corinthians, on which
Weiss relies have long been shown to be unreliable by
the Dutch, especially by Loman, 1 Van Manen, and Steck. 2
There is no proof of the existence of Pauline Epistles
before Justin, and it remains an open question whether
Justin had any knowledge of such Epistles. Papias also is
silent about Paul's'Epistles, even at a point where he would
have been bound to mention them if he had known them. 8
It is also a matter for reflection that as early as the second
century there were heretical sects, such as the Severians,
who declared that all the Epistles of Paul were spurious.
(a) Emotional Arguments for the Genuineness. We
can, therefore, only seek to prove the genuineness of the
Pauline Epistles by internal arguments, by philological
considerations or analysis of their style. But how we can
in this way establish that the Epistles really were written



1 Quccstioiies Paulines. 2 Oalaterbrief, p. 287.

3 Eusebius, EccL Hist., Ill, 40.



104 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

by the apostle Paul, and belong to the middle of the first
century, seeing that we have no independent specimens of
Paul's writing, it is difficult to say. When a philologist
like Wilamowitz infers the genuineness of the Epistles
from their vivid and personal style, and says, categorically,
" This style is Paul, and no one else," 1 we merely have
one more proof of the dependence of our whole science on
theology. How does the philologist know the character
and personality of Paul if not from the Epistles issued
under his name ? He therefore finds the test of genuine-
ness in the Epistles themselves ; and when he discovers
that the Epistles naturally meet this test, he thinks that
he has established their genuineness. "A standard is
used," says Van Manen, " which has been taken from the
Epistle or Epistles whose genuineness is in question, and
students proceed as if the picture of the apostle of the
Gentiles which they owe to tradition, to descriptions by
third persons, or to their own research, was obtained
apart from the Epistle or Epistles to which it is applied.
They exclaim : Paul to the life ! They recognise one
feature after another. But what have they really proved ?
They have merely hoaxed themselves." 2

But what about the " powerful personality," the " unin-
ventible originality," the " soul " that lives in the Epistles ?
When our opponents can find no other argument, they
have naturally to rely on the originality, the uniqueness,
the impossibility of inventing the style of the Epistles.
On this point we find von Soden, Jiilicher, Weiss, and all
the rest in full agreement. " Then the general impression
made by the Epistles," exclaims J. Weiss, ecstatically
we almost see him with his eyes raised to heaven and his
hand laid on the text of Paul " this richness of tones and
shades, this extraordinary originality any man who cannot
feel it convicts himself of great uncultivation of literary
taste and judgment " (p. 100).

1 Kultur der Gegenw., I, p. 159. 2 Romerbrief, p. 185.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 105

But who in the world contests a word of this ? What
we contest is the deducing of the apostle Paul from these
features of the Epistles. No matter how " personal " the
style of the Epistles may be, it does not give us the least
assurance that the Epistles were written by the man
whose name appears at the head of each. Nor does it
follow from the " distinctiveness of the style " that they
could not have been produced by a school or a group. Is
not the style of the Johannine literature even more
distinctive '? Or must the Homeric poems have been
composed by a single Homer because they all have the
same style ? As a matter of fact, moreover, the Epistles
do not accord with each other, nor is there complete
harmony within the limits of a single Epistle. 1 As to the
originality, van Manen observed : " To be original in any
form, in any language or age, is just as possible, provided
that the man has the necessary ability, for one who covers
himself with the mask of some distinguished person as for
one w r ho w r rites in his own name and person, for the
pseudonymous writer just as well as for the candid writer "
(p. 188). On the principles of our opponents, Nietzsche's
work, Thus Spake Zarathustra, must have been written
by the ancient Persian religious founder, because it is so
personal, so original, so rich in tones and shades. On the
same principles, the fourth gospel was evidently written
by the apostle John ; and, as a matter of fact, up to the
middle of the last century theologians affected to perceive
in it the very heart-beat of the disciple whom Jesus loved.
"Which," as van Manen says, "ought to make us more
cautious, and raise the question whether we are not at
times too ready to identify an old and long-standing
opinion with the fresh and unadulterated impression
which the work, the Epistle, would make on an impartial
reader. It is at least certain that as yet no one has
succeeded in denning the ' personal ' element in such a

1 Compare Steck, p. 363.



106 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

way that any moderate group would agree in the descrip-
tion. A satisfactory portrait of Paul is one of the things
that are yet no more than pious wishes " (p. 189).

Jiilicher says, in reference to the " sharp variation of
tone, the moods, the allusions to things known only to the
people to whom the Epistle is addressed, and the outbreaks
of almost sinister anger in the Pauline Epistles" (p. 25),
that no man could put himself in the frame of mind of
another in this way. In that he merely shows that a
modern professor of theology sitting at his desk is
incapable of doing it, not that an impassioned Gnostic
of the second century, in the thick of the fight against
legal Judaism and ardently seeking to vindicate his
conception of the gospel, could not have " invented "
these things. We need not, therefore, regard him as a
" forger " who " works with incredible fineness and creates
the most extraordinary monuments of a great enthusiasm "
(p. 26). He need only put into words his own feelings
and thoughts, and, as was not uncommon at the time,
place on the work the name of the apostle Paul, with
whom he feels a spiritual aflmity, or whom he has chosen
for some other reason; and what seems to Jiilicher
impossible is done.

(6) Arguments for Genuineness from the Times. The
defenders of the genuineness of the Pauline Epistles
would be in an evil plight if they had no other arguments
than the aesthetic considerations we have just examined.
They have others, however. According to von Soden, no
one has ever given an intelligible theory of the origin of
these Epistles in the second century. " They deal with
far too many things, and with the most lively interest,
which no one in Christendom regarded seriously in the
second century, as we learn from other and reliable
documents" (p. 29). Jiilicher also says: " They fit no
other period but the years between 50 and 64." Others,
however, especially the Dutch experts, are of the contrary
opinion. They have, amongst other things, pointed to



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 107

the rich inner life of the communities to which the
apostle directs his Epistles, and to the complex organisa-
tion and ecclesiastical institutions, which are hardly
consistent with the view that these were newly founded
and quite young communities ; they rather indicate that
they had been in existence for a long time. Van Manen
in particular has described the condition of the Roman
community as one that we cannot conceive in the year 59,
in which the Epistle to the Romans is supposed to have
been addressed to it (p. 155) ; and Steck has shown the
same in regard to the Corinthian community (p. 265) .*
Such institutions as the vicarious baptism for the dead
(1 Cor. xv, 29) and the ascetic law of marriage (1 Cor. vii)
rather point to the second century, with its Gnostic
influence, than to the middle of the first ; unless we
admit that the Jesus-cult is much older than our
theologians are disposed to think, and Gnosticism is the
root of the whole of Christianity. The divisions and
parties of the Corinthian community, also, which the
apostle is eager to conciliate, and the nature of which no
one has yet succeeded in explaining, give the impression
that they " are merely described schematically under
names which were familiar from apostolic times, and the
general aim of the warning against ecclesiastical splits
was such as the later period everywhere made necessary." 3
It has been said that the gift of tongues which is
mentioned in 1 Cor. xii-xiv had " quite disappeared " in
the second century, and this is advanced as a proof that
the Pauline Epistles must have been written in the first
century. 3 But the " ecstatic or Methodistic " phenomenon

1 Besides van Manen (p. 14), William B. Smith has, in an article in the
Journal of Biblical Literature (1910), which even Harnack appreciates,
shown that Romans i, 7 originally read, " To all that are beloved of God,"
instead of "To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints,"
so that the Epistle of Paul was not addressed to the Romans, but was a
theological message to all Christians in general : a view that Zahn has
adopted in the third edition of his Einleitung in den Romerbrief. (See
Harnack in Preuschen's Zeitschr., 1902, p. 83.)

2 Steck, work quoted, p. 72.

8 Otto Schmiedel, Die Hauptprobleme der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, p. 14.



108 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

of tongues is so general, and recurs so constantly in
periods of religious excitement, being even found among
certain religious sects and institutions of our own time,
that the silence in regard to it of the rest of the literature
of the second century gives us no right to conclude that
the Pauline Epistles are genuine. We know the gift of
tongues from the Epistles, which are assumed to belong
to the first century. But how can anyone say that these
Epistles must belong to the first century because there is
question in them of the gift of tongues? The question
of circumcision, also, was by no means unimportant in
the second century, as Clemen says ; l so much is clear
from the Dialogue of Justin with the Jew Trypho
(cap. 47). The question is there raised whether the
Judaeo-Christians who cling to the law can be saved,
and the reply is that there is no reason why they should
not be, provided they do not press the law on the Gentile
Christians under the pretext that they otherwise could
not be saved, and do not refuse to live with the Gentile
Christians. That indicates that about the middle of the
second century the two parties in Christendom still faced
each other much as we find them doing in the Epistle to
the Galatians. 2

As is well known, the attitude of the Christian towards
the law and his relation to Judaism is a central pre-
occupation of the Pauline system. Now, during the
whole of the first century, at least until the destruction
of Jerusalem, there was no opposition between Jews and
Christians in regard to the law. They lived in friendliness
with each other, visited each other, intermarried, and
claimed each other's help in sickness, for instance. So,
amongst many others, Chwolson tells us and he has
carefully investigated the matter in his work on The
Last Passover. In the year 62, according to the account



1 Paulus, sein Leben und sein Wirken, I, p. 11, 1904.

2 Steck, p. 380.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 109

of Josephus, the high priest Hannas had James executed,
and this displeased the Pharisees. According to Acts
(xv, 5), some of the Pharisees joined the sect. Indeed,
about the year 58, the scribes among the Pharisees stood
up for Paul, and acknowledged that they found no wrong
in him (Acts xxiii, 9). Acts, in fact, knows nothing of a
fundamental difference between Paul and the rest of the
apostles in regard to their attitude towards Judaism, and
even the account of his travels the part of Acts which
has the strongest claim to be regarded as genuine is
silent as to any difference of mind between Paul and the
first disciples of Jesus, and does not betray by a single
syllable that Paul has promulgated a gospel far in
advance of that of the original apostles and surpassing
theirs both in the richness of its contents and the depth
of its thoughts. Compare with this the vigour with
which the Pauline Epistles assail the Mosaic law, the
profound opposition between the ideas of Paul in the
Epistles and those of the Jews, especially of the Pharisees,
his rejection and fresh interpretation of the older Jewish
idea of the Messiah, his glorification of the crucified and
risen Jesus at the cost of all that was dear to the religious
feeling of the Jews ; and then reflect whether such a
system was more likely to develop in the first century, a
few years after the death of Jesus, or in the second
century whether it does not fit any period rather than
the years between 50 and 64 !

As a matter of fact, it was, as the Jews affirm, and as
Lublinski and others have shown, the destruction of
Jerusalem that brought about the breach between Jews
and Christians. It was only when, after the fall of the
holy city, the Jewish priestly organisation and religious
life were put out of joint, and the Jews, in order to main-
tain the purity and strength of their vanquished faith,
stood aloof, and sought in an increased service of the law
some compensation for the loss of the temple, that the
Christians, with their more liberal idea of worship, their



110 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

inner morality fostered by the prophets, and their stronger
sense of penitence on account of their expectation of a
speedy end of the world, began to separate from the other
Jews, from whom they had as yet not been essentially
distinct, and realise that they were a special religious
community in opposition to Judaism. This separation
increased to deadly enmity and irreconcilable hatred
when, about the end of the first century, the section of
the Christians opposed to the law got the upper hand,
when the Christians went on to deny the validity of the
law and its indispensability for religious salvation ; when,
in the last decisive struggles of the Jews against the
Romans, the Christians took the side of the latter, and,
abandoning their national hopes of the restoration of
Jerusalem and the political recovery of Israel, endeavoured
to prevent the rebuilding of the temple, and thus openly
separated from their compatriots. The Jews now refused
to have any intercourse with the Christians ; they cursed
and burned their Scriptures, and expelled them from the
communities. The Christians avenged this conduct by
branding the Jews as obdurate. They reproached them
with cutting themselves off from the promise, and con-
trasted themselves as the chosen of heaven with their
former compatriots as outcasts of God and damned. This
is the very idea that pervades the Pauline Epistles.
Such ideas as those set forth in Eomans ix to xi, repre-
senting that the Jews, in spite of the promises made to
their fathers, will have no part in the blessings of Chris-
tianity, had no foundation whatever in the time about the
year 59. The question why the Jews were excluded from
salvation could not arise and be answered until they were
actually outside Christianity. Yet at the time when the
Epistle to the Romans is usually supposed to have been
written the mission to the Gentiles had only just fully
developed, and at least those of the Jews who lived in the
dispersion had as yet had no opportunity of learning the
gospel. How, then, could Israel be at that time described



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 111

as " broken off from the trunk " (Romans xi, 17-21) ?
How could anyone talk of a "fall" of the Jews, which
is to be visited by " the sternness of God " ? This,
as van Manen observes, presupposes the fall of Jeru-
salem, " the first important fact after the death of Jesus
in which the Christians might see a punishment "
(p. 159).

The Christian tendency that most strenuously opposed
Judaism was Gnosticism. Its roots go back, as Fried-
lander 1 and others have shown, into the period of the
origin of Christianity. But it is not until the second
century that we encounter it as a fully -developed
religious - philosophical theory or a theosophy. Now
Paulinism has the closest affinity to Gnosticism, as
Holsten, Pfleiderer, Weizsacker, and others have shown.
In both the idea of faith changes into the idea of know-
ledge ; this knowledge is based on divine revelation : the
salvation of the soul depends on the recognition of certain
facts of revelation. In both we find a thoroughly dual-
istic system, in which God and the world, law and
grace, death and life, spirit and flesh, etc., are set in the
sharpest contrast, and the tendency to mysticism and
asceticism goes hand in hand with the striving after a
speculative interpretation of the facts of religious experi-
ence. Besides their idea of God, and their Christology and
doctrine of redemption, they have in common a large
number of ideas, such as gnosis, grace, pleroma, ectroma,
life, light, etc. They agree, also, not only in their easy
disdain of history, but also in their hostility to Judaism
and their depreciation indeed, rejection of the law. In
one case the connection between Gnosticism and Paul is
so evident that it may be cited as a proof that Paul
knew nothing of an historical Jesus ; it is the passage in
1 Cor. ii, 6, where the apostle speaks of the " princes of
this world," who knew not what they did when they

1 Der vorchristliche Gnosticismus, 1898.



112 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

"crucified the Lord of glory." It was long ago recog-
nised by van Manen and others that by these " princes "
we must understand, not the Jewish or Roman authorities,
nor any terrestrial powers whatever, but the " enemies of
this world," the demons higher powers, which do indeed
rule the earth for a time, but will " pass away " before the
coming triumph of the saviour-God. 1 That is precisely the
Gnostic idea of the death of the Redeemer, and it is here
put forward by Paul ; from that we may infer that he did
not conceive the life of Jesus as an historical event, but a
general metaphysical drama, in which heaven and earth
struggle for the mastery.

It is well known that prominent Gnostics like Basilides,
Valentine, and especially Marcion, appeal confidently to
Paul. Marcion's liking for Paul won him the name of
" apostle of the heretics." All this may be explained in
the sense that the Gnosticism of the second century had
a source in Paul, and appropriated his ideas in the expo-
sition of their own doctrines. But it is just as possible
that both Paulinism and Gnosticism belong to the same
age, and are only different branches from the same root.
This seems to me the more probable when we reflect how
well the ground must have been prepared for the apostle's
letters if they were to be understood in the communities.
Such difficult dogmatic disquisitions as those in the Epistle
to the Romans imply a long period of evolution, during
which the apostle's ideas must have been much discussed
in the communities. They suggest a familiarity with
Paulinism which is hardly credible, especially in distant
Rome, at the time when the Epistle is usually supposed
to have been written. " Paulinism," says van Manen,
" seems to be a generally familiar and much-discussed
phenomenon. It has its supporters and its opponents, its
catchwords and stereotyped phrases, its own language,
which needs no explanation because the readers are

1 RGmerbrief, p. 124.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 113

assumed to understand it" (p. 141). Without any
explanation the apostle uses a number of expressions
which would have been understood at once in Gnostic
circles of the second century, but could not possibly have
been understood in the middle of the first century, a few
decades after the death of Jesus, in letters to newly-
founded communities.

But it is particularly remarkable that Paul himself
should have attained so detailed and systematic a know-
ledge of Gnostic ideas so soon after the tragedy of
Golgotha. One has only to recall the fundamental
points of the Pauline system to see that van Manen is
right in saying that " a long time must have elapsed
since the appearance of the first disciples before a new
tendency of this character could arise. We have here
more than a simple triumph over the repugnance to the
cross, by which pious Jews were enabled to accept the
ideal of a suffering Messiah, to hail Jesus of Nazareth as
the Messiah promised to their fathers, and to join the
new brotherhood. We have here a complete breach with
Judaism, a new and substantially complete system, need-
ing only to be elaborated in detail and accommodated to
the needs of a later generation, a thorough reform of the
prevailing system, assuredly the fruit of a deep experience
of life and a long period of earnest thought." This
reform is supposed, according to the prevailing view, to
have taken place a few years after the death of Jesus, to
have been brought about by a man who, himself a Jew
and pupil of the Jewish scholars, is supposed to have
lived wholly in Judaism until that time, and to have
arisen in circumstances which would hinder rather than
further it ! That seems to be quite unintelligible from
the psychological point of view. " It is simply incon-
ceivable," says van Manen, "that Paul the Jew, who
persecuted the community on conviction, brought about
so extraordinary a revolution in the faith of this com-
munity almost immediately after he accepted it. It is

I



114 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

not conceivable that this conscientious zealot for Israel's
God, Israel's laws, morals, and customs, should perceive
so suddenly, when he has overcome his repugnance to
the cross, that this God was not the most-high, but must
make way for the father, whom neither Jews nor Gentiles
had known before the coming of Christ [?] ; that this
Christ was not the one promised to their fathers, the
Messiah, but a supernatural being, God's own son, who
merely assumed for a time the appearance of a man like
ourselves ; and that the law, with all its prescriptions
and promises, could and should be thrust aside as without
value or significance. We must not forget that all this
is new in the Pauline gospel, and has no relation to the
' faith ' of the first disciples, who were still full-blooded
Jews in their Messianic expectations. Let us try to
realise what it means for a serious-minded and pious
Jew, like the convert Paul, to abandon the God of his
fathers and bow down to one who had hitherto been
unknown. Consider the dependence of the pious Jew on
the law and the morals and customs it prescribes.
Imagine what is required to make a man accept as a
supernatural being, as God's own son, one whom he had
shortly before regarded as an impostor, and who had
died on the cross as a criminal a few years before, even
if he now acknowledges his innocence and his high
character as an anointed of God. A belief in the resur-
rection and transfigured life of Jesus could not accomplish
this, any more than it led the first disciples to deify the
master, because it was believed that Enoch, Moses, and
Elias also had been taken up into heaven ; they had not
on that account ceased to have a human character in the
minds of believers. In this we can clearly discern the
influence of ideas of a non-Jewish origin, the ideas of
oriental gnosis, which in turn had come into contact with
Greek philosophy and pagan notions of divinity. We
have here no case of ordinary ' deification,' for which a
pious imagination might supply the material. Had not



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 115

Christianity come into contact with gnosis through
' Paul,' had it remained permanently under the lead of
the Jewish mind, the monotheism of Israel would have
warned it against deifying its ' founder,' just as in the
days of their fathers Moses, the founder of the religion
of Israel, was saved from deification." 1

What efforts the historical critics have made to render
more or less intelligible the sudden revulsion of Paul
after the Damascus vision ! But neither the resources
of the Hegelian dialectic, as used by Baur and, in a
certain sense, Pfleiderer, nor those of modern psychology,
employed by Jiilicher, Weiss, and others, have enabled
the prevailing theory to give even plausibility to their
idea of the origin of the Pauline Christology, and to fill
with psychological and historical considerations the gap,
the reality of which J. Weiss does not deny, 2 between the
doctrine of Paul and that of the so-called disciples of
Jesus. That the light which Paul saw, and the words
he heard, led him to condemn the whole of his previous
thought, life, faith, and hope, and converted him into a
" new creature," is hardly credible. Such an event
would be so " unique " in the history of the world that
any man who admits it has no need to deny other
" miracles " in the New Testament, or regard any of its
statements as incredible. It has recently been suggested
that the historical Jesus himself may have been concerned
in the conversion ; we hear of the " strong impression "
that Jesus must have made on Paul, and Kolbing 3 and
J. Weiss speak of " a spiritual action of the person of
Jesus" some even suggest a meeting somewhere of the
two. Such a theory finds no support whatever in Acts
or the Pauline Epistles ; indeed, as I said before, it would

1 Work quoted, p. 136. As to the impossibility of the historical Jesus
being deified by Paul and the great difference between this sort of deifica-
tion and the deification of other outstanding personalities, such as the
Emperor, etc., see Lublinski, Das werdende Dogma, p. 49.

3 Paulus und Jesus, pp. 3 and 72.

8 Die geistige Einwirkung der Person Jesu auf Paulus, 1906.



116 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

make the apostle untruthful, as be says repeatedly and
emphatically that he received his gospel only by an
inner revelation (Gal. i). Theologians also see in the
" Damascus miracle " another proof of the " all-surpassing
greatness and significance " of their Jesus, and try to
realise the " ineffaceable impression " which Paul must
have had of Jesus, in order in this way to find some
justification of their cult of Jesus. The event, however,
is not made more plausible in this way, because the
difficulty precisely is how it was possible for a mono-
theistic mind, a zealous Jew, to apotheosise a man who
had died not long before, not a personage of remote
antiquity such as Moses, Elias, or Enoch. And the
difficulty is not removed by supposing that the apostle
had somewhere or other met the crucified Jesus. Paul
had never known Jesus personally. The Christianity
that was linked with Paul in its later development
cannot be traced to a personal action of Jesus on the
apostle. That is unequivocally shown by the documents,
the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. Any man
who denies this is reading into the documents something
that they do not contain; in fact, they say just the
contrary. Whoever reads this into them is simply
introducing into the documents a conception of Jesus
which he has obtained elsewhere, interpreting them in a
sense that they do not justify, and cannot complain if his
opponents regard his claim to be " methodical " and
" unprejudiced " as a ridiculous hallucination and pre-
sumption.

(c) The Spuriousness of the Pauline Epistles. If Paul
refers in his Epistles to an historical Jesus, these Epistles,
bearing his name, cannot possibly have been written by
the apostle who was changed from Saul to Paul by the
Damascus vision. For it is inconceivable that an his-
torical individual should, so soon after his death, be
elevated by the apostle to the dignity of a second God, a
co-worker in the creation and redemption of the world.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 117

If the Epistles really were written by Paul, the Jesus
Christ who is a central figure in them cannot be an
historical personality. The way in which the supposed
Jew Paul speaks of him is contrary to all psychological
and historical experience. Either the Pauline Epistles
are genuine, and in that case Jesus is not an historical
personality; or he is an historical personality, and in
that case the Pauline Epistles are not genuine, but
written at a much later period. This later period would
have no difficulty in raising to the sphere of deity a man of
former times who was known to it only by a vague tradi-
tion. And if the Epistles do not come from Paul, they
belong to a totally different circle from that of the con-
verted Jew, and are rather, as Steck says, the work of a
whole school of anti-legal Gnostics of the first quarter of
the second century, who aimed at detaching Christianity
from its maternal Jewish stock, and making it an inde-
pendent religion ; in that case their references to Jesus
have no historical value, and cannot be quoted as evidence
of the historical Jesus.

Let it not be objected that the Pauline Epistles bear
unmistakably the stamp of Jewish authorship, and in their
Rabbinical cast of thought and argument point to the
Paul of Acts. For, apart from the fact that this would
afford no proof that Paul was the author, since the Gnostic
author of the second century might be a Pharisaic Rabbi
converted into an apostle by some " tremendous experi-
ence," the Jewish character of the author of the Epistles
and his relation to Rabbinism are by no means so certain
as believers in Paul suggest ; indeed, here again it seems
as if most of them know nothing of the Rabbinical cast
of mind and method of argument except from the Epistles
themselves. Jewish scholars, who can appreciate the
point, by no means recognise the contents of the Epistles
as of their own spirit ; they emphatically deny that their
author could have been a pupil of the Rabbis. There is
serious ground for reflection in the fact that, as Kautzsch



118 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

pointed out in 1869 and Steck has confirmed (p. 212),
the writer of the Epistles does not quote the Hebrew text
of the Scriptures, but the Greek Septuagint translation,
with all its faults, and that on this account he makes
statements which a glance at the Hebrew text would
have shown him at once to be incorrect. 1 That would
be unintelligible on the part of a rigorous Jew and pupil
of the Eabbis, because the translation of the Old Testa-
ment into a foreign language was regarded by the strict
Jews of Palestine as a sin against the law, a profanation
of the holy word.

Did Paul know Hebrew at all ? The question seems
to be absurd if the author of the Epistles really was the
pupil of Gamaliel and had been a zealot for the Mosaic
law. Yet the Epistles give no trace of an acquaintance
with Hebrew. In spite of the assurance of the writer
that he was born a Jew, he seems to be Greek in every-
thing. He thinks as a Greek, speaks as a Greek, uses
Greek books ; and whatever there is in him that can only
be explained we are told by Judaism is much closer,
as van Manen says, to the Alexandrian or Hellenistic
Judaism of Philo and Wisdom, which he often uses, than
to the ideas of the Old Testament, and need by no means
have been taken from the Hebrew Bible.

Further, this supposed pupil of the Eabbis interprets
the law in a way that, as we are told by Jewish experts,
is anything but Eabbinical. While the Eabbis leave
the literal meaning of the scripture untouched even in
their allegorical interpretations, the apostle is extremely
arbitrary in this respect ; he turns the meaning of the
words inside out, and changes a plain meaning into the
very opposite, as Eschelbacher shows (among others) in
the case of Gal. iv, 21 (p. 546). The author of the



1 For further details see Eschelbacher, " Zur Geschichte und Charak-
teristik der Paulinischen Briefe," in the Monatsschrift fiir Geschichte u.
Wissenschaft d. Judentums, 51 Jahrg., Neue Folge, 15 Jahrg., 1907,
pp. 411 and 542.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 119

Pauline Epistles has neither an accurate knowledge of
the text of the scriptures nor an interest in, or under-
standing of, its contents. He twists the plain course of
the text to his purposes at the moment, and grossly offends
against both the letter and the spirit of the passages in a
way that no man who had passed through the schools
would ever venture to do. " The interpretations of scrip-
ture in the Pauline Epistles," says Eschelbacher, " cannot,
either in substance or form, be brought into any relation
whatever either with those of the Palestinian experts, or
with those of the Judseo-Hellenistic religious philosophers,
or with those of their time or of the following period.
There is nothing analogous to them in the whole of
Jewish literature. This is found only in the Christian
writings of the second century, such as the Epistle to
the Hebrews, the Epistle of Barnabas, the writings of
Justin, etc." (p. 550). " There is no question whatever of
a thorough knowledge of scripture, or scholarly acquaint-
ance with what was taught in the Jewish schools in
Palestine or elsewhere, in the Pauline Epistles " (p. 668).

When we survey all that has been urged, especially
by the Dutch, against the genuineness of the Pauline
Epistles, particularly the contradiction between Acts and
the Epistles, 1 we cannot resist the impression that the
obstinacy with which historical theology clings to the
Pauline authorship, and declares every attack on it to
be " beneath discussion," is really due rather to a very
intelligible prejudice than to the merits of the case. In
the eyes of these theologians Paul is the weightiest
witness to the historicity of Jesus on whom their
" science " can rely, hence nothing can be " scientific "
which tends to discredit the testimony of their witness.
We who are convinced that, even if the Pauline Epistles
were genuine, they would not prove the existence of an



1 See ScHager, Der Paulus der Apg. und der Paulus der Briefe, in the
periodical Die Tat, 2 Jahrg., 1910, Heft 8.



120 THE WITNESS OF PAUL

historical Jesus, and that they probably refer to another
Jesus altogether, are only moderately interested in the
question who was the author of the Epistles. It is
immaterial to us whether there was one author, or
whether, as the Dutch have tried to show, several
co-operated in producing them ; whether they are
original, or are merely elaborations of older letters ;
whether in substance they go back to an apostle Paul
who preached the gospel to the Gentiles about the middle
of the first century, founded communities, and was to
some extent opposed to the " original apostles " at
Jerusalem, or whether they are altogether products of
the first quarter of the second century, and the figure of
the apostle is a piece of fiction.

It is possible that, as Steck and van Manen believe,
there really was a Paul, a man who, though he may have
taken up a somewhat exceptional position in regard to
the other apostles, can scarcely have been so decisively
opposed to them as the Epistles represent, and whose
features we have described, somewhat didactically, in
Acts. This Paul, however, was in that case " a Jew by
birth, who had to a slight extent turned his back on
Judaism. He preaches circumcision that is to say,
fidelity to the rites and customs of Judaism, fidelity to
the law in spite of his acceptance of the faith and
expectations of the disciples of Jesus." 1 There was thus
no direct connection between him and the author of the
letters which bear his name ; they show a quite different
spirit. But there was an indirect connection in the sense
that Paulinism, as an attempt to detach Christianity from
Judaism, making it a world-religion, and at the same time
spiritualising and deepening its contents, may have had a
grateful recollection of the man who first gave wide
publicity to the ideas of the new religion. But it is
equally possible that the name of Paul is only a general

1 Van Manen, R&merbrief, p. 206.



THE WITNESS OF PAUL 121

title for a number of letter-writers, who invented the
character in order to give an air of authority to a
religious system that went beyond the original Chris-
tianity. It would not be possible to ascribe so peculiar
and novel a system as Paulinism to an immediate disciple
of " the Lord," to whose supposed historical personality
the other followers of the new religion appealed. But
some sort of connection with the " historical " Jesus was
needed in order to displace the older Christianity with its
Judaic leanings, and to base the hostility to Judaism on a
" revelation " that came from Jesus himself. Thus arose
the character of the once pious Jew Paul, who rages
against the Christians, and is then converted by a vision,
and, as a zealot against the law, founds a purely spiritual
Christianity, making it easier by his own example for
the Jews to abandon the law.

However this may be, the Pauline Epistles, we need
not repeat, give no support whatever to the belief in an
historical Jesus. This also, as we said, puts an end to
religious interest in the historicity of Paul, and profane
historians and philologists may be left in peace to recon-
struct, out of Acts and the so-called Epistles of Paul, a
picture of the real sequence of events which accompanied
the rise of Christianity.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS



THE evidential value of profane writers and the Pauline
Epistles in regard to the existence of an historical Jesus
has proved illusory. The genuineness of the Pauline
Epistles is not at all established. ' Even if, however,
they were really written by the apostle in the fifties and
sixties of the first century, they would give no testimony
to the historical human being Jesus. That the apostle
has such a person in mind, and not a heavenly being, a
saviour-god Jesus, who has become man, cannot be
deduced from the Epistles, but is read into them, so
that the existence of an historical Jesus is merely
assumed. Now, this assumption is based on the gospels,
and, therefore, the Pauline Epistles cannot in their turn
serve to prove the existence of the Jesus of the gospels.

There is no other source of the belief in an historical
Jesus but the gospels. The credibility of the historical
documents of Christianity finds no support outside them-
selves. For an historian that is a lamentable situation.
Even Weiss feels that he must make some excuse in
quoting the gospels as witnesses, as sceptics may object
that a witness can hardly testify in his own favour. He
consoles himself by pointing to the grandeur and beauty
of the gospels as some assurance of their truth, for-
getting that truth only vindicates itself, and not its
authors. However much we may esteem the contents
of the gospels, this appreciation does not throw the
least light on the historicity of the statements made in
them. However much the figure of Jesus, as it is set
forth in the acts and words of the gospel narrative, may

122



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 123

move and enchain the sentiments of the reader, it cannot
be deduced from these sentiments that an historical
personality was the model of the character. Otherwise
we should have to describe Homer's heroes, Shakespeare's
Hamlet, and Goethe's Faust as historical personalities
because they are so vividly portrayed, and make such a
" strong impression " on sensitive souls. The attempt to
prove the historicity of Jesus is hopeless if there are no
other historical sources for it than the gospels, even if the
gospel tradition is so close to the historical facts that we
may be dealing with historical reminiscences. We see,
therefore, how important it is for those who maintain the
historicity of Jesus to have other witnesses besides the
gospels, and we understand the frantic efforts of theo-
logical " historians " to retain the evidence of profane
historians and of Paul, however slender and disputable
it be. The importance of the inquiry into the evangelical
documents is thus set in its true light. It is not merely a
question of establishing the historical credibility of the
gospel narratives in detail, but of securing in general a
firm historical ground in which tradition may anchor.
To obtain some assurance of the historical character of
the gospels is a matter of life and death to the historical
faith of the Christian. Hence it is that every straw is
eagerly welcomed, and in this matter the theological
" historians " betray a contentedness and liberality that
would not be tolerated in any branch of profane history.

1. THE SOUECES OF THE GOSPELS.

Such a straw, in regard to the belief in the historicity
of the gospels, is the often-quoted testimony of Papias. It
is, as is known, one of the " safest " (though by no means
unquestioned) results of the modern discussion of the life
of Jesus that the gospel of Mark is the oldest of the
surviving four. As compared with the other gospels, it
shows the " greatest freshness " and " vividness," the



124 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

most impressive " picturesqueness," and such an abun-
dance of trivial details that it gives one the impression of
" directly suggesting the narrative of an eye-witness."
It is, therefore, a happy coincidence, theologians assure
us, 1 that Papias, bishop of Hierapolis about the year 150,
makes a statement about Mark, the author of the gospel,
which admirably agrees with that impression. He says :
" Mark was Peter's interpreter, and he carefully wrote
down all that he remembered. He did not, however,
adhere to the order followed by Christ in his discourses
and actions. He had himself never heard the Lord or
been among his followers. But he afterwards met Peter,
as I said, and Peter instructed his hearers as opportunity
offered, though he did not give the words of the Lord in
their proper order. Hence Mark did no wrong in writing
things as they were in his memory. He was concerned
only to omit nothing that he had heard, or to admit no
untruth in his work."

In this way the origin of the oldest gospel seems to go
back very near to the time of Jesus, and its historical
character seems to be accredited. The only question is
how far we can rely on the statement of the Bishop of
Hierapolis. Now Papias appeals to the priest John
[Presbyter Johannes] as his authority. Who is the
priest John, and whence did he obtain his knowledge?
According to Jerome and Irenaeus, he was identical with
John the Evangelist. Papias himself, however, denies
this when he assures us that he himself never saw or
heard the holy apostles, but owed his knowledge to their
friends, the elders. Hence Papias received his informa-
tion as to the origin of the gospel from John, John from
Mark, and Mark received his information about Jesus
from Peter, who in turn only said what he knew about
Jesus. Seeing that, in addition, the writings of Papias
have been lost, and we know of him only from Eusebius

1 Wernle, Die synoptische Frage, 1899, p. 204.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 125

(of the fourth century), that is clearly too complicated a
piece of evidence to merit an unreserved acceptance. We
do not, moreover, learn from Papias whether Peter
gathered from his own intercourse with Jesus what he
told to Mark, or, if he did not, whence this original
witness derived his knowledge of the Saviour. It does
not follow from the words of Papias that Peter was a
personal disciple of Jesus, however emphatically Eusebius
may regard him as such, and however Papias may have
thought so. The good bishop was not at all the kind of
man to have a clear idea of such a thing. According to
Eusebius and Irenaeus, he was very " narrow-minded,"
and the other things which he gathered from the elders
in the way of parables and teachings of Jesus and deeds
of the apostles, in order to have as much information as
possible about Jesus and his followers, are so disputable
and miraculous that even Eusebius is obliged to relegate
them to the province of fable. 1

There is another matter that we learn in regard to the
bishop from Eusebius (ii, 15), and this also is supposed
to help to prove the connection of the gospel of Mark
with the historical Jesus. Papias is reported as saying
that, when Peter came to Rome and overcame the
wizard Simon in their conflict, his hearers turned to
Mark, who accompanied Peter, in their zeal for the
gospel, and begged him to let them have a written
memorial of the teaching that had been orally delivered
to them, and he did so. The apostle, he says, learned
this by a revelation of the Holy Spirit (!), rejoiced at
their zeal, and directed that the writing should be used
in the churches. " Why," asks Lublinsky, " had Peter
to learn from the Holy Spirit that his constant companion
had written a gospel, instead of from Mark himself, who
ought first to have asked his master to look over so
sacred and important a work '? It would be impossible,

1 EccL Hist., iii, 40.



126 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

moreover, for the apostle to confirm and commend a
work which was not written in the proper order of the
Saviour's life. Such carelessness is even more difficult
to believe when we reflect that the Jews are said to
have already taken up an attitude of hostility to the
Christians, and would certainly fasten at once upon
any untruth or inaccuracy on the Christian side.
There were still too many witnesses of events alive
for any one to dare even to correct the matter a little "
(p. 62).

There is, in fact, much to be said for Lublinski's
conjecture that there is question of a gospel belonging to
the first half of the second century, to which it was
sought to give some canonical prestige by tracing it to
Peter and the Holy Ghost, and that the story of Peter's
pedagogical activity was invented to cover the discon-
nectedness of its material. To trace it directly to the
apostle, as the first gospel was ascribed to Matthew and
the fourth to John, was impossible for some reason. It
was, therefore, inscribed with the name of Mark, of
whom it was said in the so-called first Epistle of Peter :
" The Church that is at Babylon saluteth you, and so doth
Marcus my son," just as the third was ascribed to the
physician Luke, and thus brought into relation with the
apostle Paul. 1

In any case, it is impossible to prove the connection of
the gospels with the historical Jesus from these two refer-
ences of Papias, as they are preserved by Eusebius. Even if
the notice in Papias were better accredited than it is, his state-
ment need not have arisen independently of the literary
character of the gospel of Mark. It is said to agree per-
fectly with that character. But we do not know whether
the gospel was not precisely ascribed to Mark, and thus
connected with Peter, because at the time of its appear-
ance this accidentally concordant character of the gospel

1 See Gfrorer, Die heilige Sage, I, 3-23, 1838 ; also Liitzelberger, Die
kirkliche Tradition ilber den Apostel Johannes, 1842, pp. 76-93.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 127

impressed its readers, if it had not been expressly written
in the Petrine sense.

Besides the reference to the origin of the gospel of
Mark, we have in Eusebius also one to the origin of the
gospel of Matthew; a reference to which the greatest
importance is attached by historical theology, and of
which the author is again Papias. " Matthew," he said,
" wrote the words of the Lord in Hebrew, and others
translated them as well as they could" (iii, 40). Theo-
logians at once assume that these " words of the Lord "
are sayings of the historical Jesus ; and it is possible that
Papias meant this, though he does not mention the name
Jesus, and we have in early Christian literature (such as
the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles and the Epistle of
James) words of the Lord which are not quoted as words
of Jesus, but are clearly sayings of earlier prophetic
teachers, the so-called apostles. The expression " words
of the Lord " often means the sayings of prominent
religious personalities which were attributed to the direct
influence of the Holy Ghost ; even quotations from the
Old Testament are called " words of the Lord " that is
to say, of the God of Israel. 1 Moreover, the identity of
the Matthew who is said by Papias to have written the
words of the Lord with the evangelist Matthew is not
certain, as the latter drew from Greek sources, and the
tax-gatherer whom Jesus calls (Mark ii, 14), and in
whom we are supposed to have the author of the gospel,
was not named Matthew, but Levi, son of Alphaeus, and
seems not to have been identified with the apostle
Matthew until a later period. 2 That is what theologians
call " a sound tradition " ! We cannot avoid the sus-
picion that these supposed sayings of Jesus, the " words
of the Lord " of Papias, which Matthew is said to have
collected, were not the words of a single definite individual

1 Matt, x, 20; Mark xiii, 11. Also compare Revelation xii, 10: "The
witness of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."

2 Wernle, work quoted, p. 229.



128 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

or an historical Jesus, but were merely placed in his
mouth afterwards. 1 In that case this second passage of
Papias referring to Matthew is just as incapable of
showing an historical connection of the gospels with the
life of an historical Jesus. We learn nothing from it
except that there were " words of the Lord " in
the second century in several different versions, and
that these differences were understood to be due to
different translations of a common source, the author
of which was believed to have been a certain Matthew,
whose name appeared among the so-called disciples of
Jesus.

It is on this " sound tradition " that modern critical
theologians base their hypothesis of two sources. It
supposes that the gospel of Mark, or an earlier version
of it, the so-called "Primitive Mark," is one source of
our three Synoptic gospels ; it describes the actions of
Jesus. The other source is the discourses or sayings-
source, the document which Papias ascribes to Matthew,
the so-called " Primitive Matthew." Our actual Matthew
and Luke have independently taken their account of the
actions of Jesus from the primitive gospel of Mark, and
have taken the words of Jesus from the other source, and
combined the two. Each of them, however, has his
" private property," something that is not found in the
words-source or the primitive Mark, but is probably due
to oral tradition. In working out this hypothesis theo-
logians differ considerably from each other. Some say
that there were stories of the life of Jesus also in the
primitive Matthew and discourses of Jesus in the
primitive Mark. Others think that besides the primitive
Matthew and Mark there was a primitive form of Luke ;
according to Arnold Meyer, this may have been older than
the actual Mark, and contained, besides the stories of the
birth and childhood of Jesus, the parables and stories

1 Steudel, Wir Gelehrten vom Fach ! p. 37 ; Im Kampf um die
Christitsmythe, p. 56.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 129

which tended to glorify poverty and depreciate wealth.
We thus get an "Ebionite Gospel," or gospel of "the
Poor," which is believed to have been especially used by
Luke. Recently, if we may so interpret a passage in
Weiss (p. 155), the gospel of John, which has been
almost entirely excluded from the discussion of the sources
of the life of Jesus for more than half a century, seems
to be returning to the group of sources. That would be
another instance that " everything happens over again,"
as Nietzsche said. The game of combining the various
possibilities seems to be an essential part of the theolo-
gical discussion of the sources. At all events, the con-
tinued work of theologians has so complicated the
problem of the sources of the life of Jesus that it is
hardly possible to speak any longer of a " two-sources
hypothesis," and speak freely of it.

Whatever may be said from the philological point of
view as to the value of the two-sources hypothesis, of
which German critical theologians are so proud, it has, as
the above considerations have shown, no value as far as the
historicity of Jesus is concerned. It would not have
even if the exact contents of the sources were known to
us, as Weinel seems to think, and if the reconstruction
of the sources in Harnack's German translation, which
is by no means generally admitted, were something more
than a mere hypothetical attempt, and Wernle's corre-
sponding analyses were not sheer and uncertain con-
jectures. No matter how much the method of the
historical theologians is improved in the future, it can do
no more. That in the gospels we really have to do with
the " tradition of a personality" namely, the historical
Jesus cannot be shown even by the acutest philological
criticism and the most perfect command of technical
apparatus. The attempt of historical theologians to
reach the historical nucleus of the gospels by purely
philological means is hopeless, and must remain hopeless,
because the gospel tradition floats in the air ; the belief



130 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

in its historical value is not confirmed by a single external
witness who has the least claim to confidence.



2. THE WITNESS OF TEADITION.

On what general ground do theologians affirm that the
gospels contain history ? On no other ground than that
such is the general view. "We are asked," Weinel
exclaims, " to prove that Jesus was an historical
personage ; in other words, we are to sacrifice an
historical tradition of centuries, against which as a

whole not a single objection was brought until

Bruno Bauer in 1841, and Albert Kalthoff in 1902 "
(p. 10). He says that it is a " depreciation of tradition "
to call in question the historicity of the gospel narratives
(p. 10). Weinel seems never to have heard of the
Gnostics, whose resistance to the growing tradition of an
historical Jesus gave so much trouble to the Church in
the second century. He does not seem to know that it
was not Bruno Bauer and Kalthoff who first questioned
or denied the historicity of Jesus, but philosophers who
lived a hundred years before Bauer, Bolingbroke and
the English Deists. We have heard of the saying of
Pope Leo X. at the beginning of the sixteenth century
about the " fairy-tale of Christ." Even so enlightened
a ruler as Frederick the Great does not seem to have
been entirely convinced of the historicity of Jesus. He
speaks of " the comedy " of the life and death and
ascension of Christ, and says : "If the Church can err in
regard to facts, I see reason to doubt if there is a
Scripture and a Jesus Christ." 1 Has Weinel never
heard of Dupuis and Volney, who advanced an astral-
myth explanation of the gospel "history" in the last
decade of the eighteenth century ?

As a matter of fact, the existence of Jesus has been
assailed from the moment when historical inquiry began

1 Friedrichs des Gr. Gedanken ilber Religion, 1893, pp. 87 and 92.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 131

to oppose itself to the prevailing ecclesiastical ways of
thinking that is to say, from the eighteenth century.
That is quite natural, as no one had hitherto believed in
a purely historical Jesus, and the dogmatic Christ of
tradition gave little occasion to contest his historical
reality ; he might be accepted or rejected, but not on
historical grounds. " Precisely because liberal theology
has," says Ernst Krieck, " constructed its Jesus in
opposition to the whole of Christian tradition, we have
a right to ask it for proof ; precisely because, as Weinel
admits (p. 22), documents are wanting in regard to their
Jesus such as are generally used to prove the reality of
historical personages, the demand for proof is not so absurd
as Weinel represents it to be." 1

It is a complete perversion of the facts when Weinel
and his colleagues claim that tradition is on their side.
The tradition of the first eighteen centuries of Christianity
knows only a god-man, not the man Christ. Lublinski
rightly calls attention to the fact that " in the early
centuries the blood of Christian martyrs was chiefly shed
because the unyielding and angry primitive Christians
regarded the cult of the emperors as the horror of
horrors, since it meant adoring a man. They, however,
worshipped their Christ and died for him because they
considered him, not a man, but a god-man. Who is
nearer to tradition, the one who makes an earthly man
of Jesus, or the one who is content to say that he was
from the start a mythical being, a symbol in a word, the
God-man?" It is precisely one of the objections raised
by orthodox against liberal Christians that they are in
opposition to the whole of Christian tradition ! What
early Christian writings are there, apart from the gospels,
that show the existence of an historical Jesus ? There
is not one single early Christian document that speaks,
not of the god-man Jesus Christ, but unequivocally of

1 Die neueste Orthodoxie u. d. Christusproblem, p. 47.

2 Dos werdetide Dogma, p. 82.



132 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

the mere man Jesus which modern liberal theology
conceives him to have been. Weinel appeals to the
apocryphal gospels, the writings of the " apostolic
fathers," the apologists of the second century (Justin, for
instance) ; they all show just the contrary of what he
states (p. 103). It is precisely one of the strongest
arguments of those who deny the historicity of Jesus
that neither Acts nor Revelation nor the Epistles, nor
the apologists, etc., relate the slenderest fact that can
confidently be referred to a purely historical Jesus. As
regards the apologists, in particular, they know, says Pro-
fessor W. B. Smith in his Ecce Deus, " nothing whatever
about the miraculous pure human life in Galilee and Judasa.
Not a single event is mentioned, not a single proof, not
a single explanation, or exhortation, or counsel not a
single motive have they drawn from the incomparable
life which is supposed to have fascinated the disciples
and even the bloodthirsty Saul. The modern preacher,
even the modern critic, at a distance of 1900 years, fills
all the vessels of his discourse at this pure and inex-
haustible source of the personality and life of Jesus. But
the early apologists, who lived under the Antonines and
before the settlement of the canon of the New Testament,
know nothing of this source in their debates with kings
and emperors, with philosophers and representatives of
their own group. They do not draw a single drop of the
water ; they rarely mention it, even remotely. It would
almost seem that, if it existed at all, it was confined to
an esoteric, not exoteric, source. We do, it is true, find
a few scanty references to certain teachings which are
' known,' but they are all of a more or less metempirical
character, such as the mystery in 1 Tim. iii, 16. We
find no knowledge of such a human life as that which
modern and orthodox theologians make the basis of their
New Testament theory."

To base the historicity of Jesus on tradition is merely
to make tradition the decisive factor in the question



133

because it is tradition. "History," says Weinel (p. 22),
" depends on tradition." But when tradition is so isolated
as it is in the case of the gospels, we have every right to
ask whether there are any historical facts whatever at the
base of it. Even Weinel admits that the historicity of a
tradition cannot be shown by " some simple logic." Such
proof can only be given " by means of documents." There
are, however, none for the life of Jesus. It has been said
that Socrates and Plato might be struck out of history
just as easily as Jesus, since there are spurious works
among those that bear the name of Plato, and it is
impossible to prove that the others are genuine. But we
are assured of the existence of Socrates, not only by
Plato and Xenophon, but by the comedian Aristophanes,
and there is not the slightest ground to doubt his his-
torical existence. And the historical existence of Plato
is accredited, not merely by the works ascribed to him, but
in other ways, as well as that of any personality in history.
We should not even have ground to doubt his historicity
if all the works of the philosopher were spurious. As to
the existence of Luther, Frederick the Great, Goethe, or
Bismarck, we have not only documents from their own
hand, the genuineness of which is not open to question,
but masses of evidence on the part of contemporaries. 1
All this is wanting in the case of Jesus. He has not left
behind a single line. He has, as Jiilicher says, " written
in the sand," and there is not a single reliable document to
enable us to trust the gospels, from which alone we learn
something about his life. It is, therefore, just as permis-
sible to doubt as to admit the existence of such a person ;
and it is an unhappy indication of the superficiality and
loose thinking of our time that even leaders of science have
not hesitated to bring into the field to prove the historicity
of Jesus this foolish reference to historical personalities. 2

1 See Jiilicher, p. 14.

2 Steudel, Wir Gelehrten vom Fach, p. 6 ; Lublinski, Das werdende
Dogma, p. 47.



134 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

3. THE METHODS OF HISTOEICAL CRITICISM.

(a) The Methodical Principles of Theological History.
From what we have seen we perceive that critics are con-
vinced of the historicity of the gospels a priori, before
investigating the subject. All they have to do, therefore,
is to seek the "historical nucleus " in tradition. How is
that done ? " The Christian element," says Weinel,
" must be stripped from the figure of Jesus before he can
be discovered. But this means only the Christian element
in a certain sense. Jesus was not a Jew, but something
new; the Christian element must be removed from him
in the sense of thoughts, ideas, and tendencies w T hich could
only be entertained by a later community" (p. 28). Or, as
we read in another passage: " The only standard by which
the historical critic can discriminate between the genuine
and the spurious is to set aside as spurious those features
of tradition which could not be due to the interest of Jesus,
but only to the interest of the community " (p. 30).

Notice how much is assumed in all this : that Jesus
was an historical personage, that he was not a Jew, that
he was " something new," and, especially " the interest
of Jesus." How is it that Weinel knows the interest of
Jesus so well before beginning his inquiry that he thinks
he can determine by this test what is spurious in tradition
and what is not ? Let us be candid. Is it not a question
of the " interest " of historical theology and the Church
rather than of Jesus? The gospels, it seems, are to be
understood from " the soul of Jesus," not from the soul
of their authors ! I should have thought that in a strict
historical inquiry the " interest " and the " soul " of Jesus
could only be gathered in the course of the inquiry. The
theological " historian," however, assumes from the start
precisely what he is supposed to prove and deduce the
existence and the knowledge of the innermost nature of
the man Jesus. Not only does Weinel do this, but
Clemen also formulates, for use in the religious-historical



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 135

interpretation of the New Testament, the famous "methodo-
logical principle " that a religious-historical interpretation
is impossible when it leads to untenable consequences
(namely, the denial of the historicity of Jesus or of the
genuineness of the Pauline Epistles) or starts from such
premises. 1 J. Weiss says this even more plainly when he
acknowledges that in all his inquiries he starts with the
assumption " that the gospel story in general has an
historical root, that it has grown out of the soil of the
life of Jesus, goes back to eye-witnesses of his life, and
comes so near to him that we may count upon historical
reminiscences" (p. 125). It is little wonder that they
find themselves " scientifically " compelled to cling to the
historicity of Jesus, and regard the so-called historical
method which they use as the only correct method,
because it seems to establish this historicity. The truth
is that it is not a result, but a presupposition of their
method ; the method is arranged in advance so as to
confirm the presupposition, and it is not in virtue of the
method that the inquiry ends in a conviction of the
existence of a definite Jesus, but because this was the
goal kept in mind from the start.

This, however, is not all that we have to say in regard
to the theological method of inquiring into the historicity
of Jesus. There is a further principle, that all that
seems possible to the theological critic in the gospel
narratives may at once be set down as actual. Thus
Weinel would regard a tradition as valid as long as "it is
not clearly seen to be impossible." But are there not
plenty of things in traditions which are possible, yet may
not in the least be actual ? The story of Tell is possible,
the story of the seven kings of Home, or of Semiramis or
Sardanapalus ; and as long as independent documents did
not exist, they were held to be real histories. Indeed, on
this criterion of " possibility " we might prove that

1 Die religionsgeschichtl. Erklarung des N. T., 1909, p. 10.



136 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

Hercules was an historical personage, and endeavour to
extract an " historical nucleus " out of the shell of legend.
Why may there not have been a man of that name who
strangled a lion, dragged a wild boar, caught a hind alive,
slew a dangerous serpent, cleaned out a stable, and
performed other heroic deeds, finally sacrificing himself
on the pyre ? That the hydra had more than one head,
and that when one was cut off two new ones grew in its
place, is, of course, due to later imagination ; possibly it
originated in a " vision " on the part of Hercules. Do we
not know that he was a heavy drinker ? Well, in a state
of intoxication things are often seen doubled, or even
trebled. Thus it would be possible to give an " historical "
interpretation of the myth of Hercules on the above
principle. The principle, however, overlooks the fact
that, though everything that is actual is at the same time
possible, the laws of logic forbid us to draw an inference
in the opposite direction, from possibility to actuality.
Yet it is simply on such a deduction, apart from con-
siderations of " the interest of Jesus," that all theological
constructions of the life of Jesus are based. The stories
in the gospels are first examined to see if they are
possible, and they are then treated as historical realities,
the historicity of which is supposed to have been proved
by showing that they are possible.

(b) The Method of J. Weiss. J. Weiss is a master in
the application of this wonderful method. His way of
interpreting the miracles of Jesus must not be passed in
silence.

Weiss starts from the general character of the age in
which the miracles are supposed to have been performed,
its credulity and thirst for miracles, an age " for which
saviour and physician are almost the same thing." It is
true that he grants that the sudden and remarkable cures
wrought by Jesus cannot be controlled in their further
course. " We do not hear of a single patient who tells
anything of his subsequent history " (p. 119), which is



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 137

at least very curious, and does not say much for their
gratitude. He thinks, however, that " many [!] a one
will acknowledge " that Jesus was much occupied with
healing the sick. We have, it is true, " not a very good
idea " of the way it was done. We can only imagine the
manner in which Jesus acted. It is, however, " a quite
unreasonable scepticism to say that these scenes, because
of the difficulty of imagining them, and thelhealing work
of Jesus in general, should be relegated to the province of
legend. That Jesus was regarded and sought as a healer
of the sick we are bound to assume, as the popular side of
the great impression which he made on men," which in
turn is simply assumed in this paragraph. " The one [!]
possible explanation is that he was full of the belief that
he was allied to divine force ; his confidence in God's
miraculous aid, his ' enthusiasm ' in this regard, must [!]
have been strong and sincere, and it must [!] have been
based on real experience " (p. 117).

Take, for instance, the possessed in the synagogue at
Capernaum. Weiss thinks he can explain his delivery by
the enthusiastic messianic character of the preaching of
Jesus, " by which the patient, identifying himself with
the demon within him, feels that he is personally
threatened, yet at the same time attracted; and thus a
paroxysm is provoked, and it is followed by tranquillity.
In this," he exclaims, " how have we passed the bounds
of historical interpretation ? What is there improbable
in the episode ? " Jesus imposed silence on the demon
" by virtue of the divine spirit which he felt in himself."
If any one ventures to differ from him, Weiss bitterly
retorts : " Any man who says that these religious ideas
and emotions are inconceivable had better keep his hand
off matters of religious history ; he has no equipment to
deal with them" (p. 121). Then there is the healing of
Peter's mother-in-law. "I have," says Weiss, "no
experience in such matters [What a pity ! What a lot
he might have taught us had he been able to experiment



138 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

on his own mother-in-law !] ; but I do not see that what
is described here is impossible " (p. 122) / It is true that
one may regard the curing of such a patient by suggestive
influence as " quite possible, and even probable." But
what sort of " science " it is to reduce the whole contents
of the gospels to mere possibilities of this sort we must be
permitted to hold our own opinion.

Perhaps the " method " by which critical theologians
prove the existence of their Jesus cannot be better studied
than in the case of Weiss's Das dlteste Evangelium. Weiss
tries to prove that the author of our gospel of Mark is
merely incorporating an already existing tradition. " Not
without certain assumptions," he admits, " do we set about
the inquiry. We have been prepared by the tradition of
the early Church, especially by the evidence of Papias [!] ,
to find that in the gospel which has come down to us
under the name of Mark we shall find an echo of the
statements of Peter. Hence [!] we approach our subject
with the particular question how far the reminiscences of
Peter form the groundwork" (p. 120). "My aim is, I
candidly admit, to trace the text of Mark in its general
lines [!] to an earlier tradition. As far as it is possible [!] ,
I endeavour to trace it to Peter's way of looking at things,
and understand it as historically as possible. I am, there-
fore, a partisan of my author that I grant to a certain
extent " (p. 122). Now let us listen.

" Now, after that John was put in prison, Jesus came
into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God "
(Mark i, 14). " Thus Peter may have begun his account "
(p. 136). Then there is the account of the calling of the
early disciples. Here we detect a certain amount of
literary manipulation ; the story reminds us too strikingly
of the calling of Elisha by Elijah (1 Kings xix, 19). It is
not certain that the phrase " fishers of men " was uttered

1 In his work, Das dlteste Evangelium (1903), Weiss tells us that it was
"probably a case of malarial fever," and refers us to Eulenburg's Real-
Encyclopddie der ges. Heilkunde, p. 146.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 139

on this occasion. But it may have been spoken on another
occasion, and the whole account may spring from a
reminiscence of that " unforgettable moment " in which
the word of Jesus induced Peter to follow him. The
technical phrase " casting of nets " is, Weiss assures us,
significant ; he seems to think it improbable that any but
a fisherman should use this very unfamiliar phrase, or
know anything about so unusual an occupation. In this
case we may have the first part of those narratives of
Peter which Mark is said by Papias to have used. Now
for the Sabbath in Capernaum, the healing of the possessed
in the synagogue and of Peter's mother-in-law, the healings
in the evening, the flight in the morning. How excellent
a local and chronological connection there is between the
stories! How vividly the details are told ! Howthe agitation
of all concerned is felt in the account ! From all this the
" sole scientific method, the one prudent and critical view,"
deduces that (we tremble with curiosity) here we have an
" excellent tradition " in fact, the recollections of Peter
because (we must complete the argument) no other
man could have invented these things, or at least not
have told them in that way.

In the second chapter we have the strange story of
the palsied man who could not reach Jesus on account of
the crowd, so that they had to remove the roof of the
house and let him down to the healer within. As the
scene is Capernaum, and there is " mention of a house,"
it is natural, according to Weiss, to suppose that it was
Peter's house ! Another of Peter's reminiscences, there-
fore. Does the parable of the sower belong to the same
category ? " We should like to believe it, on account of
the graphic introduction [!] . The reminiscence recalls a
very clearly-described locality [the fact is that Jesus is
supposed to have spoken the parable from a boat at the
shore], and the time of it also is determined by iv, 35
["And the same day, when the even was come"]. It
was a perfectly definite [?] day on which these things



140 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

took place" (p. 178). The boat (iv, 1) was, of course,
Peter's boat, though this is not said in the text.

Into the story of the daughter of Jairus the healing of
the woman with an issue of blood is rather artistically
woven. This artistic combination cannot be a literary
device, but depends on a real historical reminiscence.
"It was unforgettable that so curious an event should
take place on the way to the house of Jairus " (p. 180).
Then there is the calming of the tempest. The story is
so improbable, and so strongly suggests Jonah i, 3 and 5,
that most critics since Strauss have regarded it as a mere
legend, and one is disposed to ask, with Weiss : "If Peter
could tell things of that kind, what use is he to us ? "
Nevertheless, why should we not once more see a real
episode at the base of it, and suppose that the evangelist
afterwards gave it the first touches of miraculous quality ?
In the same way, the story of the Gadarene possessed is
supposed to be based on " a sound tradition " (tradition
is always "sound" when it fits the theological scheme).
Observe how the writer's acquaintance with the locality
is assumed. What a graphic description ! Mountains
running down to the shore and falling precipitously into
the sea I 1 " This description could only originate among
those who were familiar with these features of the
country." Mark could not have so described it unless
tradition had enabled him ; hence the story must be true,
and Peter must be the teller of it. And then the descrip-
tion of the possessed man ! The symptoms are totally
different from those of the possessed in the synagogue ;
it is " epileptoid hysteria " (this also the " historian " seems
to have found in Eulenburg's Beal-Encyclopddie) . The
account, moreover, must have been given by the patient
himself after his restoration or by the other people ; hence
once more we have a " sound tradition." The only defect
of the evangelist's description is that he is too much

1 Mark v, 11 and 13.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 141

interested in the swine, too little in the man. "The
story is interesting in any case, and if any man takes
offence at it he may be told that it was narrated precisely
on that account " (p. 189).

So much for the "historian" Weiss. After these
specimens of his critical exegesis we may refrain from
following him further along this path, although there is
much in his work that ought not to be suffered to pass
into oblivion ; his interpretation, for instance, of the
confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi the locality is
" drawn to the life," the detail is " thoroughly concrete ";
it has, as Herr von Soden would say, " the very smell of
the soil of Palestine," so that we are compelled to admit
its historical reality and his conception of the trans-
figuration of Moses, which must, of course, have been a
" visionary experience on the part of Peter."

We may add, to the credit of science, that the effort
of Weiss to reconstruct the fundamental form of Mark's
narrative by means of exegetic analysis, and prove that
Peter and his friends were responsible for it, has met
with the most violent resistance even among his own
colleagues. Wellhausen finds the tradition of Mark as
regards Galilee and the Galilean narratives to be of such
a nature that it cannot be referred to the primitive
disciples. " Is it possible," he asks, " that Peter was the
authority for the sudden vocation of the four fishers of
men? that he told of the walking on the sea, the
driving of the evil spirit into the swine, the healing of
the woman with an issue of blood by the virtue of his
garments, and of the deaf and blind by means of spittle ?
And why does he not tell us more, and in greater detail,
about the intercourse of the master with his disciples ?
It does not seem likely that the narrative tradition in
Mark originated among the companions of Jesus ? " Otto
Schmiedel also finds himself compelled to put more than

1 Einl. in die drei ersten Evangelien, 1905, p. 52.



142 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

one note of interrogation after the statements of Weiss,
and observes : " We do not know with so much confidence
(in spite of Papias) that Peter was Mark's authority." 1
In fact, the whole method is in the air, and it is quite
hopeless to attempt to deduce the historicity of the gospel
narratives from their character.

4. THE " UNIQUENESS " AND " UNINVENTIBILITY "
OF THE GOSPEL POETEAIT OF JESUS.

In the absence of any objective criterion it is necessary
for the theologian to rely upon subjective feeling and seek
in this the irrefragable proof of the historicity of the
gospel Jesus. Here we have especially to meet the
emphatic claim that the portrait of Jesus is " unique "
and " could not have been invented."

As to the uniqueness, the phrase is so obviously used
for the purpose of raising the personality of Jesus above
all other men, in spite of its purely human and historical
character, and to provide some compensation for the loss
of belief in his divinity, that we need not linger over it.
Even a theologian like Paul W. Schmiedel acknowledges :
" For my part I never claim that Jesus was unique ; it
either means nothing at all, since every man is unique,
or it may seem to affirm too much." 2 And the historian
Seeck observes that every man has his like, and therefore
there are no unique personalities in the sense in which
theologians use the word here. 8 Faust, Hamlet, Lear,
and Caliban, and their like, are unique ; are they therefore
historical personalities ?

The great point, however, is that the figure of Jesus,
as it is described in the gospels, " could not have been
invented." This is repeated incessantly, not only in
popular discussions, but even by experts such as von

1 Die Hauptprobleme der Lebcn-Jesu-Forschung, 2 Aufl., 1906, p. 62.
3 Die Person Christi im Streite der Meinungen der Gegenwart, 1906,
p. 29.
8 Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt, iii, p. 183.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 143

Soden, Jiilicher, Weiss, and even Harnack. How much
truth there is in it has been shown by Steudel in his
work against von Soden. It would not be easy to find
a more ridiculous phrase or a feebler argument. In no
other historical inquiry whatever would such an argument
be admitted as proof of the historicity of a certain person
or event. None but a theological historian would venture
to use such an argument, and it is lamentable that he
should find any support on the side of profane historians.
As if one could settle a priori the limits of the human
faculty of invention ! As if the figure of Jesus in the
gospels stood really apart from comparison with any
others ! If religious-historical inquiry has told us any-
thing, it has shown that this is the reverse of the truth.
The Saviour of the gospels is paralleled by other redeem-
ing divinities, whom he resembles so closely at times as
to be identical with them. His fate is entirely related to
that of Attis, Adonis, Dionysos, Osiris, Marduch, etc.
Indeed, in many and important points we recognise a
human personality in the saviours of the non-Judaic
religions, and the more research advances in that field
the clearer it becomes that the separate features of the
figure of Jesus have their counterpart, partly in ancient
mythology, partly and especially in the Old Testament,
and thus it is absurd to say that they could not be
invented. So fine a story as that of the disciples at
Emmaus (Luke xxiv, 13), which treats of the risen, not
the living, Christ, and therefore must certainly be un-
historical according to the critical theologians, could be
"invented." 1 The story of the adulterous woman also,
which is found only in John (viii, 1), is allowed to be a
later invention. 2 Even the pleasant story of the two
sisters, Mary and Martha (Luke x, 38), is, as Smith has
shown in his Ecce Deus, a mere allegory of the relations
of paganism and Judaism to the cult of Jesus, the former

1 Cf. Niemojewski, Warum eilten die Jilnqer nach Emmaus ? (1911).

2 Compare Robertson's Christianity and Mythology, p. 457.



144 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

receiving him with joy, the latter occupying herself much
with customs and ceremonies and claiming the same
service from her "sister." 1 If these three stories three
of the pearls of the gospels were invented, what is there
that could not be invented ?

However, one has the feeling that the theological
historians are not really very much in earnest with this
argument. They use it only at times as a rhetorical
auxiliary, and on account of the impression which it is
apt to make on the thoughtless mass of people. Even
Weiss seems to be not quite at home with it (p. 15), and
Schmiedel expressly acknowledges that the statement
that the figure of Jesus in the gospels could not be
invented " is not a valid argument in its general form."
" We must," he says, " restrict it to certain passages in
which it is indisputably valid. I count nine such
passages, and, in order to emphasise their importance,
give them a special name : I call them the main pillars
of a really scientific life of Jesus." 2

5. SCHMIEDEL'S " MAIN PILLAES."

We have now reached a point where the man who
denies the historicity of Jesus is to be definitively put to
shame: the "granite," the "historical bedrock," which,
according to the theological critics, will resist every
attempt to rob the gospel narratives of their funda-
mentally historical character. Nine main pillars of a
really scientific life of Jesus ! The same number as in a
game of skittles. Here we have the last solid ground
on which the structure of the liberal conception of Jesus
rests. Beneath the roof that rests on these nine pillars



1 Moreover, the circumstance that Martha (" mistress ") worried also
finds expression in the name of the place, Bethany, where, according to
John, the episode is supposed to have taken place. In Aramaic it means
" The house of her who worries."

2 Die Person Jesu im Streite der Meinungen der Gegenwart. See also
Schmiedel's work, Das vierte Evangelium gegenttbdr den drei ersten, p. 16.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 145

the critic may confidently relax from the strain of his
usual historical efforts. As long as the pillars stand
there is no danger of the collapse of the Christian
historical belief. But what if these also are fragile if
the " granite " is mere plaster or stucco, if the nine main
pillars are merely wings to hide the emptiness and
nakedness of the theological way of writing history?
What if they are "jerry-built houses," intended only for
show ? As a matter of fact, the pillars will stand only
as long as one refrains from putting them to a serious
test, and is content to admire their " really scientific "
appearance ; it would hardly take a Samson to bring
Schmiedel's whole nine pillars with a crash to the ground.
For they are based entirely on the assumption that it is
the aim of the gospels to represent the historical human
Jesus as a divine being ; they fall of themselves the
moment one assumes that, as the " Christ-myth " main-
tains, they seek, on the contrary, to describe as a real
man one who was originally a god.

Schmiedel's nine pillars have of late years, on account
of the great part they have played in the discussion of the
Jesus-problem, been subjected to a close scrutiny by more
than one writer. Hertlein endeavoured to upset them in
1906, and more recently Robertson (Christianity and
Mythology] , Lublinski (Das werdende Dogma, p. 93) , Steudel
(Im Kampf urn die C.M., p. 88), and W. B. Smith (most
fully of all, in his Ecce Deus) have dealt with them, and
shown that they are entirely untenable. I might there-
fore refrain from returning to the subject were it not that
so much stress is still laid by theological "historians " on
Schmiedel's nine pillars ; and a fresh discussion, at least
of the more important of them, is needed.

First, then, what is the nucleus of Schmiedel's argu-
ment ? When, he says, one learns about " an historical
person merely from a book that is pervaded with reverence
for its hero, as the gospels are in regard to Jesus, he
regards most confidently those passages in the book as

L



146 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

authoritative which are not in harmony with this rever-
ence ; he says to himself that, in view of the author's
mood, they could not have been invented by him indeed,
could not have been chosen by him from the material at
his disposal if they had not been forced on him as abso-
lutely true."

There is, for instance, the statement in Mark (iii, 21)
that the relatives of Jesus, his mother and brothers, went
forth to seize him, saying that he was mad. That, says
Schmiedel, cannot have been invented by one who rever-
enced Jesus, because he would lower his hero in the eyes
of his readers ; it is the less conceivable when we reflect
that the other evangelists say nothing of such language
being used by the relatives of Jesus, clearly because they
felt it to be out of harmony with their conception of
Jesus. Hence in this passage of Mark we have the echo
of a real historical reminiscence. But in the gospel of
John, which is generally admitted to carry the glorifica-
tion of Jesus to its highest point, we find the depreciatory
circumstance that even his brothers did not believe in
him (vii, 5) ; and in x, 20, the evangelist makes the Jews
say: "He hath a devil, and is mad." In the book of
Wisdom (v, 4) we read how the godless spoke of the just
man : " His life we held for a folly." In Zechariah
(xiii, 3) it is written : " And it shall come to pass [in the
days of the saving of Jerusalem from the attack of its
enemies] that, when any shall yet prophesy, then his
father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him :
Thou shalt not live, for thou speakest lies in the name of
the Lord ; and his father and his mother that begat him
shall thrust him through when he prophesieth." And to
those who ask him about the wounds on his hands he will
reply : " Those with which I was wounded in the house
of my friends." In Psalms (Ixix, 8) it is likewise said :
" I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien
unto my mother's children." Now, no one doubts that
the figure of Jesus in the gospels is in many respects



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 147

determined by passages in the Old Testament. How can
one doubt that what Schmiedel thinks " could not be
invented" originated in that source?

Moreover, Schleiermacher has pointed out, and Strauss
confirmed the fact, that the word of the Pharisees, " He
hath Beelzebub " (Mark iii, 22), which has quite a
different context in Matthew (ix, 34, and xii, 24) and
Luke (xi, 15), gave the evangelist an opportunity to put
it, in its meaning, also in the mouths of the relatives of
Jesus, in order to explain his slighting reply when their
coming was announced to him. 1 It has, however, clearly
only the symbolical meaning that real relationship with
Jesus is purely spiritual, not bodily, and it is neither
" beyond the range of invention " nor contradictory to
the divine reverence for Jesus. In fine, the conduct of
the Saviour's relatives in the gospels need not be taken at
all as a depreciation of Jesus, so that there is no need to
regard it as historical on that account. " As if," Steudel
says, " a romancer depreciates his hero by representing
him as misunderstood by those about him." 2 As if it
might not just as well have been his aim to bring out the
surpassing importance of Jesus by representing him as
too great to be understood by his relatives, and even being
regarded by them as mad. When people refuse to recog-
nise an " historical sense " in those of us who deny the
historicity of Jesus because we find such an argument as
this trivial, we must on our part refuse the " aesthetic
sense " to Schmiedel and his followers because they so
little understand the poetical fineness of that passage in
Mark as to find it out of harmony with the general
portrait of Jesus in the gospels.

We turn to the second pillar. In Mark x, 18, Jesus
declines to be called a " good " master " Why callest
thou me good? There is none good but one, that is



1 Strauss, Leben Jesu, I, 692.

3 Im Kampfe um die Christusmythe, p. 89.



148 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

God." How little such an expression could be invented
by the followers of Jesus who wrote the gospels, says
Schmiedel, we learn from Matthew. In his gospel
(xix, 16) the rich man says : " Good master, what good
thing shall I do that I may have eternal life ? And he
said unto him, Why asketh thou me about the good ?
One is good." 1 Logically, Jesus ought to have said:
" One thing is the good." But as Matthew had the words
of Mark before him, and sought to avoid their offensive-
ness, he changed the words. 2 Unfortunately, it is not at
all certain that in this case Mark has the original text.
The oldest manuscripts read like Matthew, and leave
out the " good " at the beginning of the usual text, so
that the text of Mark may be a later form of the altered
text of Matthew. This oldest text, however, is not at
all as illogical as Schmiedel represents. In the Hebrew
version of the reply of Jesus the masculine and neuter
are both the same : it may be either " one person " or
" one thing." " Let us assume (with Eesch) that the
reply ran : One thing is good keep the commandments.
First this was translated into the masculine gender in
Greek : One is good. Afterwards the explanatory note
was added, and later admitted to the text namely, God.
' One is good, God,' seemed to be in opposition to the
person of Jesus. Hence the question, Why askest thou
me about the good ? had to be changed into, Why callest
thou me good ? The connection was now broken, and it
had to be restored by adding, ' But if thou wilt enter
into life,' and so the original question was resumed."
This is the literary-critical hypothesis put forward by
Pott as regards the historical evolution of the text. 8
However that may be, in such a condition of things no

1 [The English translation of the Bible has the same answer in Matthew
and Mark. I find that there are different versions of the Greek text of
Matthew xix, 16. J. M.]

2 Das vierte Evangelium, p. 19.

8 Der Text des Neuen Testaments nach seiner geschichtlichen Entwick-
lung, 1906, p. 63, Also see Robertson's Christianity and Mythology.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 149

one has a right to say that the correct answer of Jesus is
in Mark, and that Matthew gives a tendentious modifica-
tion of the original text, and to make a "main pillar"
out of such material as this. Psychologically, it is just
as improbable that the innocent and customary address
"good master" provoked Jesus to disclaim the epithet as
that the question as to doing good should have prompted
him to say that God is good. Moreover, the answer
" God alone is good " suggests Plato just as forcibly as
the form " The good is one " suggests Euclid of Megara-
Hence it is impossible to say that these words of Jesus
" could not be invented." For the rest, until Schmiedel
no one had noticed anything particularly offensive in the
passage of Mark. Justin, for instance, finds in the reply of
Jesus a proof of the Saviour's lowliness and modesty in
disclaiming the appellation " good "; while other apostolic
fathers, in the opposite sense to Schmiedel, saw in the
words of Jesus a proof of his divinity, making Jesus
apply to himself the words, " God alone is good," as if
he wished to say : " That man rightly calls me good,
for I am God."

Equally ambiguous is the value of the third main
pillar. It consists in this, that Jesus could perform no
miracle in Nazareth, on account of the unbelief of his
countrymen (Mark vi, 5). But it is maintained that the
symbolical character of this passage is obvious. Is not
the glorification of the power of faith a leading tendency
of the gospel of Mark ? " For verily I say unto you,
That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou
removed, and be thou cast into the sea ; and shall not
doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things
which he saith shall come to pass ; he shall have what-
soever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things
soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive
them, and ye shall have them " (xi, 23 and 24). The
man who believes shall receive help (x, 52). Shortly
before, in the fifth chapter, the evangelist has described



150 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

how the woman with an issue of blood was healed owing
to her faith in Jesus ; and Jesus said to Jairus, whose
daughter had died : " Be not afraid, only believe." As a
complement to this we have the description of the unbelief
of the people of Nazareth and the failure of the wished-for
miracles. Can anyone seriously doubt that the story has
been " invented " to illustrate the fundamental idea of the
gospel, that faith is necessary for miracles? Moreover,
the sojourn of Jesus in Nazareth clearly reminds the
evangelist of the familiar saying of the time, that a
prophet is nowhere of less account than in his own
country and among his own people. He therefore puts
the proverb in the mouth of Jesus, and then illustrates it
by making him refrain from performing miracles in his
country. It is, in any case, impossible to find anything
here inconsistent with the evangelist's reverence for
Jesus. The thing that the impartial reader would be
inclined to regard as beyond the range of invention is
that anyone should be scandalised at the passage, and
from this scandal endeavour to deduce the historicity
of Jesus.

A fourth pillar, according to Schmiedel, is Jesus's cry
of despair on the cross : " My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me?" The words, however, are found at
the beginning of the twenty-second psalm, which gives
various details of the crucifixion the just man hanging
on the stake, the perforated hands and feet, the mocking
crowd, the soldiers gambling for the clothes everything
takes place as described in the psalm. Is it possible to
believe that the words were really spoken by Jesus?
Yes, says Schmiedel ; and Harnack agrees. If the story
of Jesus is recounted in such a way that the sacred words
of the Old Testament seem to be fulfilled in it, this was
only done when it served "the interest of Jesus"; but
this interest would have been injured if the words of the
psalm had been put in the mouth of the dying Jesus. As
if the gospels had been composed in much the same way



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 151

as a modern writer would sit down at his desk to write a
large book, and contained one consistent idea, with the
various parts carefully controlled and all contradictions
avoided. As if the gospels did not swarm with contra-
dictions and " discordances " in their description of the
character and experiences of Jesus, which afford another
proof that there is no question in them of a single definite
person and of historical recollections, but a mere collection
of details taken from very different sources, the choice of
which was determined, not with a view to avoiding con-
tradictions, but with a view to making the figure of the
Saviour as vivid and attractive as possible in the sense of
the Messianic expectations.

Lublinski has admirably shown that in an attempt to
give sensuous embodiment to a symbol, such as the
supposed historical Jesus is in our opinion, the result is
inevitably an irrational organism which is sure to present
many " contradictions " to our intellect. 1 " The one aim
of the author of the primitive gospel," says Steudel, "was
to give an expressive elaboration of the idea ; and, as he
wished to describe Jesus as the ' suffering servant ' of
Psalm xxii, he could not hesitate for a moment to put
in his mouth as a prayer the quotation in question.
Whether the figure which he built up was consistent or
not gave very little concern to the author." '

Even the theologian Spitta says that it is a " modern
notion that a later dogmatic could not possibly have put
into the mouth of Jesus the despairing cry of Matt.
xxvii, 46, and Mark xv, 34. Dogmatics has had nothing
to do with it ; it was the primitive Christian tradition
which saw in the twenty-second psalm a prediction of the
death and resurrection of Jesus. It is a curious illusion
to suppose that gospels of the Christological views which
Matthew and Mark represent would not suffer Jesus to
end his life with a cry of despair of God and his mission.

1 Das werd. Dogma, p. 93.

2 Ln Kampf uni die Christtismythe, p. 117.



152 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

That may apply to certain constructions of the life of
Jesus, but it is not inconsistent with the feeling of the
gospel writers. That, in view of the undoubted influence
of the Old Testament doctrine of the sufferings of the just
one on the suffering figure of Jesus and of the central
significance of the death of Jesus in the Pauline dogmatic,
the later manipulations of the evangelical tradition would
not be disposed to weaken the sufferings and death of
Jesus, should not need emphasising." ;

Only if it were proved that there is question of a real
history in the gospels could one admit that the evangelist
would have avoided weaving into the life-story of his
Jesus such details from the Old Testament as did not
accord with his main idea of the personality of Jesus.
If the historicity of Jesus were established by other
arguments we should be justified in deducing from the
presence of these details the fact of an historical tradition
which the author was bound to reproduce. But to seek
a proof of the historicity of the gospel narrative from
mere contradictions, real or apparent, is not science nor
the method " which every historian follows in non-
theological matters "; it is simply the method of arguing
in a vicious circle which is peculiar to theological
" history," the thing that has to be proved being taken
for granted. To go back to our earlier illustration from
Heracles, we could prove the historicity of the Greek
hero on that method. In the account of him there are
many details that do not accord with the otherwise
splendid figure of this strongest of all Greek heroes. He
is supposed to have become insane at times, and to have
murdered his own children when in that condition ; he
is said to have taken refuge with a Thracian woman in
his struggle with the Meropes, and concealed himself in
female clothing ; in fact, he is supposed to have been
altogether unmanly and weak in face of Omphale, winding

1 Zur Oeschichte und Literatur des Urchristentums, iii, 2, 1907, p. 204.
Cf. Feigel, Der Einfluss des Weissagungsbeweises, u.s.w., 63-69.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 153

her wool and running round her in her garments. We
might call these " main pillars of a really scientific life
of Heracles "!

Hence it is sheer self-deception for Schmiedel to
imagine that he has " established " the existence of an
historical Jesus beyond a shadow of doubt. His main
pillars are " ingenious discoveries of a theologian, master-
pieces of apologetic hairsplitting " (Steudel) ; they are
" small matters which one must examine with a
microscope in order to give them the character of
granite which they are supposed to have as central
columns of the liberal Jesus " (Krieck).

Yet the four we have discussed are the only ones
among them which even seem to have any importance.
This cannot be said of the other five. When Jesus
confesses, in regard to the day and hour of the end of
the world, that " no man know T eth, no, not the angels
which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father "
(Mark xiii, 32), we can only say that omniscience is not
expected of him, as the evangelist describes him as a
mere man, with human qualities and human limitations.
Moreover, the uncertainty in point of time of the end of
the world is one of the normal features of every
apocalyptic. Hence the ignorance of Jesus on that point
is so natural that the evangelist himself prudently refrains
from any chronological statement. Lastly, Smith points
out how one may infer the divine character of the Son
from his being placed after the angels in the words of
Jesus.

And when Matthew (xi, 5) makes the Saviour say :
" The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the
lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up,
and the poor have the gospel preached to them," to what
extent can we see in this a contradiction of the idea
which the evangelist had of Jesus? Schmiedel takes
the words spiritually : the spiritually blind shall see, the
spiritually lame walk, etc., because Jesus, he thinks,



154 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

" could not have more seriously destroyed the effect of his
words than by making a series of miracles, which rises as
high as the awakening of the dead, close with something
so simple and common as preaching to the poor." Yet
we read in Isaiah (xxxv, 5), in relation to the promised
coming of the Lord : " Then the eyes of the blind shall
be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue
of the dumb sing." And in Isaiah Ixi, 1, it is said :
" The spirit of the Lord God is upon me : because the
Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the
meek ; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the
prison to them that are bound [sight to the blind] ; to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of
vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn." 1
Clearly, the " pillar " is merely made up of these two
passages, and therefore the saying of Jesus has no claim
to historicity.

Of the rest of the "main pillars" it is better to
say nothing. Those who are interested may consult
Schmiedel and the works we have quoted. For my part,
I have tried in vain to see in them any sort of argument
for an historical Jesus. A man has to be a theologian to
appreciate arguments of this kind. We may assume
that real historians shrug their shoulders at Schmiedel's
" nine main pillars," if they have gone so far as to look
into the matter. Schmiedel's " nine main pillars " are
excellent companions to the three "pillar-apostles" of
the Epistle to the Galatians. At a distance they look
very fine ; when you come closer to them they dissolve
into atoms. Schmiedel thinks that in virtue of his
"pillars" he "knows" that the person of Jesus cannot
be relegated to the world of fable. He also "knows"
that " Jesus was a man in the full sense of the word, and

1 See also Isaiah xlii, 7.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 155

that in him the divine, which is, of course, not on that
account denied, must be sought only as it can be found
in a man." 1 We leave him with this " knowledge "; for
our part, we decline to settle in a house that rests on these
"nine main pillars of a really scientific life of Jesus." 2
Schmiedel has the support of his colleague Weiss in his
search for " indubitable historical features " in the
evangelical figure of Jesus. " The power of Jesus," Weiss
says, " rests on the spirit that was given to him in
baptism ; we see how this spirit wrestles with the
spirits" (Mark i, 25; iii, 11; v, 6, 8; xxv, etc.). Then
follows the list of Schmiedel's chief pillars, and the
" historian " continues : " We see [!] how the dogmatic
conception of the evangelist was unable to absorb the
human-historical figure" (p. 133). Surely we have here
a tenth main pillar ! 3

This, then, is, as regards the historicity of Jesus, the
" solid " fruit of that penetrating " analytical work on the
gospels which is called historical exegesis," which has
been going on for more than a century. We quite under-
stand that " there are many who are indifferent to this
inquiry into the inner structure of a document, and

1 Die Person Jesu, p. 9.

2 Observe the play of colour in the phrase " a man in the full sense of
the word," in whom, nevertheless, "the divine is not denied," though it
" must be sought only as it can be found in a man." (See also his Das
vierte Evangelium, p. 17, where it is said that, while we acknowledge that
there was something divine in Jesus, he thought and lived in a way which
we must regard as really human. To what triviality is this "God-
manhood " reduced in our liberal theologians !) Is Jesus a God -man in
the Christian sense or is he not ? We might ask these theologians in
the words of Elijah : " How long halt ye between two opinions ? "
(1 Kings xviii, 21).

8 Some may see a sort of main pillar in the words of Jesus (Mark
xiii, 30): " This generation shall not pass till all these things be done."
Because, they may say, if a prophecy of this kind, which was not confirmed
by the course of events, could remain in the gospels, it must have been
uttered by Jesus. But is it not possible that the saying of Jesus is part of
the Jewish apocalyptic which is embodied in the chapter of Mark quoted ?
In that case it is no more historical than Matt, x, 23, Mark ix, 1, and
Luke ix, 27, which are merely due to modifications of Mark xiii, 30. The
saying cannot be a " main pillar " because it contradicts the first "pillar "
(Mark xiii, 32), according to which Jesus declined to tell the time of the
end of the world.



156 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

declare in warning tones that the work of theologians
is hopeless, though they themselves will do nothing "
(Weiss, p. 134).

6. THE METHOD OF " THE CHRIST-MYTH."

(a) The Literary Character of the Gospels. Differently
from the method of the theological historian, The Christ-
Myth starts with the conviction that the gospels are, on
the confession of the theologians themselves, works of
edification, not of history, or tendentious works of a
dogmatic-metaphysical character ; that is to say, it is not
so much their aim to describe the real life of Jesus as to
put before the minds of their readers a Jesus that will be
likely to " influence their religious feelings, inflame their
hope, and awaken their faith." Even Weiss admits " how
impossible it is to take the gospel of Mark forthwith,
without close inquiry, as a primitive source. We cannot
trace the inner movement, or even the course of external
events, from the successive pieces in Mark. The form
and tone which Mark gives to the various parts of his
narrative are often more dogmatic than historical ; he
himself is not a chronicler, but a witness to the gospel of
Christ, the son of God " (p. 153). In the conception of
Mark the death of Jesus is, as Weiss observes, " the real
aim and content of his life (!) ; it is seen in advance, and
everything works up to it, so that the entire gospel is
really a story of the Passion stretching backwards "
(p. 132). Moreover, the chronological frame in which
Mark encloses the details of the life of Jesus is " neither
historical nor chronological, but didactic. Galilee is the
life, and Jerusalem is the death ; the passage from
Nazareth to Golgotha is the unavailing work among
Israel and the prospect of the believing heathens of the
future ; that the actions of Jesus in Israel did not bring
salvation to that people, but that salvation is found in the
mystery of his death for those who acknowledge and



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 157

believe those are the great ideas which he spreads like
a net over his variegated material " (p. 136).

Even when the evangelist offers us ostensible history,
we do not feel confident about what he describes.
" Chronology is his weak point." " He has no idea of
the duration of the activity of Jesus" [in the year 64 !].
For him to make Jesus, the pious Jew, come to Jeru-
salem for the first time at the Passover is, according to
Weiss, " a really childish idea." He gives nothing in
chronological order. We never find a date that might
serve to fix any event in point of time. And it is not
much better with his indications of places. It is true
that he knows the names of a few places, and often
represents a situation as known to his readers ; but his
indications are generally so superficial and vague (a
house, a mountain, a solitary place, and so on) that
the historian can make no more of them than he could
of the stage-directions of a play. " His geographical
notions are," says Weiss, " confined to a few large
divisions Galilee, Peraea, Judaea, the ' sea ' of Galilee,
etc. But it is clear, from, for instance, the section that
deals with the two miraculous meals, that he has no idea
of the localities. To represent Jesus moving about the
sea, suddenly appearing in the region of Tyre and Sidon,
and then to the east of the sea again, shows that the
writer has no idea of the topography of the country "
(p. 137). " The topographical ideas of the evangelist are
confused," we read in his Das dlteste Evangelium. " He
does not take the least interest in such things ; he is indif-
ferent to time and place" (p. 235). Weiss naturally
complains of this vagueness as to time and place which
is so conspicuous in this evangelist (p. 151). Wellhausen
speaks in the same way, and even more disdainfully,
of the author of the oldest gospel. 1

But the other two synoptics are no better in this

1 Einleitung, p. 51. Compare also the Commentar zu den vie
Evatigelien of P. van Dyk (S. E. Verus), Leipzig, 1902, Kap. 8 and 9.



158 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

respect. At least we might have expected more of Luke,
who expressly describes himself as an " historian " in the
foreword to his gospel. Unfortunately, it is not so. The
phrases " In those days," " At that time," " On a Sabbath
day," "After eight days," "At the same hour," etc., are
just as common with him ; and when he does seem to
give definite indications of time for instance, " In the
days of King Herod," " At the time of the enumeration
under the governor Cyrenius," " When Lysanias the
tetrarch was at Abilene, and every man had to be
numbered" we find him historically inaccurate in
every case. Herod had died four years before the
beginning of the present era. Cyrenius was not governor
until the years 7-11 A.D. Lysanias had been dead
thirty-four years at the time when Jesus was born.
Annas and Caiaphas could not be high-priests together,
as there was only one high-priest at a time. The
description of the Pharisees is wrong in Luke and all
the other evangelists. The trial which ended in the
condemnation of Jesus does not correspond at all to
Jewish usage at the time. 1 Nothing is known by any
historian of a friendship between Herod and Pilate, such
as Luke (xxiii, 12) describes. It is true that we know
that Pilate was procurator in Judaea in the fifteenth year
of the Emperor Tiberius (28). But the character of
Pilate, as described in Luke and the other evangelists,
is entirely opposed to all that we know of the man ; and
it is not certain that we have not here an astral myth, in
which the Homo pilatus (the javelin-man Orion) played a
part, converted into history on the strength of a similarity
of name with the Roman procurator Pilate, and that the
whole story was not on this account placed in the time of
the first two Roman emperors. It can be detached from
that period without suffering any essential change. In
essence it is independent of time, as myths are. This is

1 Brandt, Die evangel. Geschichte ; Steudel, Im Kampf um die Christus-
mythe, pp. 42 and 53.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 159

strikingly confirmed by the statement of St. Augustine 1
that Jesus died on March 25 under the consulate of the
two Gemini (29). The death of Christ falls, according to
the calculations of Niemojewski, on March 25 (during
the vernal equinox), when the new moon dies in the
constellation of the Heavenly Twins in Latin, Gemini. 2
There are many other details in the gospels which point
to the fact that astral relations are at the root of the
supposed historical events which they describe.

In any case, the narrative of the gospels is not of a
nature to exclude the possibility that dogmatic and
metaphysical material, which originated in a totally
different province, was afterwards worked into an his-
torical scheme, and that this was done at a time when
the real features of Palestine in the days of Jesus were
very superficially known to the author, and by one who
had not an accurate knowledge of the geographical and
chronological conditions. From this we know what to
think when von Soden and others speak of the " graphic
miniature painting " and " smell of the soil of Palestine "
in the gospel narratives, and when Jiilicher assures us
that Jesus is " a human personality that could not possibly
have been in any other time and place than those in
which he is put in the gospels," and emphasises his being
" rooted in Jewish soil." It is much the same as if a man
were to say that Borneo and Juliet were real characters
which could not have existed elsewhere but in Verona,
in medieval Italy, where Shakespeare places them.
Augustine is nearer the truth when he confesses : " Were
it not for the authority of the Church, I should put no
faith in the gospels."

We may dispense ourselves from considering more
closely the much-praised "pictorial character" of the
gospels and examining the proof of the historicity of
Jesus that is based on it. The description in the gospels

1 De civitate Dei, xviii, 54.

2 Niemojewski, Gott Jesus, pp. 131, 371, 382, 384.



160 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

may be pictorial, but it is not more so than any description
which aims at giving a sensible form to a certain idea by
artificial means. If we admitted this as an argument for
the Biblical Jesus, we should have to accept the characters
and situations of many novels, dramas, and other works of
fiction as historical realities. Moreover, the vividness of
the gospels is only found in situations and sensations, not
in depicting characters ; the character of Jesus by no
means merits that description, on account of the contra-
dictions it includes, and there is no consistent and
progressive treatment in the gospels. In this respect
Lublinski has very well described the style of the gospels
as an "impressionist lyrical al fresco style": "Great
stress is laid on certain scenes, while all the rest lies in
a darkly-coloured background. That kind of description
would be curious and incongruous, in fact unprecedented,
if there were question of a biography. But as the aim is
to represent a god in his superhuman splendour, no happier
style could have been chosen. The god must not come
too close to ourselves, otherwise he loses his altitude, yet
not be too far from us, otherwise he would not have
assumed human form for the redemption of sinners.
The best course is to bring him out in some of his
actions and situations with sudden and magical power,
and then allow him to sink back again. Thus we get the
transfiguration scene, the scene on Golgotha, the entry
into Jerusalem, the arrest, the crucifixion, and the
resurrection. We hear strong, angry words and others
full of tenderness and pity, which similarly break upon
us suddenly and unexpectedly in seemingly indifferent
passages. At other times lofty moral sentiments are
pronounced, and these in turn have to retire behind the
glamour of mystic words spoken at the last supper or
after the resurrection and apocalyptic visions. These
details are not given in logical order and in the quiet
course of a sustained narrative, but with a certain sudden-
ness ; just as, when one is travelling in a mountainous



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 161

district, every turn of the road presents new aspects
and wonders of the landscape. But the character
that produces these effects, now humanly approaching us
and now fading into the mystical distance, would not be
found a definite personality if his psychology and conduct
were considered from the biographical point of view. As
a symbol and god-man, however, he could not have been
better described." '

(b) The Mythical Character of the Gospels. We have
further to consider the resemblance of the figure of Jesus
to the saviour-gods of pagan peoples, which theologians
do not contest, and the resemblance of the Christian
doctrine of redemption and details of the cult to those of
the mystical cults in ancient times. 2 We can quite
understand when the theologians, under the lead of
Harnack, regard the relevant research in comparative
religion with great distrust and concern, and that in this
respect they warn us to proceed with extreme " prudence." 3
But all that they have said as yet against the possible

1 Das werdende Dogma, p. 39.

2 See Arnold Meyer, Inwiefern sind die neutestamentl. Vorstellungen
von ausserbiblisclien Religionen beeinflusst, 1910.

3 How theologians go to work may be seen in a pamphlet by Harnack
on Christmas, in which it is said that the Christmas-story is " not a
mythology, but a lofty legend, comprising historical and religious facts
and experiences in very fine images." One is tempted to ask the dis-
tinguished writer what there is in the story that is not mythical. Is it
the child-bearing of "Mary " at "Bethlehem " at the time of the great
" census " ? Or the shepherds on the fields, to whom an angel announces
the birth of the Saviour, and their veneration of the "son of David"? Or
the story of the announcement of the birth of the Baptist ? Or the
massacre of the children ? Or the presentation of the child in the temple ?
Or but Harnack at last tells us : the story of the star and the wise men
from the east ! " Here we have an ancient myth reproduced and applied
to Jesus Christ, but " he at once soothes his readers "how rich the story
is ! At that time many ancient religions were pressing from the east into
the Roman Empire ; they were, to some extent, deeper and richer than
the Graeco-Roman, and therefore had many followers. Our story shows
us the wise men from the east that is to say, those oriental religions [!]
bowing down before the wonderful star that had arisen over Bethlehem,
and bringing gifts to the new-born child. And so it actually came to
pass ! History has fulfilled and confirmed the myth in a wonderful way
[sic] . The oriental religions brought gifts to the Christian, and then
paled before its light." Thus speaks "Dr. Adolf Harnack, ordinary Pro-
fessor at the University of Berlin." We now know how to give a " really
scientific " interpretation of myths.

M



162 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

derivation of the Christ-story from the pagan myths is so
lame and biassed that it is difficult to keep patience in
discussing such things with them. Take, for instance,
the notion of a suffering and dying God. The Christ-
Myth has shown how familiar this idea was to Judaism
from its own tradition how the notion of a suffering
king and just one, offering himself for the sins of his
fellows, was based on a very ancient rite in the whole
early world, which has left traces even in the Old Testa-
ment. A man must be utterly devoid of psychology and
be a worshipper of the letter to doubt that the idea must
have had adherents among the Jews even in the days of
Jesus merely because we have no direct evidence of it in
writing. And what a decisive part the idea plays in the
Gnostic systems ! Nor can it any longer be disputed
that Gnosticism was not, as was hitherto generally
believed, a product of Christianity, but is much older than
Christianity. 1 In the second century the Talmud expressly
sets forth the idea of a Messiah suffering in atonement
for his people. It would be surprising if, in the circum-
stances, the belief in a suffering and dying saviour-god
had not been found among the Jews at an earlier date.
As we shall see more fully, the idea had been impressed
on them by Isaiah (ch. liii). The ancient Babylonian
idea of a divinity coming down from heaven and soiling
himself with earthly material for the purpose of saving
mankind was bound to imply suffering and death,
especially among a people of strong religious feelings,
surrounded by the suffering and dying gods of neigh-
bouring peoples, in the close atmosphere and mysticism
of sectarian life.

Opinions may differ as to the way and the extent in
which Christian ideas, especially the gospel narratives,
were influenced by the analogous myths and ceremonies
of non-Christian religions whether the influence was

1 See M. Bruckner, Der sterbende und aufersteliende Gottheiland in den
Orient-Religionen und ihr Verh<niss zum Christentum, 1908, p. 30.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 163

direct or indirect, and whether the analogies were merely
accidental or were, as some credulous writers affirm,
divinely appointed. The Christ-Myth refrained from
taking up any definite position on this point. It was
generally content to tell the facts and let them speak for
themselves, in order to justify its theory that Jesus also
may have been one form of the myth, and the " history "
of him may have been derived from the same mythic
material as that of the pagan saviour-gods. It stimulated
questions, and drew attention to points which might
contribute to the elucidation of obscure passages in the
gospels. If it has been misunderstood and represented as
saying that on all points the Christian ideas were depen-
dent on the non-Christian world, or as speaking of a
"composition" of the story of Jesus from the analogous
myths of pagan religions, the author is not to blame, and
does not need to be told that analogies do not of them-
selves prove historical connection.

This much, at least, is certain : the origin of Chris-
tianity cannot be properly understood without regard to
the mythological connections of its ideas with those of
other religions. In this respect research is only just in
its infancy, as up to the present there has been almost
nothing but purely historical and philological work done
in this field, and biblical " mythology," which has had
an able and far-seeing exponent in Nork, has been thrust
into the background. While Mr. J. M. Robertson has
led the way and made considerable advance in England
in his Christianity and Mythology, Pagan Christs, and
Short History of Christianity, the science of religion in
Germany remains wholly under the influence of theology,
and is mainly concerned to avoid a conflict with theology.
Hence on the theological side we find men contesting the
obvious affinity of the Easter-story of the gospels with
the myths and ceremonies of the Attis-Adonis-Osiris
religion, saying that " there is no such thing "as a burial
and resurrection in the myths of Attis and Adonis, and



164 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

that the difference between the death of Jesus and that
of his Asiatic kindred can only be explained by the
" hard fact " the famous theological bed-rock of the
death on the cross. Weiss is unable to recognise in
Mary Magdalen and the other Marys at the cross and
the grave of the Saviour the Indian, Asiatic, and
Egyptian mother of the gods, the Maia, Mariamma, or
Maritala, as the mother of Krishna is called, the
Mariana of Mariandynium (Bithynia), Mandane, the
mother of the "Messiah" Cyrus (Isaiah xlv, 1), the
" great mother " of Pessinunt, 1 the sorrowing Semiramis,
Miriam, Merris, Myrrha, Maira (Maera), and Maia, 2 the
" beloved " of her son. Weiss, however, does not question
that " the belief in a dead and risen Christ has, in general
outline, considered from the point of view of the science
of religion, a similar structure to these cult-myths, though
the details are altogether different " (p. 39). As if there
were any question about the details as such ! Whether,
for instance, the traditional number, "after three days,"
in the account of the resurrection has been chosen on
astral grounds, and is related to the three winter months
from the shortest day, when the sun dies, to the vernal
equinox, when it triumphs definitively over the winter,
and so the months are condensed into three days in the
myth, 3 or whether the moon has furnished the data for

1 See The Christ-Myth, pp. 53 and 78.

a The mother of the " world-saviour " Augustus, who is generally known
as Attia, is also called Maia in Horace and on an inscription at Lyons
(" Maia' s winged child"), and she is supposed to have brought her son
into the world in a remarkable way and under astonishing circumstances.
The name was a standing name for the mothers of the saviour-gods of
antiquity, and it is naive to regard it as the real name of the historical
Jesus.

9 Weiss denies that the three days could be taken from the course of
the sun, as the sun is never buried for three days and three nights. But
Heracles is said, according to the scholiast of Lycophron (Cassandra, 33),
to have remained three days in the belly of the sea-monster, and to have
escaped with the loss of his hair, which clearly points to the rays of the
sun. The somewhat similar Jason also, the Greek counterpart of the
biblical Joshua, whose solar nature is beyond question, is said to have
been swallowed by the dragon and spat out again. The biblical Jonah,
whose name means "dove," and points to the reverence of the Ninevites



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 165

the three days and three nights, as it is invisible for that
period, and, as so often happens in myths, the moon and
the sun have been blended, we need not consider here.
Possibly the number may be explained by the popular
belief in Persia and Judaea that the soul remains three
days and nights in the neighbourhood of the body, only
departing to its place on the fourth morning. Possibly,
again, the number was determined by Hosea vi, 2, where
we read : " After two days will he revive us ; in the third
day he will raise us up." In any case, when there are
so many possible explanations, we have no convincing
reason to regard the account in the gospels as historical,
and to say with Weiss that the third day was chosen
" because something of importance [sic~\ had happened
on it" (p. 36).

There is very little force in the other objections of
theologians to the astral explanation of the day of the
death of Jesus. It is true that the day of the vernal
equinox is at least fourteen days before the Passover,
which is celebrated at the full moon after the beginning
of spring. I may recall, however, the very common
combination of sun and moon- worship in myths. Niemo-
jewski has proved that a moon-myth is at the base of
Luke's astral system. Moreover, we may very well
suspect that, on account of the symbolism of the Paschal
lamb, the Christians have tampered with the calendar.
That the mythic-astral method " breaks down altogether "

for doves, seems also to have been originally a sun-god and related to
Heracles, or, rather, to the sun-god Perseus and Joshua. In Jaffa, from
which Jonah is supposed to have set out for Tarsis, there were still shown
in the days of Pomponius Mela certain large bones of the fish that had
tried to swallow Andromeda whom Perseus delivered (consider the similar
liberation of Hesione by Heracles) ; and the dove was, according to Assyrian
ideas, the wife of Ninus (that is to say, the fish), who appears in the Old
Testament, under the name of Nun, as the father of Joshua. In fact, the
connection of the Christ-form with these pagan sun-gods is clearly seen in
the ceremony performed on December 26 in the Church of Sta. Maria di
Carmine at Naples, in which the hair is cut off the figure of the crucified
with great solemnity. Compare also the three (winter) months and five
days during which Joseph is said, according to the " Testament of the
Twelve Patriarchs," to have dwelt in the under- world (Christ-Myth, I, 46).



166 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

in face of the time of the death of Jesus, as Weiss says,
is not true at all, and before we consent to regard Sunday
the 15-16 of Nisan as the day of the resurrection,
" because on that day something of importance [sic]
happened to the first disciples" (p. 38), we have to settle
the chronological confusion that we find in regard to the
date of the death of Jesus, which no one yet has succeeded
in doing.

In fine, we may ask, as some reader of The Christ-
Myth did, if the death and resurrection of Jesus really
took place at the Jewish Easter, why was the day not
fixed once for all instead of changing with the date
of Easter? If Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on a
certain day and " rose again on a certain day, and if
the Pentecostal gathering took place in Jerusalem forty
days after the resurrection, these days ought to have been
fixed. It is useless to say that the festivals of the Church
were only fixed at a later date. That may be true of
Christmas, etc., but not of the day of the death and
resurrection, which, together with Pentecost, were days
of incomparable importance for Christians from the very
first. These definite days ought to have been celebrated
everywhere by Christians with great solemnity, either
joyous or mournful. There could not possibly be a doubt
as to which dates were to be celebrated. The fact that
the Jewish calendar had movable feasts does not affect
the matter ; Paul ought at least to have given his Greeks
and Romans a definite date to celebrate. The Church
professes to know quite accurately the day on which
Peter and Paul were crucified at Borne." How has it
failed to fix vastly more important dates? As long as
theologians can give us no satisfactory answer to this
question we prefer to think that we are dealing, not with
history, but with a myth to which an historical form was
afterwards given.

Critical theologians have hitherto affirmed the his-
toricity of the gospel narratives, but they have landed in



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 167

insuperable difficulties and insoluble contradictions ; so
poor, not to say purely negative, a result amounts to a
bankruptcy of their whole method. It seems, therefore,
to be our duty to try the mythic-symbolic method, and to
consider the gospels from the point of view that their
Jesus was not an historical, but a purely mythical, per-
sonage. The literary quality of the gospels, their tenden-
tious dogmatic-metaphysical character, their chronological
and topographical vagueness, their constant absence of
definite indications of space and time in regard to events,
the slender traces of an apparently historical and geo-
graphical framework, the resemblance of their most
important details to the myths of non-Christian religions
a resemblance that often extends to the smallest points
all this demands that we shall study the gospels from
a very different point of view from that hitherto adopted.

The fundamental idea of The Christ-Myth is that
their historical character is only a symbolic clothing of
their real content.

Why this method is less sound than the historical
method followed by theologians, less " scientific " in
fact, no real method at all is, in the circumstances, not
very obvious. It is quite certain, and will be questioned
by no one, that the gospels contain a large amount of
legendary matter, and that a good deal in them is to be
understood mystically or symbolically. It is not at all
equally well established that they have an historical basis.
The idea is grounded solely on the feeble tradition of
Papias. What is there to prevent us, therefore, or what
methodological principle restrains us, from extending the
mythic-symbolical interpretation to the whole contents of
the gospels, and refusing them any kind of historical
reality ? In Homer's Iliad there is much that seems at
first sight to be historical and real, yet no one has
attempted to see in the Iliad an historical document,
and to extract its " historical nucleus " by means of
criticism and exegesis from the mythical and poetical



168 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

shell. It is possible that The Christ-Myth is wrong in
its analysis of the gospel story into myths ; but in that
case its failure will only bring out more brilliantly the
historical character of the gospels, so that, instead of
scolding us, the believers in an historical Jesus ought to
be grateful that we have relieved them of their thankless
and uncongenial task. Our opponents complain that our
procedure is actuated by the secret hope that there never
was an historical Jesus. The truth is that it is their
own exertions which are inspired by the opposite hope.
Would theologians ask us to believe that they approach
the problem impartially ? Must we be dubbed unscien-
tific because we take no interest in their historical Jesus ?
Let us avoid pretence, and have respect for truth. To
science as such it is wholly immaterial whether there
ever was a Jesus or no. It has no advantage in approach-
ing the question of his historicity either from the positive
or the negative standpoint. It is theology alone that
has an interest in regarding the positive standpoint as
necessary, and in coming to an affirmative solution of the
problem. This, however, is not a scientific, but a religious
or ecclesiastical, interest ; and therefore all their talk
about their " scientific procedure " and all their disdain
of their opponents' methods are interested manoeuvres.
It is ridiculous for theologians to tell the laity that
" science " has " proved " the historicity of Jesus, and
"historical research" has established the "fact" of his
existence. We cannot repeat too often : The science of
history has up to the present taken no notice of the
problem. Theology is not science, and, strictly speaking,
does not merit the name of science at all, because, in
spite of its formal scientific procedure, it rests, in the
long run, on faith.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 169

7. THE MYTHIC-SYMBOLIC INTEEPEETATION OF
THE GOSPELS.

(a) The Suffering and Exaltation of the Messiah. The
mythic-symbolic interpretation of the gospels sees in
Isaiah liii the germ-cell of the story of Jesus, the
starting-point of all that is related of him, the solid
nucleus round which all the rest has crystallised.

The prophet deals with the "servant of Jahveh," who
voluntarily submits to suffering in order to expiate the
sin and guilt of the people :-

He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief ; and we hid as it were our
faces from him ; he was despised, and we esteemed him
not.

Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows ;
yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and
afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities ; the chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray ; we have turned
every one to his own way ; and the Lord hath laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened
not his mouth ; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth
not his mouth.

He was taken from prison and from judgment; and
who shall declare his generation ? for he was cut off out
of the land of the living, for the transgression of my
people was he stricken.

And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich
[evildoers] in his death ; because he had done no violence,
neither was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him ; he hath put
him to grief ; when thou shalt make his soul an offering
for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days,
and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be
satisfied ; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant
justify many ; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great,



170 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

and he shall divide the spoil with the strong ; because he
hath poured out his soul unto death ; and he was numbered
with the transgressors ; and he bare the sin of many, and
made intercession for the transgressors.

The general belief is that there is here question of the
sufferings of Israel in the interest of the whole of mankind.
According to Gunkel and Gressmann, however, the idea
of the suffering just man is joined to an allusion to the
god who expiates the sins of men by his voluntary death.
Certainly we detect in it all the essential features of the
suffering Christ, sacrificing himself for mankind and
expiating their sins. That the early Christians felt this
we see in Mark ix, 12, and xv, 28 ; Matt, viii, 17 and
xxvi, 23 ; 1 Peter ii, 21 ; and Acts viii, 28-35, where the
words of the prophet are expressly applied to Jesus.

Isaiah liii speaks of the "griefs " of the just one. But
Plato, who also has described, in his Republic, the perse-
cutions and sufferings that befall the just man, makes him
be scourged, tortured, cast in prison, and finally pilloried
("crucified"); 1 and in Wisdom the godless deliberate
about condemning the just to a " shameful death."
According to Deuteronomy (xxi, 23), there was no more
shameful death than "to hang on a tree" (in Greek
xylon and stauros, in Latin crux) ; so that this naturally
occurred as the true manner of the just one's death.
Then the particular motive of the death was furnished
by the passage in Wisdom and the idea of Plato. He
died as a victim of the unjust, the godless, who say :

Let us overpower the poor just man Let us set snares

for the just, because he is a burden to us, and opposes our
deeds, and represents to us the commands of the laiv. He
boasts that he has a true knowledge of God, and calls
himself the servant of God. He has become unto us a

1 Apollonius refers to the passage of Plato's Republic (II, 361) in his
Apology : " For one of the Greek philosophers also says : The just man will
be martyred, spat upon, and at last crucified." The passage seems even to
have been in the mind of James when he says : "Ye have condemned and
killed the just, and he doth not resist you " ; and we read in Justin : " Ye
have beaten the just " (Dial. xvi).



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 171

living reproach, on account of our desires. He is a burden
unto us, when we do but look on him, because his ways
and his conduct are different from those of all others. Us
he regards as insincere, and he holds himself from inter-
course with us, as from impurities. But he praises the
eternity of the just, and boasts that God is his father. Let
us see if his words be true, and wait for the manner of his
going forth. For if the just is a son of God, God will take
care of him, and save him from the hands of his enemies.
Let us put him to the proof with insults and evil treatment,
so that we may know his meekness and prove his stead-
fastness. Let us condemn him to a shameful death ; for,
according to his words, he will have protection. Such
things said they in their madness, for their wickedness
dazed them, and they recognised not the mysteries
of God.

These words suggest the cry of the martyred and
reviled in the twenty -second psalm, whose torments
also recall the death " on the tree ":

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? my

God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not I am

a reproach of men and despised of the people. All

they that see me laugh me to scorn ; they shoot out the lip,
they shake the head, saying : He trusted in the Lord that
he would deliver him ; let him deliver him, seeing he

delighted in him I am poured out like water, and all

my bones are out of joint My strength [palate] is dried

up like a potsherd ; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws

For dogs have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked
have enclosed me ; they pierced my hands and my feet [like
the lion are my hands and my feet] . I may tell all my
bones ; they look and stare upon me. They part my
garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

It is further said in the book of Wisdom :

The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no
torment can touch them. Only according to the folly of
the unwise do they seem to be dead, and their going in is
counted a misfortune, and their going forth from us for a
destruction ; but they are at peace. For if they have
been punished in the eyes of men, their hope was full of
the faith in immortality. And after they have borne a
brief torture, they will receive great rewards ; for God has
but tried them, and has found them worthy of him. Like
gold in the crucible has he tried them, and like the gift of



172 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

a whole offering has he accepted them. And at the time of
their home-coming they will shine bright, and will pass
like sparks in the reed. They shall judge the heathen and
rule over the peoples, and the Lord shall be their king for
ever. They who trust in him shall know the truth, and
the faithful will remain with him in love. For grace and
mercy shall be the part of his elect. But the godless
shall be punished according to their deeds, who despised
the just and rebelled against the Lord.

In these words we clearly perceive the fundamental
idea of the Christian mysteries. The love of the " Lord "
and trust in him are for the good and just the conditions
of their glorious exaltation and an eternal life with God
after death : " For God has created man for immortality,
and made him in the likeness of his own being. But
death came into the world through the envy of the
devil" (ii, 23). Hence the wicked irreclaimably fall to
him, no matter how long they enjoy life on the earth.
The just, on the other hand, dies young :

He is withdrawn from the midst of sinners In a

little while he hath fulfilled much time. For his soul was
pleasing to the Lord ; therefore did he hasten to take him

from the wicked world The just will himself judge the

living godless after death, and the early closed youth the

long old-age of the unjust For they shall see the end

of the wise, and shall not know what he hath designed
concerning him, and why the Lord hath brought him to
safety. They will see and understand not, but of them-
selves will the Lord make sport At the reckoning of

their sins they shall stand shivering, and their trans-
gressions of the law shall appear before them as accusers.
Then will the just with much confidence stand against
them that have oppressed him and have slighted his needs.
At sight of him they will be smitten with a terrible fear,
and will be astonished at his unexpected safety. They
will see ruefully to themselves, and in the anxiety of their
soul will they moan : This was he who once made sport
for us and for an object of contempt to us fools. His life
we counted a folly, and his end ivithout honour. How,
then, was he numbered among the sons of God and hath a
possession among the holy ? We have, therefore, wandered
from the way of wisdom, and the light of justice has not
illumined us, and the sun has not shone upon us



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 173

But the just live in eternity, and their reward is with the
Lord, and the care of them is with the most high. There-
fore will they receive the kingdom of glory and the crown
of beauty from the hand of the Lord.

Since the just is here described in his heavenly
exaltation as accuser and judge of the godless, speaking
judgment on them after their death, it would be curious
if in the minds of the pious the figure of the exalted just
did not instinctively blend with that of the expected
Messiah. It was an essential element of that expectation
that the Messiah would appear in heavenly glory, and
judge Israel according to its deeds, condemning the
godless and taking the good to eternal life in heaven. If
this happened, it would follow that the Messiah also
would suffer and die, and by his voluntary death remove
the guilt of men, and obtain heavenly happiness for those
who love and trust him and walk in his footsteps. It is
true that Wisdom refers the love of the faithful to God.
But we know how in the Jewish mind the figure of the
Messiah tended to be identified with that of Jahveh, and
the " son of God," as the just is called in Wisdom, is one
with his father, and is in a certain sense only another
name for him.

Bead in the prophet Isaiah the important references
to the coming lordship of the Messiah and mysterious
indications of his nature : " Say ye to the righteous, that
it shall be well with him ; for they shall eat the fruit of
their doings. Woe unto the wicked ; it shall be ill with
him ; for the reward of his hands shall be given him "
(iii, 10). That was already contained in the passage we
quoted from Wisdom :

Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be
exalted and extolled, and be very high.

As many were astonied at thee ; his visage was so
marred more than any man, and his form more than the
sons of men ;

So shall he sprinkle many nations ; the kings shall
shut their mouths at him. For that which had not been



174 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

told them shall they see, and that which they had not
heard shall they consider. 1

Would not that recall to readers the astonishment and
fear of the godless at sight of the exalted just as described
in Wisdom ? " And he shall judge among the nations,
and shall rebuke many people" (ii, 4). The prophet
applied this to Jahveh, but in Wisdom it is said of the
just, who is raised by God to heavenly glory after his
humiliating death. Is it possible to doubt that the just,
the " servant of God " in the fifty-third chapter of the
prophet, was Jahveh himself, or rather that " son of
God," in the special sense, which the Messiah was
conceived to be ?

Then there are the words of the prophet that the
servant of God grew up before Jahveh "as a tender
plant, and as a root out of dry ground" (lii, 2). Here
the connection is quite obvious, for the eleventh chapter
of Isaiah, in which the prophet describes the glory of
the Messianic kingdom in especially impressive tones,
began with almost the same words : " And there shall
come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch
shall grow out of its roots." Here the servant of God is
also described as of the root of David, as the prophet
Zechariah, too, had said : " Behold I will bring forth my
servant the branch" (iii, 8; also see vi, 12), leaving
no room for doubt that the Messiah is intended here.
Will it now be said to be impossible that the Jews had
blended the servant of God in Isaiah liii with the
Messiah, and had seen in the passage a mysterious
reference to some preceding suffering and humiliating
death of the expected Saviour, and thus Israel's Saviour
fell into line with the suffering, dying, and rising gods of
the religions of nearer Asia ?

(b) The Character and Miracles of the Messiah. Of
all these gods special myths were related by their

1 Isaiah lii, 13-15.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 175

followers. Their life-story was related, and curious
things were said of their origin, character, deeds, etc.,
from birth to death. Did the prophet who spoke of the
sufferings, death, resurrection, and exaltation of the
servant of God give any indications of this character ?
Bead the forty-second chapter :

Behold my servant, whom I uphold ; mine elect in
whom my soul delighteth ; I have put my spirit upon
him ; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.

He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be
heard in the street.

A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax
shall he not quench ; he shall bring forth judgment unto
truth.

He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till be have set
judgment in tbe earth ; and tbe isles shall wait for his
law.

Thus the servant of God is to be wise, gentle, tender,
full of endless pity for the oppressed and suffering. He
is indefatigable in the exercise of the office committed to
him by God, and his mission is to proclaim truth and
establish righteousness on earth the kingdom of that
perfect righteousness of all, which is to the prophet the
condition of the fulfilment of all that God has promised
to his people (ch. Iviii). In agreement with this we read
in ch. 1, 4 :

The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned,
that I should know how to speak a word in season to him
that is weary

The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I icas not
rebellious, neither turned away back.

I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them
that plucked off the hair ; I hid not my face from shame
and spitting.

For the Lord God will help me, therefore shall I not be
confounded ; therefore have I set my face like a flint, and
I know that I shall not be ashamed.

Obedience to God, his father, trust in his heavenly
power, patient submission to his lot, not disturbed even
by the foulest maltreatment and shame, are the essential



176 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

features of the servant of God. He submits willingly
to the command of God, just as the saviour-gods and
redeemers of the pagan religions descended to earth at
the command of their divine " fathers "; as the Baby-
lonian Marduch was obedient to his father Ea ; as Heracles,
the most resolute and powerful hero, nevertheless bowed
to the command of his heavenly father and undertook
the heaviest labours.

Now we can also understand the words of the sixty-
first chapter :

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because the
Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the
meek ; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to
proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the
prison to them that are bound ;

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the
day of vengeance of our God ; to comfort all that mourn.

They seem to be the words of the servant of God
himself, who reveals in them the meaning of his Messianic
task. He is not sent to the rich and fortunate, but to
the poor and miserable ; he does not come as a powerful
leader of armies, to lead his followers to victory over
their enemies ; but, like the saviour-gods of other peoples,
he chiefly heals suffering of body and soul, and alleviates
the lot of the people, as we read in ch. xxxv, 4 : " Behold,

your God will come and save you. Then the eyes of

the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall
be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart,
and the tongue of the dumb sing." And again (xxix, 18) :
" And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the
book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity
and out of darkness. The meek also shall increase their
joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice
in the Holy One of Israel."

To announce the gospel, the glad message of the
realisation of salvation, of the fulfilment of the hopes of
a happy life, is the essential activity of the servant of
God during his life on earth. For so speaks God,



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 177

Jahveh, who spread out the heavens : "I, Jahveh, have
called thee in righteousness, and I will take thee by the
hand, and will protect thee, and make thee to represent
the covenant with the people of Israel, and a light to
the nations, as I open the eyes of the blind, deliver the
prisoners from their prison, and from their captivity

those that sit in darkness And I will give my glory

to none other, nor my fame to the idols."

What a mysterious indication of the real nature of
the servant of God ! The covenant that Jahveh made
with Moses is renewed by him ; he is therefore a second
Moses. Nay, did not the prophet seem to intimate that
Jahveh w r ould confer on him his own glory, and does not
this seem to imply his equality in nature with Jahveh ?
Assuredly he was no ordinary man, this servant of God
of the prophet ; and the hopes of the people for the
kingdom of God would be fulfilled very differently from
what they expected, if salvation was to be extended to
the Gentiles as well as the Jews. But that the prophet's
servant of God is really he for whom the Jewish people
longed is shown by his marvellous deeds.

Thus we can explain the miracles of Jesus on which
the critics have expended so much fruitless labour ; they
followed at once from the above passages, the moment an
attempt was made to give a detailed picture of the life of
the servant of God, and to embody the intimations of the
prophets in impressive stories. These miracles must have
been performed by Jesus simply because they were part
of the character of the servant of God. They serve as
evidence of his supernatural power and his mysterious
relation to Jahveh, and they differ in no respect from
the miracles which the pagans also ascribed to their
saviour-gods, such as Asclepios, Hermes, Anubis, etc.,
just as the Old Testament had attributed them to Moses,
Elijah, and Elisha, and as, in the common feeling of
ancient times, they were expected of any outstanding
man. Take Apollonius of Tyana, for instance.

N



178 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

The prophet speaks of the curing of the blind, deaf,
lame, and dumb. Those are precisely the miracles of the
gospels. It is true that he does not speak of raising the
dead to life or driving out demons feats which were
related of Asclepios and Apollonius. He does, however,
make the servant of God deliver captives. But if we
interpret the text with deeper insight, does it not seem to
mean the opening of the doors of sense and bodily life,
which form the kingdom of the devil, and which Plato
had described as the prison of the soul, or the unsealing
of the tombs that hold the dead as prisoners? Intro-
duced into the mental world of the doctrine of mysteries,
the words of the prophet would naturally lose their
original and real meaning, and become symbols of a
mysterious truth hidden in them, the meaning of which
would be clear only to the initiated. If Isaiah's servant
of God was a saviour, a lord over natural forces chosen
by God, like the pagan saviour-gods, he must, like them,
have above all a dominion over the dread world of spirits
and demons, by which the men of the time saw them-
selves surrounded and threatened everywhere, in whom
they recognised the causes of disease, and for protection
against whom they took refuge in the magical realm of
the mysteries. 1 It would, therefore, be childish to take
the miracles of Jesus at their face value, and seek to
extract from the gospel narratives which describe them
an "historical nucleus." Compare a story like that of
the Gadarene swine (Mark v, 1) in the symbolical
explanation which Lublinski (p. 131) gives of it with
the historical conception of it in Weiss. Only complete
unintelligence could attempt to deduce from the descrip-
tion of the locality, the presence of the swine, etc.,
the historical place and truth of the story ; whereas there
is obviously question of the nether world, of a symbolical
representation of the power of the Saviour over the demons,

1 Compare Zechariah xiii, 2: "In that day I will cause the

unclean spirit to pass out of the land."



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 179

and the swine are introduced only as " typhonic " beasts,
to suggest the scenery of the nether world. 1 A good
deal of amusement has been expressed over the childish
miracles which the gospels attribute to the son of God.
We have, however, only to recognise that they are built
on the prophet's intimations and inspired by them, and
are merely symbols of the spread of faith in Jesus, as
Smith has shown at length in his Ecce Deus ; and we
shall see that even in regard to the miracles the evan-
gelical way of putting things can be justified. In this
way the much-discussed question of the miracles of the
gospels may be settled.

SUPPLEMENT.

As we have seen, Isaiah and Wisdom are the germ-
cell of the figure of Jesus in the gospels and the Christian
theory of redemption. But a third element has been at
work the figure of Job.

The canonical book of Job depicts for us a just man
who, just like the prophet's servant of God, is tried by a
conflict with Satan, by intolerable suffering and humilia-
tion, and is afterwards raised again to his former con-
dition. There is much in the book that directly reminds
us of Isaiah liii and Psalm xxii ; for instance, the circum-
stance that Job and the servant of God are both afflicted
with leprosy (Isaiah lii, 14; liii, 4). Or read the follow-
ing lament of Job :

They have gaped upon me with their mouth ; they have
smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully ; they have
gathered themselves together against me.

1 That the whole story is only meant to be symbolical is recognised by
some theologians, such as von Baur and Volkmar. But to what absurdities
their historical point of view will lead theologians we have a charming
illustration in Otto Schmiedel (p. 114). In his opinion, the possessed man
is no other than Paul, and the whole thing is a piece of malicious Judaeo-
Christian ridicule of the apostle. Yet these are the men who reproach us
with "fantastic" explanations, and ask us to respect the "method" of
theologians.



180 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me
over into the hands of the wicked

His archers compass me round about ; he cleaveth my
reins asunder, and doth not spare ; he poureth out my
gall upon the ground

My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the
shadow of death.

Not for any injustice in mine hands : also my prayer is
pure

Let my cry have no place.

Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my
record is on high.

My friends scorn me, but mine eye poureth out tears
unto God

My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves
are ready for me.

Are there not mockers with me? and doth not mine
eye continue in their provocation? [My eye must rest
on their brawls. Compare the soldiers casting dice for
the garments of Jesus.]

He hath made me also a byword of the people, and
aforetime I was as a tabret. [I must let my face be spat
upon.]

Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my
members are as a shadow.

Upright men shall be astonished at this, and the
innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite.

The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that
hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger. 1
Job cries again (ch. xxix) :

Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when
God preserved me ;

When his candle shined upon my head, and when by
his light I walked through darkness.

As I was in the days of my youth

When the Almighty was yet with me, when my
children were about me

When I went out to the gate through the city, when I
prepared my seat in the street.

and the aged arose, and stood up.

The princes refrained talking, and laid their hand on
their mouth. [Compare Isaiah lii, 15.]

The nobles held their peace, and their tongue cleaved
to the roof of their mouth.

1 Job xvi, 10-xvii, 9. Also see xxxix, 1, 9-11, and 20.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 181

When the ear heard me, then it blessed me ; and when
the eye saw me, it gave witness to me.

Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the father-
less, and him that had none to help him.

The blessing of him that was ready to perish came
upon me ; and I caused the widow's heart to sing for
joy

I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame.

I was a father to the poor, and the cause which I
knew not I searched out.

And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the
spoil out of his teeth

Unto me men gave ear, and waited, and kept silence at
my counsel.

After my words they spake not again ; and my speech
dropped upon them.

I laughed on them when they despaired ; they believed
it not, and the light of my countenance they cast not down.

I chose out their way, and sat chief, and dwelt as a
king in the army, as one that comforteth the mourners.

These words remind us of the prophet's servant of God.
But at the same time we see Jesus before us, as, sur-
rounded by his disciples, he speaks to the people in the
market-place and the streets, disputes with the Pharisees
and Scribes, and silences them, strides through life helping,
working miracles, consoling, healing, and encouraging, and
is blessed by the crowd and by the lost and the saved.

Still greater, however, than with the canonical book of
Job is the concordance of the gospel figure of Jesus with
the popular Jewish additions to it. One of these we have
in the so-called Job's Testament, which was first published
in 1883, and again in 1897 by Montague Rhodes James
and K. Kohler, and very closely studied by Spitta in its
relation to the New Testament. 1 James held at first that
Job's Testament was purely Jewish and pre-Christian, but
afterwards attributed it to a Jewish convert to Chris-
tianity, as he could find no other explanation of its
astonishing agreements with the New Testament, not
only as regards its general contents, but at times even in

1 Zur Geschichte und Literatur des Urchristentums, 1907, iii, 2.



182 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

words. 1 Kohler regards it as pre-Christian, an Essenian
Midrasch on the book of Job ; this is, however, denied by
Spitta. Bousset, a careful man, finds a " slight Christian
modification " of a Jewish work, while Spitta believes that
the remarkable work has a purely Jewish character : " One
of the Jewish pre-conditions of Christianity, a full know-
ledge of which is of great importance for an appreciation
of Christianity itself, and especially of the figure of Jesus."
" In this case, it seems to me," he says, " the view would
be more plausible that the figure of Jesus is of pre-
Christian origin than in connection with the Gilgamesch-
epic or W. B. Smith's pre-Christian Jesus." He empha-
sises the following points : " Job and Jesus are both of
royal race ; both are healers of the poor and distressed ;
both struggle against the power of Satan, and are fruit-
lessly tempted by him to fall away from God ; both incur
suffering and contempt, even death, by the machinations
of the devil ; both are saved from necrotes [the state of
death], attain honour on earth, and are raised to the
throne at the right hand of God" (p. 198). Spitta does
not fail to point out the differences between Job and
Jesus ; but he considers the resemblance to be so great
that, in his opinion, it is enough " to explain how it could
happen that the figure of Jesus was involuntarily endowed
by Jewish writers with features which originally belong
to the Job-legend " (p. 200). That this figure could have
arisen only in connection with the figure of Job is a
possibility which, of course, lies beyond the horizon of the
theologian. Yet so many details of the gospel portrait of
Jesus have been shown to be due to foreign influence that
we can hardly say what is really supposed to be historical
in it. For the rest, the Christians themselves were well
aware of the resemblance of their Jesus to Job. It is
proved by James v, 10, where we read : " Take, my
brethren, the prophets who have spoken in the name of

1 Compare, especially, the remarkable resemblance to the story of the
Magi in Matthew ii. See Spitta, p. 192, and James, pp. 169, 199, and 204.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 183

the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of
patience. Behold, we count them happy which endure.
Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the
end of the Lord ; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of
tender mercy." Here Jesus is put on a level with Job,
assuming that by " the Lord " we are to understand
Jesus, and not Jahveh, which seems more likely, in view
of the reference to the prophets who have spoken " in the
name of the Lord." l

(c) John the Baptist and the Baptism of Jesus. Weiss
rightly speaks of the gospel of Mark as " a story of the
Passion prolonged backwards." This rich fullness of the
earthly life of Jesus is assuredly something more than a
development of Pauline principle ; he humbled himself,
and was obedient even to the death on the cross. From
the Pauline gospel alone the evangelist could not possibly
have evolved his narrative (p. 132). But no one has said
that he could. What I do say is that the prophet Isaiah
has supplied the chief features for the story of Jesus, and
the general framework. There, and there only, do we
find the real " main pillars of a truly scientific life of
Jesus." Not only the sufferings, death, resurrection, and
exaltation, but the description of his character and activity
and miraculous power, come from the prophet's words.
Even the first appearance of Jesus, in connection with the
penitential preaching of John, links with the text of
Isaiah. The words with which the earliest gospel opens
are also the beginning of the second part of the book of
the prophet, the author of which is known as the Deutero-
Isaiah, and distinguished from the older prophet ; he is
believed to have written his work at Babylon in the last
days of the captivity.

1 Is James a Christian Epistle in the ordinary meaning of the word ?
The Epistle, it is true, contains sayings of Jesus, but they are not described
as such, and there is no clear indication that the Epistle reflects anything
but purely Jewish ideas. Perhaps it belongs to "pre-Christian Chris-
tianity," when the Jewish Jahveh, "the Lord," was worshipped under the
name of Jesus. See later.



184 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness : Prepare
ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a
highway for our God.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and
hill shall be laid low ; and the crooked shall be made
straight, and the rough places plain ;

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all
flesh shall see it together : for the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken it (xl, 3-5).

The gospel refers the words to the Baptist, the "voice
of one crying in the wilderness," to whom " the word of
the Lord came" (Luke iii, 2). But we know that, as
Mark himself says, he has been influenced by the prophet
Malachi, who says in his third chapter : " Behold, I will
send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before
me"; that the words "in the wilderness" have been
inserted by a copyist in the wrong place ; in reality, they
do not denote the place whence the cry came, but mean
that the way is to be prepared in the wilderness. We are
thus led to suspect that the figure of the " precursor " also
may have grown out of the above passage in the prophet,
and that the idea of a double mission of Jahveh to his
people may have arisen from the passage in which Isaiah,
consoling his fellows, says that Jerusalem has received
" double from the hand of Jahveh " for all its sins (xl, 2).
The ideas of the Baptist's message also agree with the
admonishing words which the prophet earnestly addresses
to Jerusalem. " There cometh one mightier than I after
me," we read in Mark (i, 7), "the latchet of whose shoes
I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose." In Isaiah
it is said : " The Lord God will come with strong hand."
The prophet then describes the power and greatness of
Jahveh, before whom all the peoples and powers of the
earth are nought, whose spirit is immeasurable, his power
incomparable, and who says : "I have raised up one from
the north, and he shall come ; from the rising of the sun
shall he call upon my name ; and he shall come upon
princes as upon mortar, and as the potter treadeth clay "



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 185

(xli, 25). " Whose fan is in his hand " so Matthew and
Luke complete the words of the earliest gospel " and he
will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into
the garner ; but he will burn up the chaff with unquench-
able fire" (Matthew iii, 12; Luke iii, 17). In Isaiah
Jahveh says to Israel : " Behold, I will make thee a new
sharp threshing instrument, having teeth ; thou shalt
thresh the mountains and beat them small, and shalt
make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the
wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall
scatter them " (xli, 15). And in xlvii, 14, it is said of the
Gentiles : " Behold, they shall be as stubble ; the fire shall
burn them ; they shall not deliver themselves from the
power of the flame." :

It is a language of repentance and warning that the
evangelist puts in the mouth of the Baptist : " Eepent ye,
for the kingdom of God is at hand." The last judgment
approaches. The expected Messiah is near. So in the
prophet also Jahveh appears as a kind of judge who
summons the nations before his chair, to prove to them
the nothingness of their deities in comparison with the
hero whom he has raised for the redemption of his
people. " Bring forth the people that is blind, though it
hath eyes, and they that are deaf, although they have
ears. All ye peoples, gather yourselves together, and let
the nations congregate." " Behold, ye are of nothing," he
says, reviling the gods of the nations, " and your work
of nought ; an abomination is he that chooseth you "
(xli, 24). Who is not reminded of the reproaches which
John addresses to the Pharisees, scourging their stubborn-
ness and darkness : " Generation of vipers, who hath
warned you to flee from the wrath to come "?

The publicans come to John and ask : " What shall we



1 See also Isaiah v and Psalm i, 22, where the just, who rejoices in the
law of Jahveh, is compared with the tree by the stream, "that bringeth
forth its fruit in due season," while the godless are described as "chaff,"
which " the wind sweeps away."



186

do ?" And he replies : " Exact no more than that which
is appointed you." The soldiers put the same question
and receive the answer : " Do violence to no man, neither
accuse any falsely ; and be content with your wages "
(Luke iii, 12-14). We read in Isaiah (xxxiii, 15) : "He
that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly, he that
despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands
from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from
hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil ;
he shall dwell on high ; his place of defence shall be the
munitions of rocks."

" Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance," the Baptist
cries to the Pharisees, " and begin not to say within
yourselves : We have Abraham to our father ; for I say
unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up
children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid
unto the root of the trees ; every tree therefore which
bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into
the fire" (Luke iii, 8 and 9). Can it be a mere coinci-
dence that there is also question of " the seed of
Abraham " in the forty-first chapter of Isaiah, and
Israel is consoled precisely as the Pharisees are in the
gospels, when they boast of their " righteousness " in
having Abraham for father ? And what do we read at
the beginning of the fifty-first chapter of the prophet?
" Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye
that seek the Lord : Look unto the rock whence ye are

hewn Look unto Abraham, your father." Isaiah

also makes " the day of the Lord " humble all that are
proud and lofty (ii, 12), and Ezekiel makes the proud
oaks of Lebanon fall at Jahveh's command because of
their haughtiness and godless nature (xxxi, 12).

Bobert Eisler has, in an essay on the baptism of John, 1
drawn attention to Micah vii, 14, where the prophet
makes Zion say to Jahveh :

1 In the Silddeutsche Monatshefte, 1909, Heft 12.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 187

Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine
heritage, which dwell solitarily in the wood in the midst of
Carmel the orchard

According to the days of thy coming out of the land of
Egypt will I shew unto him marvellous things.

The nations shall see and be confounded at all their
might their ears shall be deaf.

They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move
out of their holes like worms of the earth ; they shall be
afraid of the Lord our God, and fear because of thee.

Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity,
and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his
heritage?

He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us ;
he will subdue our iniquities ; and t hou wilt cast all their
sins into the depth of the sea.

Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy
to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers
from the days of old.

Here the situation is just the same, not only as in the
fortieth and forty-first chapters of Isaiah, but as in the
gospel account of the appearance of John. Nearly every
detail of the words put in the mouth of the Baptist is
found in the words of the prophet : Jahveh conceived as
a pastoral inhabitant of the wilderness in Israel, about
whom the people in the wilderness gather in spite of the
orchards about them, the reference to the coming anger
of Jahveh, the stubbornness of the " nations," the threat
that they will be humbled before Jahveh in spite of all
their power, the comparison of the stubborn with serpents
("generation of vipers"), the remark that the stubborn
themselves do not share in the forgiveness of sins and
inherit grace because they are descended from Abraham,
to whom Jahveh promised these things ; while, on the
other hand, the penitent shall see such wonders as were
done at the flight from Egypt, and especially the baptism,
by which sins are cast into the sea and washed away by
its waves. It was not unusual to put an expiatory mean-
ing on the passage of the Israelites through the Eed Sea,
and to regard it as a kind of baptism and forgiveness of



188 TEE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

sins of the whole people, as Paul says : "All our fathers

passed through the sea, and were all baptised unto

Moses in the cloud and in the sea " (1 Cor. x, 1).

In Isaiah also the " Holy One of Israel," Jahveh,
promises his people that they shall rejoice over him.
" When the poor and needy seek water, and there is
none, and the tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will

hear them I will open rivers in high places, and

fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the
wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of

water " (xli, 17). " Fear not, Jacob, my servant for

I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods
upon the dry ground : I will pour my spirit upon thy
seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring ; and they
shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the
water courses" (xliv, 2). The figure of the springs in
the desert waste recalls the " shoots on dry land," and
we have the connection between the baptism of John
and the baptism of the servant of God : " Behold, I will
do a new thing ; now it shall spring forth ; shall ye not
know it ? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and

rivers in the desert to give drink to my people, my

chosen " (xliii, 19 and 20).

" I baptise you with water," Matthew and Luke make
John say, " but one mightier than I cometh who shall
baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." In
Isaiah it is written : " When thou passest through the
waters, I will be with thee ; and through the rivers, they
shall not overflow thee ; when thou walkest through the
fire, thou shalt not be burned ; neither shall the flame
kindle upon thee " (xliii, 2) ; and the following verses
show clearly that he also has in mind the baptism in the
Red Sea, the baptism by water as distinct from the
baptism by fire, since he says : "I gave Egypt for thy

ransom therefore will I give men for thee and people

for thy life."

And now we read in the famous eleventh chapter of



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 189

the prophet, on " the rod of the stem of Jesse ": " The
spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of
wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and
might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the
Lord" (xi, 2). These are the words which have given
rise to the story of the baptism of Jesus and the descent
of the Holy Ghost upon him, and we now understand
why the preacher of repentance, John, threatens with a
coming judgment. The "rod" of the passage is repre-
sented mainly in the character of an upright judge, of
whom it is said that he will "judge the poor with
righteousness, and reprove with equity for the meek of
the earth ; and he shall smite the earth with the rod of
his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay
the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his
loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins " (xi,
4 and 5).

Thus the whole story of the appearance of John and
the baptism of Jesus is built on the prophet Isaiah. This
removes the difficulties which a purely historical concep-
tion of the story encounters, especially in the contradictory
statement that a Jesus could submit to the baptism of
John ; all the countless attempts to explain this are
merely play on words. What has not been written on
the character of John and his relation to Jesus ! It
would be just as reasonable to take as the subject of a
" scientific " investigation the question why Achilles
remained inactive ten years before Troy, instead of going
home and devoting himself to other matters. One must
regard with some pain a science that, on account of its
connection with ecclesiastical life, has to propose such
questions and deal with them in academically approved
and learned works, when it is clear from the above
passages in Isaiah that the whole story of the baptism
belongs to the province of fiction.

As yet we have not touched upon the astral features
that seem to occur in the story of the baptism.



190 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

Dupuis long ago identified the John of the gospels with
the Babylonian Oannes, Joannes, or Hanni, the curiously
shaped creature, half fish and half man, who, according
to Berosus, was the first lawgiver and inventor of letters
and founder of civilisation, and who rose every morning
from the waves of the Red Sea in order to instruct men
as to his real spiritual nature. He believed that he could
recognise him in the southern constellation of the Fishes,
as this seemed to the inhabitants of Babylon to rise out of
the Bed Sea, and its rising and setting indicated the two
yearly solstices. 1 Possibly, however, he was originally
Aquarius, as this constellation is depicted as a fish-man
in the old oriental sphere, and the constellation of the
Fishes was afterwards detached from it. 8 In any case, it
was connected with the division of the year by solstices,
and was in this sense a " teacher of astronomy." We
have a reminiscence of this primitive astral significance
of John in the fact that we still celebrate his festival on
the day of the solstice, when the constellation of the
southern Fishes rises as the sun sets, and disappears
as the sun rises. Also the newly baptised Christians
used to be called fishes (pisciculi in Tertullian), and the
baptismal font is still called the piscina, or fish-pond. Thus
the fish-man has been turned in Christianity into a sort
of fisher of men. To this there is an allusion in the
Ambrosian choral (liamum pro/undo miserat piscatus est
verbumDei), representing John as drawing the converted
out of the water with an arm of the cross ; which recalls
Oannes, who saved the first man from the flood, and is
supposed to have endowed him with his real life as a man
and spirit.

That the evangelist himself perceived this relation of
John to the fishes is proved by the parable attributed to
the Saviour, comparing the actual generation to children
who sit in the market-place and call to each other :

1 Dupuis, L'origine de tous les cultes, 1795, III, pp. 619 and 683.
* Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alien Volker, 1820, H, p. 78.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 191

"We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced"
(Matthew xi, 16 ; Luke vii, 32). For these words remind
one very much of Herodotus, according to whom, when
Cyrus heard the willingness of the lonians, who had
hitherto refused to obey, to submit after his victory over
Cro3sus, he said in a parable : "A fisherman saw fishes in
the sea, and played his flute in order to bring them out
upon the land. And when he saw that he had failed, he
took a net, and caught a great number of fishes in it, and
drew them out. And when he saw them floundering, he
said to the fishes : ' You need not dance now, since you
would not dance when I piped.' '

As the one who indicates the solstices and divides the
year, Cannes becomes identical with the sun itself, as a
rising and setting star. In this way he entered the myth-
group of Joshua, Jason, and Jesus, and, indeed, corre-
sponds to the Old Testament Caleb, as representative
of the summer solstice, when the dog-star (Sirius) sets in
the month of the Lion, or of the autumnal equinox, which
is the division of the year equivalent to the former, when
the sun descends below the celestial equator into the land
of winter. Joshua (Jesus), on the other hand, repre-
sented the winter solstice, at which the days begin to
grow longer, or the vernal equinox, when the sun again
advances beyond the equator, and enters victoriously the
"Promised Land" beyond the Jordan (or the Milky
Way) of the heavenly Eridanus, the watery region of the
heavens, in which the zodiacal signs of Aquarius and
Pisces predominate. The evangelist expresses this by
making John be born six months before Jesus (Luke i, 36),
and disappear from the scene and be put to death at the
time when Jesus enters it (Mark i, 14). Hence the
words of John : " He must increase, but I must decrease "
(iii, 30). Again, as the setting sun the Baptist resembles
the Greek Hermes Psychopompos, who, at the time of
the autumnal equinox, leads the constellations or souls
into the nether world, the dark and sterile half of the



192 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

year symbolically represented by the " wilderness," in
which the people come to John, who is there. On the
other hand, Jesus, as the rising sun, resembles Hermes
Necropompos, who leads back the souls at the time of
the vernal equinox to the heavenly home of light, the
" kingdom of heaven," their true home. Hence it is said
of the Baptist in the gospel : " John came neither eating
nor drinking "; but of Jesus : " The son of man came
eating and drinking" (Matthew xi, 17). This is quite
intelligible when we see the relation of the one to the
winter, and of the other to the summer.

The oriental imagination, however, is not satisfied with
this general idea. It affects to find the Baptist in the
constellation of Orion, near which, at the time when the
point of spring falls in the constellation of Taurus, the
sun is found at the time of the vernal equinox. It stands
in the celestial Eridanus, in the Milky Way, at Bethabara
(John i, 28), the " place of setting " that is to say, near the
spot where the sun crosses the Milky Way in the zodiac.
With one foot it emerges from Eridanus, which connects
with the Milky Way, and seems to draw water from it with
the right hand, at the same time raising the left as if bless-
ing really a very vivid astral figure of the Baptist ; we
have also the three stars of Orion's belt in the (leathern)
girdle which the gospels give to the Baptist, and the people
are seen in the constellations about Orion, and, according
to Babylonian ideas, a meeting of the gods takes place at
the vernal equinox when the sun has run its course
through the zodiac. 1

It is useless to oppose to this conception of John the
familiar passage of Josephus (xviii, 5, 2) as proving the
historicity of the Baptist. The genuineness of the passage
is just as doubtful as that of the two references in Josephus



1 I borrow this indication of the connection of the Baptist with the con-
stellation Orion from Fuhrmann's work, Der AstralmytJws von Christus.
Also see, as to the astral features of the Baptist, Niemojewski (work cited,
under "Joannes " in the index).



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 193

to Jesus. Not only does the way in which it interrupts
the narrative plainly show it to be an interpolation, but
the chronology of the Jewish historian in regard to John
is in irreconcilable contradiction to that of the gospels.
According to the gospels, the appearance or the death of
John must have taken place in the year 28 or 29 ; whereas
the war of Herod with the Nabataean Aretas, the unfor-
tunate result of which was, according to Josephus, to be
regarded as a punishment for the execution of John, falls
in the years 35 and 36 of the present era. Moreover,
the complaints against Herod Antipas on account of his
ncestuous marriage with his brother's wife, which are
supposed to have occasioned the death of John, cannot
have been made before then. 1 In fine, John might
be an historical personality without there being any
historical truth in what the gospels say of him. His
connection with the story of Jesus is certainly due
to astral considerations and the passages we quoted from
Isaiah. We have, therefore, no reason to regard it as
historical.

Space will not permit us to go more closely at this
point into the astral features of the gospel narrative.
Here there is a field open to future research which has as
yet been touched only by a few isolated students, and
from which historical theology may expect some un-
pleasant surprises. The examination of the gospel story
from the astral-mythological point of view was begun by
Dupuis, Volney, and Nork a century ago ; and Niemojewski
has more recently done very promising work in that field.
Others will follow him, and furnish us with an entirely
new key to the problems of the New Testament. 2 It will,
however, always be difficult to say how far the story of
Jesus is affected by astral relations and how far by the



1 Compare Graetz, Gesch. der Juden, 1888, III, p. 278.

2 See also Wilhelm Erbt, Das Markusevangelium. Eine Untersuchung
ilber die Form der Petruserinnerungen und die Geschichte der Urgemeinde,
1911.



194 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

Old Testament, which of the two influences was the
earlier, and whether the relevant passages of the Old
Testament may not possibly themselves be influenced by
astral considerations.

In general it may be said that astral mythology has
furnished the framework or skeleton of the gospel story,
and made it clear that many episodes which seem to be
disconnected in the gospels owe their position to their
place in the astral system. It suffices here to mention
the importance of astral mythology in the interpretation of
the gospels, and to show in the case of the Baptist how the
two methods of interpretation work together. When the
actual prejudice against astral mythology disappears, when
a closer knowledge of the starry heavens than we now have
places the student in a position to test these relations in
detail, when it is generally recognised that astronomy and
a knowledge of astrological language are at least as
necessary for a correct understanding of the ancient east
as philology is for critical theology, the time will have
come for the last supports of the present purely historical
conception of the gospels to break down, for the symbolical-
mythical method to triumph completely over the present
historical method, and for the " twilight of the gods " of
critical theology. For the present theologians know what
they are doing when they meet all such research with a dis-
dainful smile, and declare it " unscientific." Their position
in regard to it is much the same as the position of the
early Church in regard to the astrological speculations of
the Gnostics, which were met with the bitterest hostility,
because they betrayed too much of the real origins of
Christianity, and were the most dangerous obstacle to its
representation as historical.

(d) The Name of the Messiah. Meantime what we
have seen will suffice to convince any impartial reader
that, as we said, the figure of the saviour or redeemer in
the gospels is really due to the prophet Isaiah, and that
the character of the suffering servant of God, as described



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 195

by the prophet, was in the mind of the evangelists. 1 His
very name, Christus, the "anointed," can be traced to
Isaiah (Ixi, 1), where the prophet says that the spirit of
the Lord rests on him, because Jahveh has " anointed "
him (see also xlii, 1). It is, however, very significant
that the saviour and servant of God everywhere submits
to him, as if he were speaking the other's words, and
Jahveh, the prophet, and the servant of God combine in
one personality; just as in the gospel of Luke Jesus at
once applies the word of the prophet to himself, and by
its means unfolds the programme of his future work in
his first public appearance in the synagogue. In the
Jewish mind the " anointed " is the Messiah, which is
merely the Hebrew for Christ. It is a fresh proof that
the idea of a suffering Messiah was bound to begin early
to build on the above passages in Isaiah, as soon as the
announcement of the glad tidings was conceived as an
announcement of the servant of God or of the Jahveh
who was identified with him.

Now, in Isaiah vii, 14, the " son of the virgin " is
named Emmanuel, and this is translated " God with us."
That is also the meaning of the name Jesus, since in
Matthew i, 21, the son of Mary receives this name, "that
it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the
prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and
shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name
Emmanuel." In the Septuagint, as we know, Jesus is
the Greek form of the Hebrew Jeschua, which in turn
is the same as Jehoschua or Joshua. Joshua, however,
means something like " Jahveh is salvation," " Jah-Help,"
and corresponds to the German name " Gotthilf." We
read in Matthew : " And she shall bring forth a son, and
thou shalt call his name Jesus ; for he shall save his
people from their sins." The name was fairly common
among the Jews, and in this connection it is equivalent

1 Also compare Matthew xii, 17.



198 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

together the dispersed Jews and lead them into the
coveted land of their " fathers " that is to say, of souls;
to their heavenly home, whence the souls had originally
come, and whither they return after death. He was
therefore regarded as a second Joshua, and it was natural
to give him the same name.

In the Epistle of Barnabas (about the year 115) Joshua
is described as the " forerunner of Jesus in the flesh"
(xii, 20). Justin also stresses the relationship of Jesus
with the Joshua of the Old Testament, and observes that
the latter, who was originally called Hosea (Auses),
received the name of Joshua from Moses, not by chance,
but with a view to Christ, whose predecessor in leadership
he was (Contra Tryph., cxiii). Eusebius traces not only
the name Jesus, but also the name Christ, to Moses,
saying : " The first to recognise the name Christ as one
of especial veneration and repute was Moses. He
appointed a man high-priest of god in the highest possible
sense, and called him Christ. In this way he settled upon
the dignity of the high-priesthood, which in his opinion
far transcends all other human prerogatives, the name
Christ, to add to its honour and splendour. 1 The same
Moses, enlightened by God, also clearly knew the name
Jesus, and honoured it with a great distinction. He gave
the name Jesus, which had never been used before the
time of Moses, to him who, he knew, would after his
death as a type and figure of Jesus have dominion
over all. Thus he gave to his successor, who had not
previously been called Jesus he was called Nave (Nun),
as his parents had named him the name Jesus, and
meant by this to confer on him a distinction greater than
the diadem of a king. He did this because this Jesus,
the son of Nave, was a figure of our redeemer, who alone
would, after Moses and the fulfilment of the symbolical
service of God introduced by him, enter upon the

1 This refers to Lev. iv, 16, where it is said in the Greek translation :
Ho hiereus, ho Christos (the high-priest, the anointed).



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 199

dominion of the true and pure worship of God. Thus
did Moses give to the two men who then stood out from
the whole people in virtue and repute namely, the high-
priest and his successor as leader of the people as their
highest distinction, the name of our saviour Jesus Christ "
(Eccl. Hist., I, 3).

There is, however, in the Old Testament a high-priest
Joshua, who plays a similar part to that of Jesus and of
the successor of Moses ; he also is supposed to gather the
dispersed and imprisoned Jews, and lead them to their old
home, Palestine, as was expected of the Messiah. We
find him in Ezra iii, 2. According to Zechariah iii, the
prophet sees the high-priest Joshua before the angel of
Jahveh, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse
him. But the angel orders the dirty clothes to be
removed from him and be replaced by festive garments,
and promises him the continuance of the priesthood if he
will walk in the ways of God. He calls him " a brand
plucked from the burning," just as the saviour Asclepios
is supposed to have been delivered from the burning
womb of his mother by his father Apollo. In fact,
Joshua himself is represented in the light of a saviour,
when the angel speaks of him and his companions as " fore-
signs of a wonderful future," and refers to his " servant
the branch," who is to come, observing that Jahveh will
wipe away in one day the guilt of the land. It is true
that we at once learn that the " branch" is Zerubbabel,
the leader of the Jews of David's race, in whom the
prophet saw that " branch " which Isaiah (xi, 1) had
referred to the coming Messiah. Nevertheless, in Zech.
vi, 11, the prophet puts a crown on the head of Joshua, as
well as Zerubbabel, and they are placed on a common
throne. But the Greek text of the prophet was altered,
as the great hopes entertained of Zerubbabel were not
fulfilled; the name of Zerubbabel was struck out, the
plural (vi, 12) changed into the singular, and Joshua
alone was represented as crowned, and was raised to the



200 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

rank of the expected Messiah. 1 Thus the two Joshuas,
the successor of Moses and the high-priest, blend into one
person ; the name " Jesus " received a Messianic signifi-
cance, and came to be used for the " branch " of the
prophet Isaiah.

There was, therefore, not merely a pre-Christian Christ,
as Gunkel admits, " a belief in the death and resurrection
of Christ in Judaeo-syncretist circles," 2 but there was also
a pre-Christian Jesus, as Jesus and Christ were only two
different names for the suffering and rising servant of God,
the root of David in Isaiah; and the two might be
combined when one wished to express the high-priesthood
or the Messianic character of Jesus. Jesus was merely
the general name of the saviour and redeemer ; and if on
two critical occasions in the history of Israel a Jesus had
saved the people and led it from abroad into its true home,
it was natural to suppose that on the third occasion also
the work would be done by a Jesus. 8 Now, if his very
name thus becomes ambiguous, what is there left of the
historical Jesus ? 4

(e) The Topography of the Gospels.

I. NAZAEETH.

The historical Jesus is said to have been born in
Nazareth. This, however, is, in turn, anything but

1 Stade, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, 1888, II, p. 126, note; Hiihn, Die
messianisclien Weissagungen des israel. Volkes, 1889, p. 62.

a Zumreligionsgeschichtl. Verstandnis des Neiien Testaments, 1903, p. 82.

3 The possible connection of Jesus with the two Joshuas of the Old
Testament has been discussed by Robertson and by M. Bruckner in his
Der sterbende und auferstehende Gottheiland, although the latter refrains
from drawing any " particular conclusions as to the pre-Christian signifi-
cance of a Joshua- Jesus " (p. 39). These relations, therefore, cannot be so
foolish as they have been represented when we find them discussed by a
theologian in a popular religious work intended for general circulation.
The excellent Hebraist Prof. T. K. Cheyne writes in the Hibbert Journal
(April, 1911), p. 658 : " The direct evidence for the divine name Jeshua or
Joshua in pre-Christian times is both scant and disputable. Yet I incline
(on grounds of my own) to agree with Prof. Drews in his view of the main
point in dispute." Cf . p. 662 : " In my opinion Prof. Drews and his authori-
ties are right in the main."

4 Consider, also, the admission of Zimmern that the name "Jesus"
might "very well be unhistorical," in his Zum Streit um die Christus-
mythe, p. 4.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 201

certain. It may be a matter of chance that neither the
Old Testament nor Josephus nor the Talmud mentions
the place ; and, except in the gospels, the name is
unknown until the fourth century (Eusebius, Jerome,
and Epiphanius). But the statement of Weiss, that it
" cannot be denied that it was firmly believed by the
Christians of the first century that Jesus came from
Nazareth " (p. 21), is wholly unjustified, and is based only
on the unproved assumption that the gospels already
existed then in their present form. On the other hand,
it is entirely inadmissible that the sect of the Nazaraeans,
as the followers of Jesus are first called in Acts (xxiv, 3),
took their name from the supposed birthplace of their
founder, as Nazareth played scarcely any part in the life
of Jesus which was known to them. It is true that
Matthew (ii, 23) says that Jesus received his epithet
" the Nazaraios " from Nazareth, and he appeals to a
passage in the prophets. But no such passage is to be
found, quite apart from the fact that in that case he
ought to be called a " Nazarethene," or else Nazareth, his
supposed birthplace, ought to be called Nazara; this is,
indeed, found in some of the old manuscripts, and has
been affirmed, but merely in order to harmonise it with
the name Nazoraios, Nazaraios, or Nazarene, which is
given to Jesus in the gospels.

The fact is that the name only occurs in the latest
stratum of the gospels (Matthew ii, 23; Luke iv, 16),
whereas the older stratum (Mark vi, 1 ; Matthew xiii, 54)
merely speaks of his " native town." Mark i, 9, is clearly
only an amplification of the older reading of Matthew iii, 13,
where it is simply said that Jesus came "from Galilee";
and Matthew iv, 13, and xxi, 11, are plainly interpolations,
since Nazareth has not previously been mentioned. The
same must be said of Matthew xxvi, 71, where it is
written " Jesus of Nazareth," in accordance with the
earlier expression of the evangelist. On the other hand,
no theologian will deny that the story of the childhood in



200 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

rank of the expected Messiah. 1 Thus the two Joshuas,
the successor of Moses and the high-priest, blend into one
person ; the name " Jesus " received a Messianic signifi-
cance, and came to be used for the " branch " of the
prophet Isaiah.

There was, therefore, not merely a pre-Christian Christ,
as Gunkel admits, " a belief in the death and resurrection
of Christ in Judaeo-syncretist circles," 2 but there was also
a pre-Christian Jesus, as Jesus and Christ were only two
different names for the suffering and rising servant of God,
the root of David in Isaiah; and the two might be
combined when one wished to express the high-priesthood
or the Messianic character of Jesus. Jesus was merely
the general name of the saviour and redeemer ; and if on
two critical occasions in the history of Israel a Jesus had
saved the people and led it from abroad into its true home,
it was natural to suppose that on the third occasion also
the work would be done by a Jesus. 8 Now, if his very
name thus becomes ambiguous, what is there left of the
historical Jesus ? 4

(e) The Topography of the Gospels.

I. NAZAEETH.

The historical Jesus is said to have been born in
Nazareth. This, however, is, in turn, anything but

1 Stade, Qesch. des Volkes Israel, 1888, II, p. 126, note; Hiihn, Die
messianisclien Weissagungen des israel. Volkes, 1889, p. 62.

2 Zumreligionsgeschichtl. Verstandnis des Neuen Testaments, 1903, p. 82.
8 The possible connection of Jesus with the two Joshuas of the Old

Testament has been discussed by Robertson and by M. Bruckner in his
Der sterbende und auferstehende Gottheiland, although the latter refrains
from drawing any " particular conclusions as to the pre-Christian signifi-
cance of a Joshua- Jesus " (p. 39). These relations, therefore, cannot be so
foolish as they have been represented when we find them discussed by a
theologian in a popular religious work intended for general circulation.
The excellent Hebraist Prof. T. K. Cheyne writes in the Hibbert Journal
(April, 1911), p. 658 : " The direct evidence for the divine name Jeshua or
Joshua in pre-Christian times is both scant and disputable. Yet I incline
(on grounds of my own) to agree with Prof. Drews in his view of the main
point in dispute." Of. p. 662 : " In my opinion Prof. Drews and his authori-
ties are right in the main."

4 Consider, also, the admission of Zimmern that the name "Jesus"
might "very well be unhistorical," in his Zum Streit urn die Christus-
mythe, p. 4.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 201

certain. It may be a matter of chance that neither the
Old Testament nor Josephus nor the Talmud mentions
the place ; and, except in the gospels, the name is
unknown until the fourth century (Eusebius, Jerome,
and Epiphanius). But the statement of Weiss, that it
" cannot be denied that it was firmly believed by the
Christians of the first century that Jesus came from
Nazareth " (p. 21), is wholly unjustified, and is based only
on the unproved assumption that the gospels already
existed then in their present form. On the other hand,
it is entirely inadmissible that the sect of the Nazaraeans,
as the followers of Jesus are first called in Acts (xxiv, 3),
took their name from the supposed birthplace of their
founder, as Nazareth played scarcely any part in the life
of Jesus which was known to them. It is true that
Matthew (ii, 23) says that Jesus received his epithet
" the Nazaraios " from Nazareth, and he appeals to a
passage in the prophets. But no such passage is to be
found, quite apart from the fact that in that case he
ought to be called a " Nazarethene," or else Nazareth, his
supposed birthplace, ought to be called Nazara; this is,
indeed, found in some of the old manuscripts, and has
been affirmed, but merely in order to harmonise it with
the name Nazoraios, Nazaraios, or Nazarene, which is
given to Jesus in the gospels.

The fact is that the name only occurs in the latest
stratum of the gospels (Matthew ii, 23; Luke iv, 16),
whereas the older stratum (Mark vi, 1 ; Matthew xiii, 54)
merely speaks of his " native town." Mark i, 9, is clearly
only an amplification of the older reading of Matthew iii, 13,
where it is simply said that Jesus came "from Galilee";
and Matthew iv, 13, and xxi, 11, are plainly interpolations,
since Nazareth has not previously been mentioned. The
same must be said of Matthew xxvi, 71, where it is
written " Jesus of Nazareth," in accordance with the
earlier expression of the evangelist. On the other hand,
no theologian will deny that the story of the childhood in



202 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

Luke is of late date. In Mark Jesus is called " the
Nazarene " in i, 24 ; x, 47 ; xiv, 67 ; and xvi, 6, without
any statement that this indicates the place of his origin.
It may, therefore, just as well have a different meaning,
and may be a sect-name.

This is the view of William B. Smith. In his opinion
the name can be traced to the ancient root N-Z-B, which
means something like watcher, protector, guardian, saviour.
Hence Jesus the Nazoraean or Nazarene was Jesus the
Protector, just as Jahveh, 1 or the archangel Michael, the
" angel-prince," who often takes the place of the Messiah,
is known as the " protector of Israel," its spokesman with
God, and its deliverer from all its cares (Daniel xix,
13, and xii, 1 ; Gen. xlviii, 16) ; the rabbinical Metatron
also plays this part of protector and supporter of the
Jewish people, and is regarded as the " angel of redemp-
tion," especially of the damned suffering in hell. The
followers of Jesus will, therefore, have called themselves
Nazoraeans because they primarily conceived the expected
Messiah in the sense of a Michael or Metatron, a
protector ; that is, at all events, more probable than that
they took their name from the place Nazareth, with which
they had no close connection. 2 It is not at all impossible

1 Psalm 121. The fact that the protector is here called schomer, not
nozer, has nothing to do with the matter, any more than the fact that the
Palestinians of the time about the birth of Christ did not use the Hebrew
noaarfor"the protector," but the Aramaic ne' tar: it is well known that
the language of a sect tends to preserve antique words, and we are
concerned here, not with the word itself, but its meaning.

2 Smith, The Pre-Christian Jesus, 1906. Also see his article on " The
Real Ancestry of Jesus " in the Open Court, January, 1910, p. 12, and the
article " The Nazarene," by Dr. P. Carus, the editor, in the same number
(p. 26). Differently from the German theologians, who cannot speak
disdainfully enough of Smith's hypotheses, on philological grounds,
Carus admits the possibility of that origin of the name, and regards the
existence of a place called Nazareth at the time of Jesus as improbable.
Indeed, in his book The Pleroma : An Essay on the Origins of Christianity
(1910), he says that it is absolutely impossible that the Nazarene could
mean the man from Nazareth (p. 46). Moreover, Schmiedel has recently
maintained against Weinel in the Protestantenblatt, 1910, Nr. 17, p. 438,
that Smith's hypothesis is philologically admissible. Hence the charge of
" gross ignorance of the Semitic languages " which Weinel brings against
Smith is quite unjustified.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 203

that the place Nazareth took its name from the sect of
the Nazaraeans, instead of the reverse, as is admitted by
so distinguished a scholar as W. Nestle. 1 According to
the Assyriologist Haupt (of Baltimore), Nazareth was a
new name for the older Hethlon (Ezech. xlvii, 15), or
Hittalon or Hinnathon, which means " protection," and
has reference to the protected position of Nazareth among
the hills. In that case it would be natural for the
evangelist to choose a place called " protection " as the
birthplace of the " protector."

According to Mark x, 47, the blind Bartimeus, hearing
that " Jesus the Nazarene " is passing by, calls out to
him, " Jesus, thou son of David." It is possible that we
have here another indication of the original meaning of
the name. In Isaiah nazar is the Hebrew word for the
" branch," called zemah in Zechariah ; and he is called
in Isaiah " a rod from the stem of Jesse " that is to say,
a " son (descendant) of David." May it not be that the
expression Nazarsean or Nazarene also contains an
allusion to the " branch," as Robertson suggests ? 2 If the
figure of Jesus, and even his name, as we have seen, are
derived from Isaiah, it is natural to assume that his
secondary name " the Nazarsean " may also be traced to
the same source, and that in the name of his sect there
is a relation to the prophet's branch of David. " He
grew up as a tender plant, a nazar" (Isaiah liii, 2);
from this a later age has made him a " Nazarene " and
put his birth at Nazareth. 3 This would also afford a

1 Sildwestdeutsche Schulblatter , 1910, Heft 4 and 5, p. 163. M.
Bruckner also says, in regard to Smith's hypothesis : "His proof that the
epithet ' Nazarsean ' applied to Jesus in Matthew ii, 23, cannot have
been derived from Nazareth, but was the name of a pre-Christian Jewish
sect, especially deserves attention" (p. 47). In Hugo Winckler we read :
" From the word neqer comes the name of the religion of those who believe
in the ' saviour ' the Nazarene-Christians or Nazaraeans. Nazareth as
the home of Jesus is merely a confirmation of his character as saviour for
the symbolising tendency" (Ex oriente lux, Band ii, 1906, p. 59, note).
Cf. also Winckler, Die babylonische Oeisteskultur (1907), p. 147.

2 Cf. also Alfred Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alien
Orients, 2 Aufl., 1906, pp. 353, 577.

3 Possibly nazar also has an astral significance, as the Hyades in



204 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

simple explanation of the curious reference in Matthew
ii, 23, to some unknown passage in the prophets, and we
need not suppose that Nazareth only became the name
of a place at a later date ; it may have existed already,
and have been chosen as the birthplace of Jesus because
of its connection with nazar.

We are disposed to believe that the sect of the
Nazoraeans was originally the same as the Nasiraeans,
the "initiated" or "holy," who were distinguished from
the rest of the Jews by their abstinence from oil and
wine and the use of the razor, and by the rigour of their
lives ; and that the Nazoraeans were those Nasiraeans who
conceived the expected Messiah in the sense of the nazar
of Isaiah. In Lamentations (iv, 7) the " pure " are called
" Nazarites " [Nazaraeans] , and Josephus writes Nazaraios
in Antiquities iv, 4, 4, but Naziraios in xix, 6, 1.

It is admitted that the origin of Jesus from Nazareth
is in contradiction to the belief that the Messiah was to
be born in Bethlehem as a shoot from David. But it is
not a contradiction between the Messianic dogma and a
" hard fact of history," as Weiss says (p. 22) ; it is due
simply to the fact that the man of the race of David is
called by the prophet a " branch " (nazar) ; and, when
men began to make an historical person of Jesus, they
found the agreement of the word with Nazareth a very
welcome opportunity to conceal the real origin of Jesus
in Isaiah. The contradiction gave no more trouble to
the early Christians than the circumstance that possibly
there was no such place as Nazareth at the time of Jesus.
There was also probably no such place as Capernaum,
Emmaus, Bethesda, Nain, Gethsemane, or Golgotha.
And if our opponents say that, if that were so, the story
of Jesus would have betrayed its character as fiction, and
a Jew would have seen the defect at once, we may remind
them that the massacre of the children at Bethlehem, the

Taurus have the form of a branch ; and Orion, in which we have already
suspected the Baptist, seems to bring the " twig " (Fuhrmann).



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 205

wandering about of people to be included in the census,
the astronomically impossible eclipse of the sun, which
is supposed to have lasted three hours, at the death of
Jesus, and many other details, did not give the evangelists
the least concern. Even to-day the pious reader of the
Bible is not disquieted by these things. Nor was there
any fear of Jewish objection to the derivation of Jesus
from Nazareth, because the process of the historicisation
of the Christ-myth was only completed at a time when
no historical evidence whatever of the real origin of Jesus
could be adduced, since, as we have seen, the oldest
gospel uses the name Nazarsean probably not to indicate
the birthplace of Jesus, but as a sect-name with reference
to the " protector " or " saviour " and the nazar of Isaiah. 1

II. JERUSALEM.

So far, then, from the name Nazaraean, or Nazoraean,
or Nazarene, being derived from the town of Nazareth, we
must say that this is the least probable of all possible
suggestions. The names of places in the gospels, in fact,
afford no evidence whatever of the historicity of Jesus,
since the whole topography of the life of Jesus is in its
main lines borrowed from Isaiah and other prophets. So
it was inevitable that, as soon as the process began to be
regarded from the historical point of view, the great
drama of the suffering and death of the servant of God
and the associated redemption of mankind should be
located in Jerusalem. As Luke says (xiii, 33 see also
Psalm cxvi, 14-19) : " It cannot be that a prophet perish
out of Jerusalem." It is the unvarying theme of the
prophets that Jerusalem will be glorified by Jahveh, and
become the centre of the world's history (Isaiah Ixii, 7).
In the prophet Zechariah we read of the inhabitants of
the city :

And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced,

1 Compare Robertson, Christianity a-nd Mytliology, p. 311, and P. van
Dyk's Erit. Kommentar zu den Evangelien, pp. 28 and 152.



206 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his
only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is
in bitterness for his firstborn.

In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jeru-
salem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of
Megiddon.

And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the
family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart
(xii, 10-12).

On Jerusalem the eyes of the whole nation are bent.
There will their desire be consummated. From there
will salvation spread over the earth, and judgment be
meted out to men (Isaiah ii).

" Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried
stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation " (Isaiah
xxviii, 16). "And he shall be for a sanctuary, for a
stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the
houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabi-
tants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall
stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be
taken " (Isaiah viii, 14, 15 see also xxviii, 13). So the
evangelist makes Jesus say, with reference to the prophet :
" The stone which the builders rejected, the same is

become the head of the corner [Psalm cxviii, 22]

Therefore I say unto you : The kingdom of God shall
be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth
the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this
stone shall be broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall,
it will grind him to powder" (Matthew xxi, 42-44).
In Isaiah the prophet speaks in the same vein to those
who held Jahveh holy, his "disciples": "Behold, I and
the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs
and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, which
dwelleth in mount Zion " (viii, 18). " He that is left in
Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called
holy, even every one that is written among the living in
Jerusalem" (iv, 3). So the Tarsic tent-maker Paul calls
the Christians in Jerusalem "the saints"; and we are



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 207

reminded of Acts, of the Pentecostal gathering, and the
first Christian propaganda, when it is written :

As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort
you ; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem

It shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues ;
and they shall come, and see my glory.

And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those
that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish [!] , Pul,

and Lud to the isles afar off, that have not heard my

fame, neither have seen my glory ; and they shall declare
my glory among the Gentiles.

And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering

unto the Lord to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith

the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a
clean vessel into the house of the Lord.

And I will also take of them for priests (Isaiah Ixvi,
13-21).

In what does this comfort consist that Jahveh promises
to his people ? He himself will come as the king of
Israel, and lead his own towards Jerusalem : " How
beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that
bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that
bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation ;
that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth"! (Isaiah lii, 7
compare xii, 6). "Go through, go through the gates;
prepare ye the way of the people ; cast up, cast up the

highway; gather out the stones Say ye to the

daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh ; behold,
his reward is with him, and his work before him. And
they shall call them, The holy people, The redeemed of
the Lord ; and thou shalt be called, Sought out, A city
not forsaken " (Isaiah Ixii, 10 see also xxvi, 2). The
prophet refers the words immediately to Jahveh. But
we have already seen how Jahveh is constantly identified
with the figure of the servant of God and redeemer.
How easily might the story of the entry into Jerusalem
develop from these passages !

" Eejoice greatly, daughter of Zion ; shout, daughter
of Jerusalem," says the prophet Zechariah (ix, 9), in



208 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

similar words to those of Isaiah: "Behold, thy king
cometh unto thee : he is just, and having salvation ; lowly
and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass."
Hence, in Matthew xxi, 2, Jesus bids the disciples bring
him the ass and its foal that they shall find, the evangelist
having in mind also the words of Genesis xlix, 11 :
" Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto
the choice vine." And Mark (xi, 2) adds to the words of
Jesus that no man had yet ridden the ass, because it is
said in Numbers (xix, 2) that a faultless cow " upon which
never came yoke " shall be brought to the priest Eleazar. 1
The hosanna of the people and their cry, " Blessed is
he that cometh in the name of the Lord " (Matthew
xxi, 9), are taken from the 118th Psalm: " Save now, I
beseech thee, Lord [" Save now " is the meaning of the
Hebrew hoschia-na, which the evangelist seems wrongly
to have taken to be a cry of joy !] : Blessed is he that
cometh in the name of the Lord " (26). The words that
Jesus is supposed to have said about his followers on
entering into Jerusalem, "If these should hold their
peace, the stones would immediately cry out " (Luke
xix, 40), are based on the prophet Habakkuk : " For the
stone shall cry out of the wall " (ii, 11). Even the name
" Gethsemane," which is nowhere else found as the name
of a place, is, as Smith observes, inspired by Isaiah. The
name means "oil-press," or "olive-press." It seems to
refer to Isaiah Ixiii, 2, where it is said of Jahveh :
" Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy
garments like him that treadeth in the press [Hebrew
gath~\ ? " "I have trodden the press alone," says Jahveh ;
" and of the people there was none with me ; for I will
tread them in mine anger and trample them in my fury ;
and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and
I will stain all my raiment. For the day of vengeance is
in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come.

1 Compare Dent, xxi, 3.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 209

And I looked, and there was none to help ; and I
wondered that there was none to uphold ; therefore mine
own arm brought salvation unto me." Here we have a
clear relation to the abandonment of Jesus on Gethsemane
and his comforting by an angel (Luke xxii, 43), and the
reference to the blood (Luke xxii, 44) accords. Jahveh's
vengeance on the Gentiles is transformed in the gospels
into the contrary act of the self-oblation of Jesus ; and
whereas in Isaiah it is the wine of anger and vengeance
that flows from the press, here it is the oil of healing
and salvation that pours from the press (gath) over the
peoples.

Like Gethsemane, Golgotha, " the place of skulls," is
another place that we cannot verify. It is possible that
the name is connected with the pillars (golgoi) of the
western-Asiatic mother of the gods, and points to an
ancient Jebusitic centre of the cult of Adonis under the
name Golgos. But possibly there is an astral element,
seeing that Matthew (xxvii, 33) makes the word mean
" place of skulls " (from the Hebrew gulguleth, the skull),
and suggests the skull or beaker (skull as a drinking
vessel) which is found under the vernal cross in the
heavens. 1

III. GALILEE.

According to the gospels, the Saviour does not at first
live in the holy city. Whence did he come ? Again we
find the answer in Isaiah : "I have raised up one from
the north" (xli, 25). In the north is Galilee, of which
it is said in the prophet : "At the first he lightly afflicted
the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and after-
ward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the
sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The
people that walked in darkness have seen a great light ;
they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon



1 Niemojewski, p. 420. Reflect on the familiar pictures of a cup or
skull at the foot of the crucifix.

P



210 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

them hath the light shined " (Isaiah ix, 1-2). That, in
point of fact, Galilee was generally regarded as the land
from which the Messiah would come is confirmed by
the Talmud, which says that, as the Galileans were the
first to be driven into exile, they should be the first to
receive consolation, in harmony with the law of com-
pensation which governs all the divine plans. 1 Hence
the following words of the prophet might be referred to
the Galileans and their rejoicing : " They joy before thee
according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice

when they divide the spoil For unto us a child is

born, unto us a son is given ; and the government shall
be upon his shoulder : and his name shall be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting
Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his
government and peace there shall be no end, upon the
throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and
to establish it with judgment and with justice from
henceforth even for ever " (Isaiah ix, 3, 6, 7).

Hence it is the word of the prophet, not a " hard fact
of history," that demands the birth of the Saviour in
Galilee. Then Nazareth, with its relation to nazar,
occurred at once as the proper birthplace of Jesus, as
soon as men began to conceive the episode historically.

Astral considerations may have co-operated. Galilee,
from galil circle, connects with the zodiacal circle
which the sun traverses; even in the prophet the
Saviour is identified with the sun. The " people that
walk in darkness " and that " dwell in the land of the
shadow " might easily be identified with the " familiar
spirits" of whom Isaiah speaks (viii, 19), in whom
" there is no light," who " pass through" the land " hardly
bestead and hungry ; and it shall come to pass, that
when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves
and curse their king and their God, and look upward;

1 Sohar on Exodus, quoted by Gfrorer, Das Jahrhundert des Heils,
1838, ii, p. 231.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 211

and they shall look unto the earth, and behold trouble
and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be
driven to darkness." They suggest the souls in the
nether world, the stars in their course below the celestial
equator, which "rejoice" at the birth of the "great
light " at the winter solstice and are led to their time of
brilliancy. On this view Galilee of the Gentiles (Galil-
ha-goim) coincides with the lower half, the " water-
region," of the zodiac, in which are found the aquatic
signs of the southern fish, Aquarius, the Fishes, the
Whale, and Eridanus. 1 We thus understand why " Galilee,
the way to the sea, the land by the Jordan," plays so
great a part in the story of Jesus ; it was bound to be
recognised in a Messianic age. Hence this " watery
region " of the sky is the chief theatre of the Saviour's
life ; hence in the gospels the " Sea of Galilee," the Sea
of Genesareth, and the many names of places in the
district. For the Greeks and Eomans they had no
ulterior significance, and were mere names, but much
like the names of places in Homer or Vergil, or the
description of the voyage of the Argonaut by Apollonius
of Khodes. It is incredible that von Soden should seek
a proof of the historicity of the gospel narrative in these
names. 2



1 In truth, Zebulun, according to Genesis xlix, relates to the sign of the
zodiac Capricorn and Naphtali to Aries, both of which belong to the water-
region of the zodiac, the dark part of the year. (Cf . A. Jeremias, Das Alte
Testament im Lichte des alien Orients, p. 398.) According to M. Miiller,
galil means, in a derivative from the Coptic, the "water-wheel." A
water-wheel might (according to Fuhrmann) be traced in the constel-
lation Orion, the spokes being represented by the four chief stars and
the axis by the stars of the belt, the wheel being set in motion by the
falling "water" of the Milky Way. In so far as Orion is the hanging
figure of the 22nd Psalm, we may note that the latter is a galil (Galilean),
and as the constellation Orion is, as we saw, astrally related to the nazar
(the Hyades), the birth of the Saviour in Nazareth might be deduced
from this. See Niemojewski, pp. 161 and 193.

2 Work quoted, p. 21. Herr von Soden's attempt to prove the
historicity of Jesus from the " smell of the soil of Palestine " seems to me
much the same as if one were to conclude that Tell was historical because
of the many place-names in the legend. A Swiss hotel-keeper might do
that, but a student of history !



212 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

We have already seen that the Jordan has an astral
significance in the gospels, and corresponds to the
celestial Eridanus (Egyptian, iero or iera=the river) or
to the Milky Way. It may be the same with other
supposed names of places. In regard to the most
important of them all, Capernaum, Steudel has called
attention to Zech. xiii, 1, where it is said : "In that day
there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David
and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for
uncleanness," and reminds us that in his Jewish War
(iii, 10, 8) Josephus mentions a "very strong" and
fertilising spring "which is called Capharnaum by the
inhabitants of the district." When we read in Josephus
the description of the fish-abounding Sea of Genesareth
and the country about it, with its beauty and charm, its
palms, nuts, figs, olives, and fruit-trees of all kinds, we
feel that no other "knowledge of the locality" was
needed in order to " invent " the whole regional back-
ground of the life of Jesus with the aid of these
indications.

(/) The Chronology of the Gospels. Not only is the
topography of the gospels clearly based on Isaiah, but, as
we have already seen, the chronological frame of the
events described in them presents very serious difficulties.
Many names of supposed historical persons in the gospels
seem to have been originally of an astral character, and
to have been later pressed into the historical scheme ;
such are Herod, the high-priests Annas and Caiaphas,
and Pilate. There is hardly anything related about them
that agrees with the facts known to us in other ways, but
it agrees very well with astral features and constellations. 1

1 Niemojewski, pp. 367, 370. The high-priest Annas, who is supposed
to have held office with Caiaphas, is identical in name with the prophetess
Anna (Sib-Zi-Anna of the Babylonians, Anna Perenna of the Romans),
and according to Niemojewski (p. 367) corresponds to the star 7 in
Gemini, but according to Fuhrmann to the constellation Cassiopeia
which dwells " in the temple," or at the highest point of the Milky
Way. Caiaphas is clearly, in that case, the constellation Cepheus, near
Cassiopeia ; and the two names were subsequently applied to the Jewish



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 213

The conception of the just one as "hanging" and the
symbolic transformation of the martyr's stake into the
mystic form of the cross as a sign of fire and life, corre-
sponding to the constellation Orion, suggested the idea of
making the servant of God and life-bringer, who dies on
the cross, be put to death by the Eomans, not the Jews,
as the Jews killed the blasphemer by stoning. This
settled the period for the story of Jesus. It can also be
imagined that the figure of Augustus had some influence
on this ; it would be natural to oppose to the Roman lord
of the world, whose reign opened a new era of history and
who was greeted as saviour and redeemer of the world,
the true saviour in the person of Jesus, born in his time. 1
Then there was, perhaps, a more general reason for
fixing the time of the death of Jesus. According to
Luke's gospel, Jesus must have died in the year 29.
As he died in the same year as John, and John, according
to the indications in Josephus, died shortly before the
year 36, Keim 2 and others have assigned the death of the
saviour to that year. Keim recalls the general feeling of
strain in the Roman Empire in the year 34, and with
this he connects the appearance of the Baptist. At Rome
the death of Tiberius was expected daily. The Parthians
threatened from the east, and their prince Artabanes had
wrested Armenia from the Romans and turned his atten-
tion to Syria. About the same time great events were
announced in Egypt, which seemed to indicate the opening
of a new epoch. In the year 34 it was believed that the
fabulous phoenix, which came every five hundred years to
Heliopolis to burn itself and rise again rejuvenated, had
been seen. The phoenix was connected with the Messianic

high-priests on account of the similarity. The Talmud enumerates the
names of the principal men who directed the sanhedrim from Antigonas
(B.C. 250) until the destruction of the temple ; a Caiaphas is not to be
found among the number. He was high priest for eighteen years ; but
this also is not mentioned in the Talmud, although it gives the names of
all who have been high priests for ten years or more.

1 Compare Del Mar, The Worship of Augustus CcBsar.

a Geschichte Jesu, 1873.



214 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

expectation of the Jews. Just as the marvellous bird
destroyed itself at the close of each world-epoch and re-
created itself, so the Messiah was expected as the creator
of a new world. 1 The whole world was discussing the
extraordinary event at the time, and it may have con-
tributed to the locating at that period of the death of the
saviour and his glorious resurrection from the flames of
the old world.

Further, the Hindoo Krishna, who, as saviour, con-
queror of dragons, and " crucified," is in many respects
as like Jesus as one egg is like another, was said to have
predicted at his death that the fourth world -period,
Kaliyuga, the iron-age, would commence thirty-six years
afterwards, and men would become wicked and miserable.
For the Jews the year 70, in which Jerusalem was taken
and the temple, the national sanctuary and centre of the
faith, destroyed, was the turning-point in the history of
the world. It was the year of the great judgment on the
Jews, as Isaiah had predicted, the coming of which the
saviour was supposed to forecast. Beckoning backwards,
this again gives the year 34 as that of the death of Jesus,
and agrees with the idea that the gospels reached their
present form in the first quarter of the second century, in
the terrible period when the Jews and Christians began
to separate, as Lublinski has so vividly shown. 2

1 We may recall that Joseph, who was believed to have been sold into
Arabia, gone from there to Egypt, and married the daughter of the priest
at On (Heliopolis), bore in Egypt the name Zaphnat Phanech (" biding of
the phoenix " that is to say, of the sun or year-god in the five Epago-
mena or intercalary days during which the old year passes into the new).
Joseph was a kind of Adonis or Tammuz ; he was a foretype of the Messiah,
and is called even in Apollodorus (iii, 14, 4) a" son of the Phoenix," just
as Joshua is called a son of the dove (Semiramis-Mirjam), and Asclepios
a son of the crow, from whose burning womb he was delivered. See
Gruppe, Griech. Mythologie, ii, p. 144, where it is suggested that the myth
of the birth of Asclepios may be a version of the legend of the phoenix.
Jesus also seems originally to have had a dove for mother, as the baptism
in the Jordan was, according to some, the act of birth of the saviour ; and
the Holy Ghost, who descended on him in fire and flame in the form of a
dove, was represented in certain Gnostic sects as " the mother of Jesus "
(The Christ-Myth).

2 Compare A. Kniepf, Zehn Thesen zur natttrlichen Welt- und Lebens-



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 215

Whether this is so or not, we have no certain date of
the death of the saviour, and every attempt to reconcile
the contradictory indications is futile. 1 These facts, how-
ever, enable us to suspect why, when the myth of the
servant of God began to assume historical form, his death
was fixed about the year 30 of our era. The life of Jesus
may for a long time have been told unhistorically as far
as any definite period of time is concerned ; possibly it was
originally astral, as Niemojewski believes. We can only
repeat that from the chronological point of view also there
is no need whatever to take the supposed historical data of
the gospels seriously. That is unfortunate for those who
represent them as history, as they for the most part derive
their material from the gospels alone. It is quite time
to listen to the learned Jews (Graetz, Joel, Chwolson,
Lippe, Lublinski) who say that in point of fact it is
the conditions of the second, not the first, century
that have provided the framework of the gospel story
in detail. The Gnostic sects, from which Christianity
originated, knew at first only an astral Jesus, whose
mythic "history" was composed of passages from the
prophets, Isaiah, the twenty-second Psalm, and Wisdom,
In this they were not far removed from the Pharisees,
who, being " believers in fate," as we know from Josephus
and the Talmud, also favoured astrological ideas. 2 It was
only after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the

anschauung, 1903, p. 34. Notice also the story of Jesus, the son of Ananus,
told by Josephus, which happened shortly before the destruction of Jerusa-
lem (see further below), and may also be a reason for putting the death of
the evangelical Jesus about that time.

1 This applies also to the attempt to determine the date of the cruci-
fixion that is made from time to time on astronomical grounds. To all
such speculations we may say that eclipses, earthquakes, and other natural
catastrophes are part of the standing requisites in descriptions of the birth
and death of saviours, such as Krishna, Buddha, Dionysos, etc. Even at
Caesar's birth a remarkable star is supposed to have announced the event,
and an earthquake is said to have taken place at his death. Much
the same is related about the birth and death of Augustus, whose life,
moreover, is made to resemble that of the divine saviour in many respects
by contemporary writers. See Alex, del Mar, pp. 92, 99, 124, 162, and 169.

2 Cf. E. Bischof, Babylonisch-Astraks im Weltbilde des Talmud imMid-
rasch, 1907.



216 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

Pharisees abandoned these speculations and adhered
strictly to the law indeed, expressly combated the
fancies of astral mythology and when the new faith
spread to wider circles which did not understand the
astral meaning of the Jesus-myth and regarded the myth
as a real history, that the knowledge of the astral features
was gradually lost, and people began to seek standing-
ground for the story of Jesus in the real course of events.

The Gnostics of the second century, however, still held
in principle the astral character of the story of the saviour,
and possibly we have an echo of the increasing struggle
against the narrowness and one-sidedness of the Pharisaic
view by those who were " initiated " into the " mysteries "
of the astral doctrine in the words of Jesus to the scribes :
" Woe unto you, lawyers, for ye have taken away the
key of knowledge ; ye entered not in yourselves, and
them that were entering in ye hindered" (Luke xi, 52).

(g) The Pre-Christian Jesus. We saw that there was
a pre-Christian Christ as well as a pre-Christian Jesus.
In both cases Isaiah furnished the immediate occasion for
the figure. There was a belief in the suffering and the
death of the "servant of God," his resurrection and
exaltation by God, and the spiritual and corporal redemp-
tion of men by this means, as the Jews expected of their
Messiah. The servant of God, it is true, was not himself,
in his human lowliness and poverty, to be the Messiah,
for with the Messiah was associated the idea of a worldly
conqueror triumphing over the enemies of Israel, restoring
the power of David, a powerful lord of life and death,
descending from heaven to judge sinners, to found a new
heaven and new earth, and inaugurating a golden age for
his followers (Isaiah Ixv). But his appearance on earth
was to be the condition for the coming of the Messiah,
and his death was to be the great expiation for the guilt
of men, without which the Jews could not share the glory
of the Messianic kingdom (Isaiah Iviii). The figure of
the servant of God, moreover, sometimes blended with



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 217

that of Jahveh himself, and it was he who was to hold
the last judgment and lead his people into the coveted
kingdom (Isaiah xiii, 7 ; xxv, xxvi, xxxi, etc.) ; at other
times he seemed to be a special being, beside or below
Jahveh, the " son of God," or the representative of " the
just," who, according to Plato and Wisdom, endure much
from their enemies on earth, but are raised to divine
heights after death and attain eternal life. It was a view
closely akin to the belief, among non-Jewish peoples, in
a suffering, dying, and rising saviour-god, celebrated in
secret cults and represented by various sects. It is
natural to suspect that the idea of the Messiah's mission
derived from Isaiah was a secret doctrine among the
Jews, and had its chief representatives in peculiarly
mystic circles or sects apart from the official Jewish
religion.

Possibly the Nazoraeans or Nazaraeans, as Epiphanius
calls the first Christians, were such a sect, as he observes
that they existed before Christ, and knew nothing of
Christ that is to say, of an historical man of that name
(Hceres, xviii, 29). It is true that he only affirms this of
the Nasaraeans, a Jewish sect that lived east of the
Jordan, practised circumcision, observed the Sabbath and
the Jewish festivals, but rejected animal food and sacri-
fices, and regarded the Pentateuch as a forgery, 1 and
takes the greatest care to distinguish between the two
sects, the Nazoraeans and the Nasaraeans. But it is not
easy to believe that they were really distinct, and the
confusion of his text at the relevant passage is due, Smith
suspects (The Pre-Christian Jesus), merely to his attempt
to obscure the real situation.

According to Epiphanius, the Nazoraeans were closely
related to the Jessaeans ; indeed, the name is said to have

1 According to Nilus, a younger contemporary of Epiphanius (x, 430),
they were not Christians (in the current sense), but a sort of Rechabites,
living in tents, avoiding wine and other luxuries, and living an extremely
simple life. This would agree with our idea of a coalescence of the
Nazarseans and Nasirseans.



218 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

been originally a name of the Nazoraeans. Epiphanius
leaves it open whether they took their name from Jesus
or from Jesse (Isai), father of David and ancestor of the
Messiah. Either is possible, since the Hebrew name
Joshua can be rendered either Jesus or Jessus in Greek,
as is seen in the relation of Maschiach and Messiah.
Possibly, however, we have in their name (Jessaeans =
Jesaiseans [Jessaioi]) an echo of the name of the prophet
to whom they owed their particular conception of the
suffering Messiah. The name Isaiah is, moreover, closely
connected with the name Jesus, Jehoschua, or Joshua, and
means "Jahveh salvation." "God-salvation" would, of
course, be just as fitting a name for the " saviour-god " as
" God-Help."

Further, the Jessaeans or Jessenes must have been
closely connected with the Essaeans or Essenians who,
like the Therapeuts of Egypt, cultivated a mystic esoteric
doctrine, and cured disease and expelled devils by the
magic of names. The " servant of God " in Isaiah was
also a physician of the soul, a healer, and an expeller of
demons. When, therefore, Epiphanius observes that the
name Jesus means in Hebrew curator or therapeutes
(healer or physician), it is not at all improbable that the
Essaeans worshipped their god under the name Jesus or
Joshua.

In the gospels (Mark ix, 39; Luke ix, 49; x, 17), in
Acts (iii, 16), and in the Epistle of James (v, 14), we read
that the name Jesus had a miraculous power, and the
Talmud also says that about the end of the first century
disease was healed in the name of Jesus. According to
Weiss, this is " one of the strongest proofs that he was
known to Jews and Gentiles as a successful exorcist "
(p. 19) ; and Weinel charges Smith with " a poor know-
ledge of the subject," because he concludes from this that
the name Jesus must from the first have been the name
of a god. " For," he sagely informs us, " devils were
expelled in the name of Solomon, for instance, as well as



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 219

in the name of God or of a god. 1 In this way they
secured the mysterious power which, according to the
ideas of the age, Solomon or Jesus possessed the latter
in virtue of the cures which he had actually accom-
plished " (p. 94). Indeed! Unfortunately, in the passage
quoted from Josephus it is not said at all that the Jewish
magician Eleazar exorcised demons " in the name of
Solomon," but merely that he exorcised them and at the
same time "remembered" the name of Solomon and
pronounced the magical formulae composed by him.
From this it does not follow at all that it was the
name of Solomon, and not the name of some divine
being, that worked the miracles. Is Solomon supposed
to have expelled demons in his own name ? That would
be too much like Zeus in Offenbach's operetta Orpheus in
the Underworld, who swears "by me"! That was not
even done by Jesus, who drove out devils in the name of
the Holy Ghost (Matthew xii, 28). We read in Justin,
moreover, that the Joshua of the Old Testament was only
made capable of performing miracles when Moses changed
his name from Hosea into that of the Christian saviour
(Numbers xiii, 16) . 2 Hence, miracles were not done in
the name of Jesus because the historical Jesus had been
" a successful exorcist," but the name itself was supposed
to have the power of expelling demons and compelling
nature, quite independently, it seems, of the miracles of
the " historical " Jesus.

In this connection there seems to be more probability
in the suggestion of Smith that the words of the magic-
papyrus published by Wessely, "I adjure thee by the
God of the Hebrews, Jesus," points to a pre-Christian
use of the name Jesus in exorcisms. Weiss, it is true,
says that the papyrus was " certainly " written by a
pagan " who was unable to distinguish between Jews and
Christians" (p. 19). Deissman also believes that the

1 Josephus, Antiq., viii, 2, 57. 2 See Justin, 113, 4.



220 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

name was subsequently interpolated by a pagan, since
neither a Christian nor a Jew would call Jesus the God
of the Hebrews. But what if Jesus was originally the
name of a god ? What if there were a pre-Christian
Judaeo-Gnostic Jesus-god ? Is it possible that Deissman
has himself fallen here into the error of the " destroyers
of names " whom he so much despises those who think
" nothing genuine that is not trivial," and who strike out
" a great name " wherever they find it ? The copyist
has added " the cathari" (i.e., " the pure ") to the words
quoted. No less a scholar than Albrecht Dieterich has
declared that the " pure " are identical with the Essenes
or Therapeuts, and pointed out that the papyrus betrays
no Christian influence whatever, but belongs to Judaeo-
Hellenistic circles, 1 and, if this is so, the Essenes must
have recognised a Jesus-god. What does Weinel, who
thinks it " childish " to identify " the pure " with the
Essenes, say to this ? He says flatly : " Everybody
knows that we have Christian influence here ; that it is
the Christian Jesus who is meant, and he is mistakenly
represented as a God of the Hebrews" (p. 103). The
truth is that theologians have hitherto thought they had
proved this, because they did not consider any alternative
to their own view.

Then there is the Naassene hymn, which Hippolytus
has preserved for us, in which the name Jesus occurs.
He " prays his father " to send him down to bring
redemption to those who walk in darkness. " In posses-
sion of the seal will I go down : all aeons will I traverse :
all mysteries will I solve, the forms of the gods will
I reveal, and what is hidden of the holy way [gnosis]
will I make plain." Theologians say, in opposition to
Smith, that this hymn is post-Christian. But as there
were Naassenes or Ophites before the appearance of
Christianity, as Mosheim (Geschichte der Schlangen-

1 Abraxas, 1891, p. 143 ; see also his Mithrasliturgie, 1903, pp. 27 and 44.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 221

bruder) and Baur (Die christliche Gnosis, 1835, pp. 37,
52, and 194) supposed, and Honig has completely proved
(Die Ophiten, 1889), it is merely begging the question to
say that in the case of this psalm we have " Christian
Naassenes," especially seeing that the psalm itself has a
very ancient character and is closely related to the
corresponding Babylonian forms of adjuration. On the
contrary, it is difficult to resist the suspicion that the
ancient Babylonian name-magic was combined at an
early date with the idea of a divine healer, and Jesus
(Joshua, Jason, Jasios) was a name used in exorcisms by
the pre-Christian Gnostic sects. Further, the name
must indicate some sort of divine being, as few will
doubt who have any acquaintance with the old ideas of
adjuration and magic.

Whittaker (The Origins of Christianity, 2nd ed., 1909,
p. 27) has drawn attention to Jude 5, where it is written :
" I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye
once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the
people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards 1 destroyed
them that believed not ; and the angels which kept not
their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath
reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the
judgment of the great day." So it reads in the revised
text. But in the original text, as we have it in Butt-
mann's Greek edition of the New Testament, we read
the name Jesus instead of " the Lord," and this, as we
saw, is equivalent to Joshua. If we then remove the
comma after " Egypt," where it is quite arbitrary and
has no meaning, and put it after " a second time," we
read : " that Jesus, having saved the people out of the
land of Egypt a second time," and we have a strong
proof that there was a pre-Christian saviour of that name
known in the Judaeo-Christian circles to which the
Epistle is addressed. Not only does it confirm the belief

1 [Not "afterwards," but "a second time," in the Greek text. J.H.]



222 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

in a god Jesus in these circles, as, of course, only a god
could judge the angels and put them in chains ; it at the
same time shows us the identity of this Jesus with the
Joshua of the Old Testament, and strengthens our con-
viction that Joshua also, who saved the Israelites from
the bondage of Egypt a second time, Moses having saved
them once before, was regarded in those circles as a
divine being and not as a mere hero. That " Jesus " is
really the earlier reading is shown by the fourth verse,
where Jesus is described as the " only Lord " of the
Christians, so that it is impossible that in the very next
verse the writer should call another say, Jahveh the
Lord, especially as Jesus Christ is also expressly called
the "Lord" in verses 17, 21, and 25. Hence we have
in the Epistle of Jude and the changes of its original
text a positive proof of an attempt to conceal the traces
of a pre-Christian Jesus-god.

With this passage in the Epistle of Jude Whittaker
compares one in the " Sibylline Oracles," an essentially
Jewish work, in which we read : " Now a certain
excellent man will come again from heaven, who spread
forth his hands upon the very fruitful tree, the best of
the Hebrews, who once made the sun stand still, speak-
ing with beauteous words and pure lips." The German
translation runs : " Whose hands outspread on the
fruitful tree of the best of the Hebrews," and relates the
"one" to Moses and the cross to Exodus xvii, 22. But
Moses does not stretch his hands on the cross, but in the
form of a cross ; and it was not Joshua who made the
sun stand still, but Aaron and Hur who supported his
arms, Joshua in the meantime being engaged with the
Amalekites. Here again the figures of Jesus and Joshua
are blended, and we learn from the passage that they
identified the Old Testament Joshua, not only with the
" crucified " servant of God, but also with the Messiah
descending from heaven.

A further proof that Jesus was the name of a god in



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 223

pre-Christian times is found in the " Teaching of the
Twelve Apostles," according to Harnack and others an
originally Jewish work, which was afterwards, somewhat
superficially, Christianised. It says, in connection with
the Last Supper : " We thank thee, our father, for the
holy vine of David, thy servant, whom thou hast made

known to us by thy servant Jesus We thank thee for

the life and the knowledge that thou hast given us

through Jesus, thy servant We thank thee for thy

holy name, for which thou hast prepared a dwelling in
our hearts, and for the knowledge and the faith and the
immortality that thou hast made known to us through
thy servant Jesus." How is it that the words of institution
of the Last Supper in the gospels, which must have been
so important and dear to Christians, are omitted and
replaced by the above words? Is this Jesus of the
" Teaching," who is supposed to have made known to
his followers the " holy vine of David," the same as the
Jesus of the gospels? This Jesus who reveals life and
knowledge, and in this way communicates immortality
to his followers, has a suspicious resemblance to the
Jesus of the ancient Gnostics, in whose case also the
knowledge (gnosis) revealed by him was the essential
mark and condition of eternal life.

Then there is the so-called " Kevelation " of John !
Here, again, apparently, we have an originally Jewish
work which was afterwards modified in a Christian sense,
and no one can say confidently whether the nucleus of
the revelation was composed before or after the supposed
time of Jesus. There is the terrible form of the " son of
man " coming in the clouds, who says : "I am the Alpha
and the Omega," just as Jahveh says of himself in Isaiah :
"I am the first and the last" (xlviii, 13). "His head
and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow ;
and his eyes were as a flame of fire ; and his feet like
unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace ; and his
voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his



224 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

right hand seven stars; and out of his mouth went a
sharp two-edged sword ; and his countenance was as the
sun shineth in his strength " (Eev. i, 14-16). Then there
is the lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, that is "as
if slain," and the mysterious book opened with the seven
seals (v, 5), and the child of the woman " clothed with the
sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a
crown of twelve stars," who is carried to the throne of
God, and of whom it is said that he will " rule all nations
with a rod of iron " (xii). Or consider the rider on the
white horse, with many diadems on his head, clothed in
a blood-stained garment, whose name is " the word of

God and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness

and wrath of Almighty God ; and he hath on his vesture
and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord
of Lords" (xix, 11). What have all these forms to do
with the " simple " Jesus of the gospels ? How could we
explain the transformation of such a Jesus into these
extraordinary mixtures of the grotesque and gigantic so
soon after his death ? Have we not rather a product of
the unrestrained imagination of some religious sect or
conventicle, to whom Jesus was from the start, not a
man, but a supernatural, divine being, and in whose
ecstatic visions mythical and prophetic elements grew
into the frenzied figures which we have in Revelation ?

In details we perceive a connection with the prophet
Isaiah in the form of the child and the lamb which is
slain, in the allusion to the " root, the offspring of David,
and the bright and morning star " (xxii, 16 ; Isaiah Ix), in
the figure of the rider who treads the winepress of the
anger of judgment (Isaiah Ixiii), in the reference to the
sufferings of the saints, which by no means relates to the
persecutions of the Christians, as has hitherto been
believed, but rather to the sufferings of the just in
Wisdom, in the comforting with the " fountain of life "
and the eternal light of the lamb, in which the nations
walk and to which the kings of the earth bring their



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 225

glory (Isaiah Ix), in the promise of the new Jerusalem,
in which the treasures of the nations will be heaped up
and only the just shall live, in the struggle of Jahveh
with the Leviathan, and the figure of the last trumpet
(Isaiah xxvii). The historical Jesus, who is supposed to
have been the occasion of all this, is nowhere to be
recognised, and could not be found at all in Revelation,
if it were not read under the conviction that it belongs to
Christian circles, and that the Jesus of whom it speaks is
the one whose supposed life-story is told in the gospels.
It may be an esoteric work of the "Jessaeans," in the
sense of the word previously explained. There is no
proof that it is a Christian work and relates to the
" historical " Jesus. The numerous astral-mythological
allusions in the work which were indicated by Dupuis
point, not to an historical, but a purely mythical Jesus.

If, therefore, Jesus had a mythic significance in pre-
Christian times, it would be very surprising if he were
not also worshipped in certain sects, especially in view of
the part played by the similarly-named Jasios or Jason as
healer and patron of physicians in the Greek mysteries.
It is certain that Moses was regarded as divine, not only
in the Alexandrian religious philosophy of Philo, which is
closely connected with the Palestinian sects, but also in
the belief of the sects themselves. Just as Philo sees in
him the lawgiver and prophet, the " purest spirit," the
ideal type of humanity, the mediator and reconciler with
God, even a divine being, and makes him equal to the
Messiah, so, on his own showing, this happened in many
of the Judaeo-Gnostic sects, who looked up to Moses as a
kind of god, had a legend of his being taken into heaven,
and on this account venerated him as the conqueror of
death and the demons. Philo says that the Therapeuts
held a great festival on the seventh Sabbath, the fiftieth
day of the year at that time, in which, after a festive
nocturnal meal, which probably had a mystic significance,
the men and women were arranged in a double choir,

Q



226 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

which Philo calls an imitation of the choir which Moses
and his sister Miriam arranged to sing their victory and
gratitude after the passage of the Ked Sea. In Philo and
the Therapeuts the delivery of the Jews from the bondage
of Egypt means the delivery of the soul from the bonds of
sense and the passage to the kingdom of the pure spirit.
But as the meal of the Therapeuts was certainly related
to the Passover meal, which the Jews celebrated before
the escape from Egypt, it had an historical as well as a
mystic significance, like the Christian Supper. " The soul
prepares in the Passover or in its imitation the Therapeutic
meals for delivery from the bonds of sense ; it then asks
divine aid in the passage through the Bed Sea which
borders Egypt (or the body), and rejoices in the sacred
choirs, inebriated with heavenly love and full of gratitude
to the saving God, the redeemer."

Now Joshua is a close relation, if not a mere duplicate,
of Moses. In his case the passage of the Bed Sea is
paralleled by the passage of the Jordan, the river of
heaven, as the Mandaeans regarded it ; 2 and in his case
also the passage is connected with the feast of the
Passover (Joshua v) . The story of Joshua is built, point
by point, on that of Moses; 3 indeed, it seems as if they
are only two different forms of the same mythical figure,
the lawgiver and leader of Israel that is to say, the sun
in its passage through the watery region in the spring, in
combination with Cannes as determining and announcing
the division of the year (see p. 190). After this, is it a
strained and precarious supposition that Joshua also was
originally an Ephraimitic name for the sun, an ancient
Jewish sect-god, a hero of the cult in certain Gnostic
circles, who were in this influenced by their heathen
pastoral neighbours and their veneration of similar



1 Gfrorer, Philo und diejildisch-alex. Theosophie, 1835, ii, p. 295.

2 Brandt, Die mandd'ische Religion, 1889.

8 Jeremias, Das alte Testament im Lichte des alien Orients, 2 Aufl.,
1906, p. 4G5.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 227

mythic personalities ? If Melchisedech, who is, like
Moses, put by Philo on the same footing as the divine
" word," the Logos and Messiah if Noah, Henoch,
Joseph, and even Cain were worshipped, is it likely that
Joshua, the second Moses, was overlooked ?

We now know that there was a pre-Christian Jewish
Gnosticism. In his admirable work, Der vorchristliche
judische Gnostizismus (1898), Friedlander has amply
described it and its connection with the religious philo-
sophy of Alexandria; 1 Gunkel has traced its relations to
Persian and Babylonian ideas. 2 Must we reject outright
the idea of a pre-Christian cult of Jesus because we have
no direct evidence of it? We can, however, deduce its
existence from the few extant traces on the same rules of
science on which we deduce any other facts from indica-
tions and survivals in historical investigation when there
is no direct evidence. It is true that we can only attain
more or less confident suppositions, especially as there is
question of a secret cult, the teaching of which was
probably not committed to writing (Gunkel, p. 63), and
because the Christian Church and Jewish synagogue have
done all in their power to destroy heretical works and all
traces of the real origin of Christianity.

We have ample experience of the conduct of the Roman
Church in suppressing inconvenient writings. How was
it likely to act when it had better means of doing so than
now, when it still had unlimited power over souls, and
when the difficulty of publishing works was such as to
restrict their number in a way that we can now hardly
appreciate ; especially as there would, in any case, be few
copies of these esoteric Gnostic works? All that we
know of Gnosticism is derived from the biassed accounts
of its ecclesiastical opponents, as the Church moved
heaven and earth to destroy the works of its supporters.
We can no more forget the treasures we have lost in this

1 Also see Harnack, Oesch. der altchristl. Literatur, i, p. 144.

2 Zum religionsgesch. Verstandniss, etc.



228 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

way than we can forget its brutal destruction of our
earliest literature (songs of the gods, legends of heroes,
magical formulae, etc.) in the first years of the Christian
mission in Germany and during the Middle Ages; in
those years we lost an invaluable treasure, torn by the
hands of fanatical priests, trampled under the heavy feet
of monks, and given to the flames.

And even if we reject the idea of a pre-Christian cult
of Jesus, those who believe in his historical character gain
nothing. It is not true at all that, as is constantly said
in pamphlets, lectures, and journals, The Christ-Myth
stands or falls with the existence of a pre-Christian Jesus.
The mythical nature of the Christian saviour is sufficiently
proved by the character of the gospels themselves and
the lack of independent evidence ; it is entirely inde-
pendent of the question whether Jesus had or had not
been previously worshipped. The belief in an earlier
cult would merely throw a welcome light on the origin
of Christianity and its connection with the surrounding
Jewish and pagan world. One may venture to say that
theologians have found so much in their documents, when
it suited their purpose, that they will certainly be able to
discover a pre-Christian Jesus whenever their theory
requires one, and they are no longer prevented by their
dependence on the Church from studying the subject
impartially.

(h) The Conversion of the Mythical into an Historical
Jesus. We must now make a special inquiry into the
question how the mythical Jesus the Isaiahian (or
Jessaean) saviour, the suffering, dying, and rising servant
of God and just one was converted into the historical
Jesus, and see how far prophetic promises and astral-
mythological speculations of the Gnostic sects co-operated
in the process, and how far personal experiences and
religious dispositions of the communities determined the
figure of the historical Jesus and transformed an abstract
scheme into a living personality. The Christ-Myth has



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 229

been content with a few general indications in this regard.
It has merely gathered together material from which
one may obtain some idea of the origin of Christianity.
Perhaps the time has not yet come for a fuller study of
the matter, as one has first to accomplish the work of
clearing a veritable Augean stable of prejudices and errors
and preparing the ground for a sober construction. It
is clear that the conversion of the mythical into the
historical Jesus could not have taken place before the
beginning of the second century, when there would be
no living witnesses of the events related. The seventy
or eighty years that would elapse after the supposed
death of Jesus would be quite enough to permit his
" history " to seem plausible, especially as the destruction
of Jerusalem had so disturbed the life of the people that
there was no fear of Jewish opponents proving the false-
ness of their assertions. At the same time, we need not
postulate a deliberate deception in the conversion of the
myth into history. As all the chief features of the
character of Jesus had, as we saw, long been in existence,
and the myth would naturally tend to take the form of
narrative, as if there were question of real events in the
past, the whole process might take place so gradually and
unconsciously that there is no occasion to speak of " glib
lying " and " thorough swindle," as some say.

The cult-legend spoke of an Immanuel or Jesus who
had, according to Isaiah, sacrificed himself for the sins of
the people, and would then come down from heaven in
the shape of the expected Messiah and lead his followers
into the kingdom they desired. As the question of the
Messiah had become urgent after the destruction of
Jerusalem and the collapse of all the political hopes of
the Jews, and amid the sufferings of the people from the
Roman oppression, the further questions were found to
rise spontaneously to the lips : When did the servant of
God really suffer ? Where did he die ? What was he
like ? What did he do before he was put to death by his



230 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

enemies ? Who were these enemies ? And so on. And
it was just as inevitable for the answer to be found in the
indications of the prophets and of astral-mythological
speculation, and thus to lead to the historicisation of the
originally mythical figure of Jesus.

His death could not be placed too long before the
destruction of Jerusalem for the reasons we have already
seen. The Messiah must have been born in the days of
Augustus, whom the pagans have regarded as the desired
saviour of the world. Astral mythology furnished the
name of Pilatus to pierce with his spear (pilum) the son
of God hanging on the world-tree, the Milky Way ; and
Pilate had, according to Josephus, been procurator in the
time of Tiberius. According to the words of the prophet,
the servant of God was to be a healer of spiritual and
corporal ills, a supporter of the poor and oppressed.
Miracles of extraordinary kinds were to reveal his future
Messianic significance, yet he was not to be understood
by his own people and was to succumb to the attacks of
his enemies. And who could these enemies be but the
Pharisees and scribes, who had been more and more
hostile to the Jewish sects after the destruction of
Jerusalem 9 1

As long as their belief in the redeeming death of the
servant of God was a secret belief within the sect there
could be no conflict with the Pharisees ; in fact, some-
times the Pharisees were united with the sectarians,
both in their mystic and astrological tendencies and in

1 Chowlson says that it was the Sadducees, not the Pharisees, who were
the real enemies of Jesus and brought about his condemnation. That is
historically not very probable, as Steudel has shown (Im Kampf um die
Christus-Mythe, p. 45). If there is any truth in it at all, it can only be
that, according to Wisdom, which, as we saw, contributed much to the
picture of the sufferings of the just one, the impious enemies of the just
might be regarded as the Sadducees, as it is written in the second chapter
(verse 22) : "They knew not the mysteries of God, or hoped for a reward
of eternal life, and would hear nothing of a recompense for stainless souls.
For God has created man for immortality, and made him in the image of
his own likeness." The chief difference between the worldly-minded
Sadducees and the Pharisees was that the former did not believe in immor-
tality, or the eternal reward or punishment of men beyond the grave.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 231

their hostility to the worldly-minded priestly nobility of
the Sadducees. We saw how in Isaiah the figure of the
Saviour constantly blends with that of Jahveh. As is
known, the aim of the preaching of Isaiah is to confirm
the people in monotheistic ideas, in belief in the one God,
who says : "I am Jahveh and no other, and there is no
god beside me. I am the first and the last." These
words are put in the mouth of the " son of man " in
Revelation. In Isaiah xlv, 15, Jahveh is called a " hidden
God," a " Saviour," just as the servant of God and
Saviour was supposed to grow up in obscurity, and the
just to expiate sins by his death without attracting much
attention or the real significance of his death being
recognised. What if, after the manner of Isaiah, the
belief in Jahveh were to coalesce with the belief in Jesus
in the mind of the sect, and Jesus become the form in
which Jahveh was worshipped as healer, expiator, and
redeemer in the mystic and esoteric cults ? For the
religion of Jesus was merely a religion of Jahveh of
deeper mysticism, a new and special form of Jewish
monotheism; and the orthodox Jews, for whom mono-
theism was the sum of their faith, had on that account
no occasion to put difficulties in the way of the original
Christians, the Jessseans or Nazorseans, the " saints," as
they were called in Isaiah. 1

Weiss thinks that the early Christians, with their
belief that the crucified Jesus was the Messiah, put
themselves in the sharpest opposition to Judaism, and
incurred hatred and persecution, and says that it is
" absolutely ridiculous to think that the first Christians
would have voluntarily encountered this difficulty ' '
(p. 44). But that was not the belief of the "first
Christians "; they believed that Jesus, the servant of
God, the Saviour of Isaiah, who was believed to have

1 This is suggested by Smith in his Ecce Deus, who tries to show that
the original Christian movement was a protest against polytheism, a
" crusade in favour of monotheism."



232 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

suffered a humiliating death among men, as Messiah,
would return in glory, and realise their hope of eternal
life. It may seem " bold " and " paradoxical " to imagine
Jahveh sacrificing himself for his people and so entering
the ranks of the pagan saviour-gods Marduk, Adonis,
Tammuz, Attis, Osiris, etc. Yet this may have been
simply a revival of an older idea, that Jahveh was himself
Tammuz, dying every year, mourned by the women of
Jerusalem according to Ezechiel (viii, 13), rising and
dying again, to enter once more into life. 1 A reluctance
to connect Jahveh with finiteness may have prevented
those who held this belief from identifying the Saviour
strictly with the supreme God. This may have been the
reason why Jesus, though essentially one with God, was
nevertheless distinguished from him as a special being.
It was a " stumbling-block to the Jews " that their God
was related to the pagan saviour-gods ; a " folly to the
pagans " that the redeemer of the world should be a
Jewish deity. But this seems impossible only when one,
like Weiss, conceives the crucified Jesus as an historical
human being. That the Christians would arbitrarily
create the difficulty of representing such a person as the
Messiah we should certainly hesitate to think. But the
ground for believing in a crucified saviour need not have
been in historical events at all ; it may have been because
the fact of the suffering and death of Jesus was revealed
by the prophet Isaiah.

As long as Jesus was the object of worship of a very
small body, and the belief in him was obscured by mystic
confusion and mythological mists, it seemed to the
orthodox Jews to be harmless. The figures of Jesus and
Jahveh were blended, and the religious foundation of
Judaism, monotheism, seemed not to be endangered.
But when, after the destruction of Jerusalem, the
orthodox Jews, deprived of their political independence,

1 See H. Schneider, Kultur und Denken der Babylonier und Juden, 1910,
p. 282.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 233

now placed their national unity and cohesion in a unity
of faith, and therefore drew up the ranks of the ecclesias-
tical regiment more strictly and hardened the ritual law
of monotheism into a dogma, Jesus was detached from
Jahveh, the god of the sect was opposed to the god of the
official religion as an independent divine being, and a
bitter hostility set in between the scribes and Pharisees
on the one hand, who represented monotheism in its
most abstract form and, in connection with it, held
rigidly to the forms of the law, and the sects on the
other hand, with whom the common folk sympathised
as we read in the gospels. Under the fearful pressure
of the uprooting of the Jewish people, and in view of
the religious need of the time, which had reached its
highest pitch with the loss of the temple, it seemed that
the terrible time foretold by the prophets had come, and
that they should look for the immediate appearance of
the Messiah. The promises that had been made must
now be fulfilled. This was the opportunity of the
Jewish sectaries to come out of the seclusion of their
mystic sects and conventicles with their " gnosis " and
proclaim to the whole people their faith in Jesus.

Possibly exalted by visions, in which they believed
that they saw the risen " Lord " in bodily form, the
emissaries of the faith went about announcing the " glad
tidings " of the coming of the Messiah and the speedy
establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth. In
market-place and on the street the appeal for change of
heart through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ rang out.
Then the innovation became dangerous to the official
Jewish religion. Weiss can only attribute to a "real
Jesus," the " influence of a personality," and the expe-
rience of his life on earth, " the immense step from the
vague Messianic hope to the confidence of possession,
fulfilment, and the joy and gratitude for what God has
given them in his servant Jesus, as we find it in the
prayers of that early time" (p. 48). But this confidence



234 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

of possession had long been a peculiarity of Jewish
sectarianism before they gave publicity to their faith and
made it the object of a popular propaganda ; Paul and
others may have begun this at an earlier period. If this
is now done more vigorously and on a larger scale, it is
not because an historical Jesus has caused it, but because
the general conditions of the time inflamed the religious
sentiment and made it seem a duty to the sectaries to
communicate their " knowledge " (gnosis) to their com-
patriots and the rest of mankind and " reveal " the
approach of the kingdom of heaven, and thus bring them
to a change of heart. It is true that the rest of the Jews
also believed in the speedy coming of the Messiah. But
the belief had so often been falsified that its strength and
sources threatened to become weaker. The sectaries,
however, had a powerful framework for that belief in
their astrally and prophetically grounded legend of Jesus,
who was supposed voluntarily to have sacrificed himself
and to be about to return as king and judge of his people.
That was new and unfamiliar, and precisely on that
account it appealed to the feeling of the time, and found
credence among their Jewish compatriots the more easily
as the belief gave them a weapon against the detested
sanctity and pride of the Pharisees, and the concentration
of the sectarians on the plain and intelligible morality of
the prophets and proverbial books offered the possibility
of religious salvation to all men who would endeavour
to lead good lives. It may have been then that the
saying of Luke was formulated : " Woe unto you,
lawyers, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge
[gnosis]. Ye entered not in yourselves, and them that
were entering in ye hindered" (xi, 52). It means that
the representatives of the official Jewish religion had
abandoned their earlier predilection for astrology, and
now attached the astrological speculations to the Gnostics.
This made an end of the astral ground of the hope in a
Messiah; there remained only the prophetical, and the



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 235

original astral Jesus became more and more vague and
was replaced by the historical Jesus. The more the new
faith spread among the people the more the gnosis was
adapted to their intelligence, and thus the supposed
historicity of the Saviour was substituted for the mythical
and astral character of their religious ideas. 1

(i) Jesus and the Pharisees and Scribes. We turn now
to consider the relation of Jesus to the Pharisees. Jewish
scholars like Chwolson 2 have often expressed their aston-
ishment at the way this relation is described in the
gospels. What, they ask, could be the reason for the
deadly enmity between Jesus and the representatives of
the official Jewish religion? Religious-moral reasons
could not possibly suffice of themselves to explain it.
In this respect there was not a very sharp opposition
between them. " In the teaching and sayings of Jesus,"
says Chwolson, " there was nothing that could offend the
religious feeling of anyone educated according to Pharisaic
laws and acquainted with the Pharisaic that is to say,
Rabbinical literature" (p. 88). Jesus is supposed to
have preached in the synagogues, of which the Pharisees
were the masters ; he cannot, therefore, have infringed
the law. Moreover, he is supposed to have adhered
strictly to the law, since he says that he had not come
to undo, but to fulfil, it (Matthew v, 17) a saying that is
found almost word for word in the Talmud : " Not a letter
of the law will ever be destroyed," and " The laws of Noah
have not been abolished, but increased" (Cosri, i, 83). 3
Matthew xxiii, 3, makes Jesus bid his disciples listen in
all things to the commands of the Pharisees. This,
however, seems to be based on Ecclus. vii, 31 : " Fear the



1 In every heathen religion the dying and risen god is an astral being ;
the sun descending in the summer-solstice or in the autumn-equinox, and
ascending in the winter-solstice or spring equinox. So Dupuis, in his
monumental work L'origine de tons les cultes (1794), has shown in reference
to Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Mithra, etc. Cf. also Jeremias, the
work above mentioned.

2 Das Passahmahl, p. 85. 3 Sanhedrim, 107 ; Bereschit rabba, 27.



236 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

Lord, and honour the priest, and give him his part, as it
is commanded from the beginning." In passing over one
or other prescription, or interpreting it in an unfamiliar
sense, he did nothing extraordinary. There were among the
Pharisees and scribes themselves many differences in the
exposition and application of the prescriptions of the law,
though this never led to charges of heresy or persecution.

One of the worst of his transgressions is that he and
his disciples are said to have violated the law of the
Sabbath by healing the sick on that day. Even among
the rabbis, however, the holiness of the Sabbath had to
give way when a man's life was in question. In fact, it
was obligatory to disregard the Sabbath when there was
danger in the observance of it, and the man who in such
a case held to the letter was regarded as a " murderer."
We read in Lev. xviii, 5 : " Ye shall therefore keep my
statutes and my judgments ; which, if a man do, he shall
live in them." And in the Talmud (Tract. Joma, 856)
we read : " The Sabbath is given to you, not you to the
Sabbath." To heal by merely stretching out one's hand
over the patient, as Jesus is said to have done on the
Sabbath in Mark iii, 5, was not forbidden by the rabbis,
and therefore the Pharisees could not be " filled with
madness," as they are said to have been on such an
occasion in Luke vi, 11.

Even on the question of divorce Jesus did not take up
a position opposed to that of the Pharisees. We read in
Matthew v, 31 : " It hath been said, Whosoever shall put
away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement ;
but I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his
wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to
commit adultery." But it is also said in the Talmud :
" Whosoever shall put away his wife, over him the altar
sheddeth tears" (Pessachim, 113), and "Whosoever
putteth away his wife is hated of God" (Gittin, 906).
Even the prophet Malachi had said : " Let none deal
treacherously against the wife of his youth, for the Lord,



237

the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away "
(ii, 15). Divorce is permitted only when an internal
breach between the spouses has already taken place
because of the infidelity of one or other, as is said in
Isaiah in regard to the union of Jahveh and his people,
which is conceived as a marriage-bond : " Thus saith the
Lord, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement,
whom I have put away ? or which of my creditors is it to
whom I have sold you ? Behold, for your iniquities have
ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your
mother put away" (1, 1). In the passage quoted in
regard to divorce, Jesus merely pronounces for the stricter
opinion of the school of Gamaliel against the laxer school
of Hillel.

Not only is there no opposition between Jesus and the
Pharisees on this point, but even the fact that he is
supposed to have openly proclaimed himself the Messiah
was not calculated to turn them against him. Not only
the children of Israel, but even individual men, are called
" sons of God," and the priests and rabbis themselves
have at times called a man the Messiah and supported
him with their respect ; consider Zerubbabel, and the
relation of the rabbi Akiba to Bar-Kochba.

In Matthew xv, 5, and Mark vii, 11, Jesus reproaches
the Pharisees with perverting the command to honour
one's father and mother in favour of one's duty to God.
We find, however, no trace of such a thing in Jewish
tradition, which expressly forbids any misinterpretation of
the commandments of the law. Again, in regard to the
laws regulating food, Jesus cannot possibly have acted as
he is supposed to have done in Matthew xv, 11, and
Mark vii, 15, because in that case it would be unin-
telligible for Peter to refuse to touch unclean food
(Acts x, 14). Moreover, Jesus is supposed to have given
him full power to bind and to loose, or to decide questions
of law according to his own judgment.

It is just as accurate for Jesus to blame the Pharisees



238 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

for making proselytes (Matthew xxiii, 15). If we were to
take his words seriously, they were wholly absorbed in
bringing men into the Jewish faith wherever they could.
As a matter of fact, the Talmud expressly forbids this indis-
criminate making of proselytes, and makes the entrance
into Judaism dependent on righteousness of heart. Still
less can there be question of the Pharisees declaring that
to swear by the temple and altar was not binding, but it
is binding to swear by the gold of the temple and the
sacrifice on the altar (Matthew xxiii, 16). If Jesus meant
that the sanctity clung to the temple and altar, not to the
things therein, that is precisely the view of the rabbis. 1
And when Jesus says (Matthew xxiii, 23) : " Woe unto
you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye pay tithe of
mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the
weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and
faith : these ought ye to have done, and not to leave
the other undone," the charge falls to the ground, from
the simple fact that plants that grow wild, and vegetables,
were not subject to tithe. 2

These charges are either brought by someone who was
unacquainted with the real facts, or have been invented
arbitrarily to confuse opponents, without any regard to
historical truth. It is the same when Jesus accuses the
Pharisees of the murder of prophets, and charges them
with having slain Zacharias, son of Barachias, between
the temple and the altar, and holds them responsible for
the shedding of his innocent blood (Matthew xxiii, 35).
Here Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, who was stoned in
the court of the temple by order of King Joash (2 Chron.
xxiv, 21), is combined or confused with Zachariah, the
son of Baruch, who was slain by the zealots in the temple
for supposed treachery during the siege of Jerusalem
by the Komans. 3 Indeed, the whole of the words in

1 See Nedarim, 106 and 146. 2 Menachoth, i.

8 Josephus, Jewish War, iv, 5, 4. See also on the subject K. Lippe,
Das Evangelium Matth&i vor dem Forum der Bibel und des Talmud.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 239

Matthew xxiii, 34 : " Wherefore, behold, I send unto you
prophets, and wise men, and scribes ; and some of them
ye shall kill and crucify, etc.," together with the subse-
quent prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem, are
based on the prophet Jeremiah (vii, 25) :

Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the
land of Egypt unto this day I have even sent unto you all
my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and send-
ing them :

Yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear,
but hardened their neck ; they did worse than their
fathers.

Therefore thou shalt speak all these words unto them ;
but they will not hearken to thee ; thou shalt also call
unto them, but they will not answer thee

Cut off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away, and
take up a lamentation on high places ; for the Lord hath
rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath

And the carcases of this people shall be meat for the
fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth ; and
none shall fray them away.

Then will I cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and
from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth and the
voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the
voice of the bride ; for the land shall be desolate.

Many writers have insisted that the relation of Jesus
to the scribes and Pharisees affords a proof of his
historicity. Yet almost the very same charges which
Jesus makes against the Pharisees are brought by Isaiah
against the heads of the people. " Your hands are full
of blood," the prophet says (i, 15 ; see also lix, 3) ;
" Wash you, make you clean ; put away the evil of your
doings from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil. Learn
to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge
the fatherless, plead for the widow." And Isaiah bemoans
that Jerusalem, "the faithful city, full of judgment,
righteousness lodged in it," has " become a harlot " and
is full of " murderers." " Thy princes are rebellious and
the companions of thieves ; every one loveth gifts, and
followeth after rewards ; they judge not the fatherless,



240 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them."
" Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and
that write grievousness which they have prescribed ; to
turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away
the right from the poor of my people, that widows may
be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless "
(x, 1 and 2; cf. Mark xii, 40). "Woe unto them that
call evil good, and good evil ; that put darkness for light,
and light for darkness : that put bitter for sweet, and
sweet for bitter. Woe unto them that are wise in their
own eyes, and prudent in their own sight" (v, 20).
Compare with this the charges which Jesus brings against
the Pharisees and scribes, and it will be seen that here
again Isaiah was the model of the evangelists. Jesus
calls the Pharisees " blind leaders of the blind " (Matthew
xv, 14) and " blind Pharisees," and blames them for the
perverse ways they have chosen to attain salvation
(Matthew xxiii, 16, 19, 24, and 26). But we read in
Isaiah (iii, 12) : "0 my people, they which lead thee
cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths," and
the prophet returns incessantly to the blindness of the
people and their leaders. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees
with hypocrisy, and tells them that their service of God
is mere lip-service, and that by their refining and multi-
plying commandments they have made the way of salva-
tion difficult for themselves (Matthew xv, 8). Isaiah
also complains to " the Lord " that his people approaches
him only with its lips, but its heart is far from him ; that
its fear of God is only learned from the precept of men
(xxix, 13), and it does not honour him in the right way.

"For your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath

muttered perverseness. None calleth for justice, nor any
pleadeth for truth ; they trust in vanity and speak lies ;
they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity " (lix,
3 and 4). Jesus calls the Pharisees " serpents and genera-
tion of vipers," as John is supposed to have done (Matthew
xxiii, 33). Here again he merely does what Isaiah had



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 241

done : " They hatch cockatrice' [vipers'] eggs, and weave
the spider's web ; he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and
that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper. Their
webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover
themselves with their works ; their works are works of

iniquity their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity

they have made them crooked paths " (lix, 5-8).

We have, therefore, every reason to doubt the historical
truth of the relevant passages in the gospels, and this
doubt increases when we find that even so important a
scene as the expulsion of the merchants from the temple
and the words put into the mouth of Jesus on that occasion
are inspired by Isaiah, and closely follow passages in the
prophet. What does " the Lord " say in the first chapter
of the prophet ?

To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto
me ? saith the Lord : I am full of the burnt offerings of
rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not in the
blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats.

When ye come to appear before me, who hath required
this at your hand, to tread my courts?

Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomina-
tion unto me.

"Behold," says the prophet Malachi (iii, 1), continuing
this,

I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way
before me ; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly
come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant,
whom ye delight in ; behold, he shall come, saith the Lord
of hosts.

But who may abide the day of his coming ? and who
shall stand when he appeareth ? for he is like a refiner's
fire and the fullers' soap.

And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and
he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold
and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering
in righteousness.

Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be
pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in
former years.

And I will come near to you to judgment ; and I will

R



242 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the
adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those
that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the
fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his
right, saith the Lord of hosts.

Add the words of Zechariah (xiv, 21) :

Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be
holiness unto the Lord of hosts ; and all they that sacrifice
shall come and take of them, and seethe therein ; and in
that day there shall be no more the Canaanite [merchant]
in the house of the Lord of hosts.

And if we further conclude that the words of Jesus, " My
house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer,
but ye have made it a den of thieves " (Mark xi, 17), are
a combination of Isaiah Ivi, 7 (" Mine house shall be
called an house of prayer for all people "), and Jeremiah
vii, 11 (" Is this house, which is called by my name,
become a den of robbers in your eyes?"), the historicity
of the narrative breaks down altogether. The seventh
chapter of Jeremiah also describes a closely similar situa-
tion, as the first chapter of Isaiah and the narrative of
the cleansing of the temple :

Stand in the gate of the Lord's house, and proclaim
there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all
ye of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship the
Lord.

Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel : Amend
your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell
in this place

For if ye throughly amend your ways and your doings ;
if ye throughly execute judgment between a man and his
neighbour ;

If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the
widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither
walk after other gods to your hurt ;

Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land
that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever.

We see from this why Jesus had to go to Jerusalem
and begin his work with the cleansing of the temple, and
why his threatening speech on the Pharisees and his



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 243

prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem must be con-
nected with the episode. It is all foreshadowed in the
words of the prophet, and there is no guarantee of
historical reality. In the thirteenth chapter of Mark and
the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew we do, indeed,
detect an historical reality; but the events referred to
have, as Graetz has shown, the colouring of the terrible
time of the Bar-Kochba war in the second century, when
Jews and Christians opposed each other in deadly enmity
and made each other responsible for the judgment, when
the name of the followers of Jesus was hateful to the
Jews, when the " Minaeans " were openly cursed, and
Jews and Christians alike were executed with fearful
cruelty during the religious persecution under Hadrian. 1
Yet here again the model for the prediction of Jesus, or
for the Jewish Apocalyptic which is at the base of it, was
the prophet Isaiah, when he says, in regard to the judg-
ment on Jerusalem and the accompanying horrors : "And
the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and
every one by his neighbour ; the child shall behave
himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against
the honourable" (iii, 5; see Mark xiii, 12). When
Jeremiah (vii, 30) says, in the same connection, " They
have set their abominations in the house which is called
by my name, to pollute it," we are reminded of the
"abomination of desolation" which is, according to
Mark (xiii, 14), to be a sign for Christians to fly, and in
connection with which Jesus himself appeals to Daniel
ix, 27. How far the whole story in the gospels has been
influenced by the prophets is seen by the cursing of the
fig-tree, which is supposed to have occurred about the
time of the cleansing of the temple, since even this detail
was, apparently, furnished by Isaiah (i, 29 and 30) : " Ye
shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen,
for ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth." We may

1 Lublinski, Das werdende Dogma, p. 75 ; compare K. Lippe, work
quoted, p. 245.



244 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

add the words of Jeremiah (viii, 13), who in the same
connection makes the " Lord " say : " There shall be
[there are] no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig-tree,
and the leaf shall fade [has faded] , and the things that I
have given them shall pass away from them " (see also
Hosea xiii, 15).

It is still disputed how far the movement initiated by
Jesus was a movement of the proletariate. The gospel
of Luke represents the saviour chiefly as a friend of the
poor and oppressed. Anyone who carefully considers the
circumstances will see that this feature also has been
taken from Isaiah. In the prophet " the Lord " is, above
all, the saviour of the poor and the unjustly treated and
suffering, reproaching the higher class for their conduct
and charging them with violence and injustice : " The
Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his
people and the princes thereof ; for ye have eaten up the
vineyard ; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What
mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces and grind the
faces of the poor ? " (iii, 14). It is very probable that the
Jesus-sect consisted mainly from the start of the lowest
sections of the people, such as had nothing to lose and
nothing to hope for in life, and whose whole thoughts and
feelings were bound up so much the more intimately with
the promise of a happy future in the world beyond, which
was connected with the coming of the Messiah. Here,
again, it is to Isaiah, not to Jesus, that we must trace the
sympathy with the poor, who unites pity and goodwill to
the enslaved with anger against the rich and the oppressor,
and has thus provided the basis of the philosophy of Chris-
tianity. When Wisdom describes the opponents of the
Saviour and servant of God as being especially the wicked
and unjust, it is merely developing the lesson of Isaiah,
and declaring that they are the enemies of the poor and
weak, the oppressors of the lower people, a proud, hypo-
critical, and self-righteous class ; thus we get the picture
of the Pharisees and scribes as we find it in the gospels,



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 245

though it is the Pharisees of the second, rather than the
first, century who have contributed to its concrete features,
as these were, in point of fact, the bitterest and most
irreconcilable opponents of the poor members of the
Jesus-sect. And if this was the quality of the opponents
of the Saviour, there was all the more reason to represent
him as a, poor man, springing from thelow y er class, and the
antithesis of Jew and Gentile, just and unjust, of which
there had originally been question in Isaiah's " servant of
God," received in the historical clothing of the mythical
ideas the character of a struggle of the poor against the
rich and powerful, the laity against the arrogance of the
priests and scribes, the honest search for salvation against
hypocrisy, the plain piety of the prophets against the law
and the pride of its official representatives.

(k) Further Modifications of Prophetical and Historical
Passages. In these circumstances no historical import-
ance will be attached to the attitude of Jesus towards
places which were hostile to him (Matthew xi, 20 ; Luke
x, 13). It is in itself very improbable that Jesus would
curse a place because it was not converted by his miracles
to faith in him, as his own relatives and nearest disciples
are represented as at times not believing in him ; and
here again the Evangelists seem to have had in mind the
prophet Isaiah, who is never tired of calling his woes
upon the heathen cities and predicting their destruction,
and whose threatening words are unmistakably echoed in
the words of Jesus. 1

A classical illustration of this connection of the words
of Jesus with those of Isaiah and invention of situations
for them is found in Matthew xvi, 15, where we have the
famous confession of Peter and subsequent appointment
of the disciple as successor in the power of the keys.
Who can fail to see that there is here a combination of
Isaiah xxviii, 16 (" Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation

1 Of. Isaiah xiv, 12, and Matt, xi, 23 ; Isaiah xiii, 19, and xvii, 9 ; and
Matthew xi, 22 and 24.



246 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure

foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste

[become weak] "), and Isaiah li, 1 (" Hearken to me, ye

that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord ;

look unto the rock whence ye are hewn look unto

Abraham your father for I called him alone, and

blessed him, and increased him "), with the prophet's
remarkable reproaches of Shebna, the " treasurer " and
head of the king's house, because he had had his tomb
hewn out of a rock. The prophet threatens that Jahveh
will drive him from his occupation for this, and continues
(xxii, 20) :

And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call
my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah ;

And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him
with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his
hand ; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah.

And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his
shoulder ; so he shall open, and none shall shut ; and he
shall shut, and none shall open.

And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place ; and he
shall be for a glorious throne to his father's house.

Zechariah also makes the high-priest Joshua be clothed
ceremoniously by the Lord with the insignia of his office,
and appointed as head of his house and overseer of its
courts. And the high-priest Joshua is in the same
relation to the Messiah Zerubbabel as Peter is to Jesus,
and in the end takes his place.

That Jesus was to die at Jerusalem and, in the sense
of Isaiah's " servant of God," expiate the sins of men by
his death, was the starting-point of the whole of this
inquiry. To what extent mythical and Old Testament
motives have co-operated in the description of the trial
and influenced the gospel story I have already shown in
the first part of the Christ-Myth. Here I will be content
to draw attention to a further circumstance, which, in
all probability, has had a very decisive influence on the



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 247

gospel narrative of the sufferings and death of Jesus. In
his history of the Jewish War (vi, 5, 3) Josephus says
that a certain Jesus (!), son of Ananus, an unlettered
provincial, went to Jerusalem for the feast of tabernacles
four years before the war broke out, when the city still
enjoyed perfect peace and prosperity, and suddenly began
to cry out : "A voice from the east, a voice from the
west, a voice from the four winds, a voice over Jerusalem
and the temple, a voice over bridegrooms and brides, a
voice over the entire people." He cried this day and
night, passing through all the streets of the city.
Arrested and beaten, he merely repeated his words
without saying a word in his defence or against his
captors. Brought before the Roman authority and
scourged until the flesh was stripped from his bones, he
neither craved mercy nor shed tears, but accompanied
each stroke with the mournful cry : " Woe to Jerusalem."
When Albinus, the official, asked him who he was,
whence he came, and why he cried thus, he made no
reply, and Albinus, convinced that the man was insane,
set him free. "He cursed none that beat him," Josephus
continues, " nor thanked those who gave him food ; he
gave no other reply to any man than his prophecy of
misfortune. He was especially loud in his cry on feast-
days." In the end he was killed by a stone during the
siege.

8. HISTOEIANS AND THE GOSPELS.

When we consider these things, we see that the claim
that the gospel narrative could not have been invented is
an empty phrase. It would be well if those who use it
would be more explicit, and tell us precisely what there
is that could not be invented in the narrative.

No one will question that the figure of Jesus in the
gospels has a certain nucleus, about which all the rest
has gradually crystallised. But that this nucleus is an
historical personality, and not Isaiah's " servant of God,"



248

the "just" of Wisdom, and the sufferer of the twenty-
second psalm, is merely to beg the question ; and this is
the less justified since all the really important features of
the gospel life of Jesus owe their origin partly to the
myth, partly to the expansion and application of certain
passages in the prophets.

Theologians triumphantly point to the fact that even
scholars who are not influenced by theology have not
doubted the historical existence of Jesus. When we
look closely into the matter, however, we find that these
scholars have not given any critical consideration to the
question, that in this matter they have spoken as laymen,
not as experts, and that they adhere to the historicity of
the man Jesus, not on personal scientific grounds, but
out of conventional feeling. This is true of profane
historians, who, as far as I can see, have almost all
avoided up to the present a serious discussion of the
question. It is true of Zimmern, who, as an Assyrio-
logist, has certainly discovered the striking parallels
between the Christ-myth and the Babylonian myth, and
even admitted that these are not mere casual analogies,
but proofs of a direct dependence and historical connec-
tion at important points, yet who, as a former theologian,
adheres to the belief in the historicity of Jesus, without
finding any foundation for it. 1 In this Zimmern appeals
to Wundt and to Hermann Schneider, who says in his
Kultur und Denken der Babylonier und Juden that we
must retain the historicity of Jesus for reasons drawn
from the history of the evolution of religion. But what
Schneider leaves intact of the personality and story of
Jesus is so meagre, and so devoid of solid foundation,
that it cannot claim any historical significance. One can
see for oneself. " That the wise teacher," says Schneider
of Jesus, " first appeared in adult age, and first taught in
the synagogues and open air of his native place, is very

1 Zum Streit um die Christusmythe : Das bdbylonisclie Material in
seinen Hauptpurikten dargestellt, 1910.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 249

probable ; also that he gathered about him a circle of
disciples of his own social sphere. That in this way he
came into collision with the professional interpreters, the
scribes, and the professionally pious, the Pharisees, is
very probable in view of the character of his teaching.
It must remain an open question whether he went to
Jerusalem and was executed there (!) ; that he should
seek disciples of his new teaching in the centre of
Judaism would not be surprising ; that he was confused
on account of some imprudent remark with the Messianic
pretenders of that excited world, and executed, is not
unthinkable, but it is just as possible that he never left
Galilee and died there in obscurity (!). The gospel story
of the entrance into Jerusalem and death of the Messiah
swarms with historical and scientific impossibilities, and
is, in view of the central position of these elements in the
dogma, rather a disproof than a proof of their contents"
(p. 464).

This, then, is the opinion of the historical Jesus of a
scholar without theological prejudice and at the same
time a typical example of the blending of the method of
subtraction with the practice of deducing reality from
possibility, as we generally find in this department. I
should imagine that a theologian would say in face of
such witnesses : " Save us from our friends."

9. THE WORDS OF THE LOED.

(a) The Tradition of the Words of the Lord. Wundt
also holds, as quoted by Zimmern, that " the story of the
Passion is, with the exception of a few [which ?] details
of sufficient (!) historical credibility, a tissue of legends."
" But," he says, " what we do not find affected by these
legends, or in any of the mythological prototypes, are the
sayings and discourses of Jesus, as they are reported in
the synoptic gospels." ' Schneider also sees in his teaching

1 Volkerpsychologie, ii, 3, 528.



250 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

the best proof of the historical existence of Jesus (p. 465).
What must we make of this statement ? In other words,
what evidence do the words of Jesus afford of his historical
reality ?

We have already pointed out that the contents of the
gospels point to two sources a record of the actions of
Jesus and a collection of his sayings, which we obtain
from the parallels in Matthew and Luke as compared
with Mark. But we also pointed out how uncertain our
knowledge of this collection of sayings is so uncertain
that we may justly speak of this source as " a completely
unknown x."

What makes this tradition of sayings so valuable to
theologians is the circumstance that they believe it brings
them much nearer to Jesus than the gospel of Mark. It
is true that they cannot deny that, even if they succeeded
in entirely and confidently reconstructing this tradition,
of which there is as yet no question, we should still have
only a book with a certain literary form or composition,
arranged on the lines of literary composition. " By means
of the sayings-source we do not at once reach Jesus, but
the community. To put it precisely : in suitable cases
we learn from the source what seemed to the community
the characteristic, distinctive, and indispensable thing in
Jesus" (Weiss, p. 159).

Now, in view of the entire constitution of the so-called
primitive community, that is not a great achievement.
It is even less when we reflect that, as we have previously
pointed out, we are not at all sure that the traditional
" words of the Lord " are the words of a single historical
individual namely, the historical Jesus. Theologians
assume this ; but they are again merely begging the
question a vice which infects the whole of their historical
method. " Words of the Lord " we cannot repeat it
too often are in Scripture so frequently merely words
which the Lord (namely, Jahveh) gives to his followers
through the " spirit " that, even granting the existence of



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 251

an historical Jesus, it would be impossible to discriminate
between what is due to the " spirit " in the collection and
what is due to Jesus. 1 We do not know whether the
collection of sayings expressly contained only the words
of Jesus, or also included sayings which were on other
grounds thought worthy of being admitted. We cannot
say whether words which were believed to have been
spoken under the influence of the " spirit " were not
afterwards incorporated in the gospels and put in the
mouth of Jesus simply because the best and most important
sayings must have come, in the opinion of his followers,
from the lips of him whom they venerated as " the
Lord " in the specific sense of the word.

That a great deal that is tendentious, partisan, mis-
understood, and of late origin has found its way among
the "words of the Lord" in the gospels, that different
phases of religious thought have found expression in them
and armed themselves with the authority of the " Lord
of Lords," is admitted by all critical students. Some
idea can be formed of how much breaks down in this
way if one takes the trouble to strike out of the gospels
the words of Jesus which are recognised as interpolations.

But have we any guarantee of the substantial truth-
fulness at least of the tradition ? We are referred to
the form of the tradition, the deep impression of the
words of the teacher in the memory of his hearers, the
accurate, almost verbal, retention of detail that distin-
guishes the rabbinical instruction. 2 We are told that the



1 Just as in the collection of sayings it is supposed to have been written,
"Jesus says," etc., so in the prophets we find the words of Jahveh intro-
duced by " A word of Jahveh," " Thus says Jahveh," etc. We have already
seen that Jesus is possibly only another name for Jahveh.

2 If this be true, how is it that such an important detail as the Lord's
Prayer has been handed down to us in such various forms ? No one knows
exactly what words Jesus used in this prayer. According to Harnack, the
earliest version is: "Father, the bread for to-morrow give us to-day, and
forgive us our sins as we forgive others, and lead us not into temptation."
Sitzungenbericht der Preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1904,
Bd. V. Cf. Steudel in Berliner Religionsgesprach, " Hat Jesus gelebt ?"
1910, 59 f .



252 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

Talmud shows the tenacity and conscientiousness of such
a tradition. Granting, however, that the circumstances
of the tradition were really so favourable, how came the
various sayings of Jesus to be handed down to us in so
many different forms as we actually have them ? How
can we explain that so much was lost of the words of
Jesus that was certainly important, while so much that
is unimportant was preserved ? Yet we cannot suppose
that Jesus said and preached no more than we have in
the gospels as his words. " What was a precept of the
school to the pupils of the rabbis," says Weiss, " became
for the disciples of Jesus a question of beatitude. The
words of the master were a matter of life and death ; they
were the foundation of the community, and the accurate
determination of the words was their most important
duty" (p. 162). It is remarkable, however, that the
ostensibly earliest Christian writings lay so little stress
on the words of Jesus that Clement, James, The Teaching
of the Apostles, etc., quote the words of the Lord without
expressly describing them as sayings of Jesus ; 1 that Paul
himself seems to know nothing of them, since, as we saw,
there is not a single clear case of his referring to sayings



1 Thus we read in Clement (xlvi, 8) the saying of Jesus : " Woe unto that

man it had been good for that man if he had not been born " (Matthew

xxvi, 24), but with no reference to Jesus. Again, in xlix, 1, we find a hymn
to love which is closely related to 1 Corinthians xiii, 1, though Paul is not
mentioned. We read in 1 Clement, xiii, 1 : " Let us before all things be
mindful of the words of the Lord Jesus which he spoke, teaching meekness
and patience. For he also said : Have mercy, that ye may find mercy.
Forgive, that ye may find forgiveness. As ye do, so will it be done unto
you. If ye are meek, ye shall find meekness. With what measure ye
mete, it shall be measured to you again (Matthew vii, 1 ; Lulce vi, 36-38 ;
Matthew v, 7, and vi, 14 ; Luke vi, 31). With this command and these rules
we will confirm ourselves in lowliness, so that we may walk in obedience to
his holy words." But we also read on one occasion : " For the holy word
says : To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite
spirit, and trembleth at my word " a quotation from Isaiah (Ixvi, 2).
In The Teaching of the Apostles (i, 2) the doctrine of the two ways is
developed, and it is also quoted in the Epistle of Barnabas (xviii, 1) ; and
we find words which echo the Sermon on the Mount, though Jesus, is not
mentioned as their author, and no indication is given that they are not
common Jewish sayings, as the quotation of the twelve Mosaic com-
mandments suggests.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 253

of Jesus, even where the similarity of idea ought to have
reminded him of them, or the context should have actually
compelled him to quote the authority of the master for
his views.

How is it that, if Weiss is right, the words of Jesus
played hardly any part in the early days of Christianity ?
Weinel's statement (p. 15) that the sayings of Jesus, not
Christology, were the chief concern of the first Christians
cannot be vindicated by a single historical fact. According
to Acts, the first Christian sermon was not a repetition of
the teaching of Jesus, but a discourse about Jesus, as we
learn in the instances of Peter, Stephen, Philip, and
Apollo. 1 If they really believed that these sayings
belonged to an historical Jesus, why have they not been
more carefully preserved ? How was it possible for this
collection of sayings to be lost ? One would think that so
valuable a thing as the words of their Lord and master
would have been guarded by the community as a sacred
treasure, copied innumerable times, and handed on from
one generation to another. Instead of this, it seems that
the mere memory of the existence of such a collection
was entirely lost by Christians for centuries, and it was
reserved for modern critical theologians to establish the
former existence of such a source. As if providence had
wished to reserve this material for their learned investi-
gations.

(b) The Controversies with the Pharisees. An attempt
has recently been made to provide a proof that the
" sayings of the Lord " in the gospels really come from
the historical Jesus. These sayings and teachings, it is
said, these conflicts with the Pharisees, these conversa-
tions with the disciples, parables, etc., are so " unique "
and " inimitable," stand so far above all the rest of ancient
literature, and have so pronounced a personal character,
that. they could only come from a personality, and, indeed,

1 Acts ii, 14 ; Hi, 12 ; vii, 2 ; viii, 5 and 32 ; xviii, 24.



254 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

from the Jesus of the gospels. The logical defect of this
deduction is obvious. No one has ever questioned that
the words of Jesus in the gospels have a thoroughly
personal and individual colouring, that they convey an
impression of definite historical situations, and that they
reflect the feelings and thoughts of a personal inner life.
But whether this was the life of a single individual, or a
number of individuals in different circumstances contri-
buted to the " sayings of the Lord " in the gospels
whether this single personality was the Jesus of the
gospels or some prominent rabbi is the great point in
question.

The many irreconcilable contradictions that we find in
the sayings of Jesus rather suggest that several persons,
not one only, are behind them. And if they really
belonged to one single personality, they could be traced
to Jesus only in so far as he was known to us from other
sources ; in that case only should we have a right to say
that none but so " unique " a person as this Jesus could
have uttered such " unique " sayings. But we know this
Jesus and the " uniqueness " of his inner life only from
the words ascribed to him in the gospels. Thus the
argument always runs in a circle when one attempts to
prove the " uniqueness " of Jesus from the character of
his words, and the " unique " character of his words from
the " uniqueness " of the Jesus of the gospels.

Are these sayings really of such a character that they
must be due to so extraordinary a personality as Jesus ?

Take his conflicts with the Pharisees. The Evangelists
are eager to show the superiority of their Jesus to the
Pharisees and scribes in certain distinctive circumstances,
and to put it in the clearest possible light. Over and over
again the Pharisees approach the Saviour to put him to
the test or ensnare him in the coils of their rabbinical
dialectic, and over and over again they retire confounded
and shamed by the clearness of his mind. Yet in very
many cases the way in which Jesus confounds his learned



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 255

opponents is such that we hardly know which is the more
surprising, the utter unsoundness and meaninglessness of
his replies, or the simplicity of the Pharisees in accepting
them.

Thus, for instance, the disciples pluck ears of corn on
the Sabbath, and when the Pharisees reproach Jesus for
this he replies : " Have ye not read what David did,
when he was an hungred, and they that were with him ?
How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the
shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither
for them which were with him, but only for the priests ?
Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the Sabbath
days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and
are blameless? " (Mattheiv xii, 3). As if the action of the
disciples could be in any way compared with the conduct
of a hungry army, to which, moreover, the Jewish law
even permitted the eating of unclean food ! And as if
the offering of sacrifice in the temple on the Sabbath were
forbidden ! 1

On another occasion the Sadducees put him the captious
question, to which husband a woman would belong after
death who had married seven brothers in succession, and
Jesus reproaches them with not knowing the law, since in
the next world people would neither marry nor be given
in marriage, but be like the angels in heavens, and he
adds : "As touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye
not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,
I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob ? God is not the God of the dead, but of
the living. And when the multitude heard this " the
Evangelist observes " they were astonished at his doc-
trine" (Matthew xxii, 30-33) . Why were they astonished ?
Can they really have supposed that the words of Jesus
were a refutation of the Sadducaean view that there was



1 See the Tractate Schabboth, fol. 17, col. 1 : " The operations involved
in offering sacrifice are not considered as work that is to say, as breaking
the Sabbath." See also Eosh hashana, fol. 21, col. 2, etc.



256 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

no resurrection of the dead ? That God is the God of the
living does not prove that life is not extinguished at death.
And what the object is of bringing in the patriarchs it is
impossible to say. When, moreover, Jesus accuses the
Sadducees of ignorance of the law, he clearly forgets that
precisely according to the law the woman never ceases to
be the wife of her first dead husband, however many
husbands she may subsequently wed. 1 How, then, could
he silence the Sadducees, or " stop their mouths," as
Luther puts it, with such a remark ?

Another time the Pharisees ask him, as he teaches in
the temple, by what authority he does this ; and Jesus
replies with a question about the origin of John's baptism,
whether it was from heaven or from men ; and when they
dare not reply for certain very improbable reasons he
answers, arrogantly : " Neither tell I you by what authority
I do these things" (Matthew xxi, 23), and thus evades
their question.

The greatest victory of Jesus over the Pharisees is
supposed to have been when he asked them whose son
the Messiah was, and they said, the son of David. He
then said to them : " How then doth David in spirit call
him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou
on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool
[Psalm ex, 1] ? If David then call him Lord, how is he
his son?" (Matthew xxii, 43-45). The gospel says that
this reply so confounded the Pharisees that they dared not
answer him, and put no more questions to him from that
day. As a matter of fact, the reply of Jesus contains so
obvious a fallacy that at the most we could only under-
stand the behaviour of the Pharisees as a reluctance to
have anything further to do with a man who answered
in such a way.

Generally speaking, the Pharisees in the gospel descrip-
tion are anything but plausible. These zealots of the

1 K. Lippe, work quoted, p. 228.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 257

law who ask Jesus for a proof of his Messianic mission
(Matthew xii, 38; xvi, 1), while the law expressly forbids
them to attach any importance to the signs and wonders
of a false prophet (Deut. xiii), these heads of the com-
munity who allow themselves to be called by Jesus
hypocrites, blind, serpents, and generation of vipers,
calmly submit to these insults before the crowd, put
their hands in their pockets, plot the destruction of Jesus,
and meantime allow him to teach in the temple and the
synagogue these are certainly not historical personalities,
especially when we observe that none of them is personally
described or named, whereas the Talmud scarcely ever
omits to name the persons in its record of the innumer-
able discussions of the rabbis with their opponents. We
have already seen the origin of these Pharisees who are
silenced by Jesus on every occasion and quietly allow
themselves to be " struck on the mouth " or instructed
by him ; they come from the book of Job, where we read
in the twenty-ninth chapter : " The princes refrained
talking, and laid their hand on their mouth. The nobles
held their peace, and their tongue cleaved to the roof of
their mouth. When the ear heard me, then it blessed

me After my words they spake not again; and my

speech dropped upon them. And they waited for me as
for the rain, and they opened their mouth wide as for the
latter rain " that is to say, they looked forward eagerly
to the words of Job, which the Evangelist has perverted
into the sense that the Pharisees sought to destroy Jesus,
not to be inwardly strengthened by him. In any case,
we have no reason to be " surprised " at the way in which
Jesus escapes the toils of his enemies. His dialectic is
by no means of a high order, as anyone will perceive
who compares the conflicts of Jesus and the scribes and
Pharisees with the way in which Socrates confounds his
opponents in the Platonic dialogues. There is no
question whatever of " uniqueness " in this respect in the
case of Jesus.

s



258 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

(c) Sayings of Jesus on the Weak and Lowly.
Among the finest characteristics of Jesus we must place,
it is said, his relation to the lowly, his love of children,
his sympathy with the least conspicuous objects in nature.
It is assuredly a touching and amiable feature in a man
like Jesus to stoop so lovingly to the weakest of the weak,
to look with tender eye on the flowers of the field and
the birds of heaven, to contrast their indifference to the
future with man's constant concern about his main-
tenance (Matthew vi, 26). But that this feature is not
"unique" we learn from the Talmud, where we read:
" Hast thou ever seen a bird or a beast of the forest that
must secure its food by work ? God feeds them, and
they need no effort to obtain their nourishment. Yet the
beast has a mind only to serve man. He, however,
knows his higher vocation namely, to serve God ; does it
become him, then, to care only for his bodily wants ?"
(Kidushin 4, Halach 14). "Hast thou ever seen a lion
bearing a burden, or a stag gathering the summer's
fruits, or a wolf buying oil ? Yet all these creatures are
sustained, though they know no care about their food.
But I, who have been created to serve my creator, must
be more concerned about my nourishment." 1

Further, one might hold that Isaiah's description of
the Saviour as especially sympathetic to the weak and
needy would suffice of itself to " invent " the feeling of
Jesus for children and embody it in the figure of his
human personality. Children were, as the Talmud
shows, greatly cherished among the Jews, and the love
of them is deep-rooted in the Jewish character. " Out
of the mouth of babes and sucklings," says the psalmist
(viii, 2), "hast thou ordained strength [praise]"; and
Jesus repeats this to the high-priests and their followers,
when they are indignant at the cry with which the
children greet him in the temple (Matthew xxi, 15). In

1 See also Ps. cxxxvi, 25 ; cxlvii, 9.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 259

the same psalm it is said (4 and 5) : " What is man that
thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man that thou
visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower
than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and
honour." " About the Messiah," says the Talmud, " will
all gather who seek in the law, especially the little ones
of the world ; for by the boys who still frequent school
will his strength be increased." 1

From these words we understand, even from the
mythic-symbolical point of view, the saying : " Suffer
little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me,
for of such is the kingdom of heaven " (Matthew xix, 14)
or the scene where Jesus calls a child, sets him in the
midst of the disciples, who have asked who is the greatest
in the kingdom of heaven, and says : " Verily, I say unto
you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children,
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whoso-
ever therefore shall humble himself as this little child,
the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven " (Matthew
xviii, 2-4). We read in the Talmud: "A young man
deserves praise when he becomes [in mind] like the
children" (Tanchuma, fol. 36, col. 4), and "Whosoever
humbles himself in this life for love of the law, the same
will be reckoned among the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven" (Baha Mezia, fol. 84, col. 2). It is not clear,
moreover, that the meaning of the relevant passages in
the gospels is not symbolical, and the " children " for
whom Jesus cares are not, as W. B. Smith says,
proselytes to the belief in Jesus. For the Talmud speaks
of those who have recently joined Judaism as " children.""
" Whoso shall receive one such little child in my name
receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little
ones ivhich believe in me, it were better for him that a
millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were
drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matthew xviii,

1 Sohar to Exodus, fol. 4, col. 13.

2 Jebamoth 22a, 486, 976 ; Necharoth 47a.



260 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

5 and 6). We must remember the many conflicts
among the first Christians, even in the second century,
as to whether a pagan on embracing the Christian faith
should submit to the Jewish law and be circumcised or
not, and the disdain of the Jew-Christians for the Gentile-
Christians. " Take heed that ye despise not one of these
little ones ; for I say unto you, that in heaven their
angels do always behold the face of my Father which is
in heaven. For the son of man is come to save that

which was lost Even so it is not the will of your

Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones
should perish" (Matthew xviii, 10, 14). This should
make an end of such sentimental stuff as Weinel puts
before his readers on p. 86 of his work, as a sort of
Indo-Germanic importation into the feelings and ideas
of Jesus, when he says that Jesus was enabled to " hear
the voice of God in bush and tree, in the harvest and the
song of birds, in the blooming flowers and the play of
children."

Jesus says in Matthew xi, 25 :

I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
because thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.

Even so, Father ; for so it seemed good in thy sight.

All things are delivered unto me of my Father ; and no
man knoweth the Son, but the Father ; neither knoweth
any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever
the Son will reveal him.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am
meek and lowly in heart ; and ye shall find rest unto your
souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

These words are among the finest attributed to Jesus,
but they are based on literary borrowing. The place that
Jesus ascribes here to himself in regard to his father is
precisely the relation of wisdom to Jahveh in the book of
Wisdom (vii, 14; viii, 3 ; xvii, 28). In the book of Jesus



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 261

Sirach also it is written : " Secure wisdom, which is not
bought with gold. Bend your necks under its yoke, and
let your soul receive justification. Close is it to him who
desires it, and whosoever gives himself to it, he findeth it.
See it with your eyes; little have I laboured, and have
found much refreshment in it" (li, 25). In fact, Wisdom
itself makes Sirach speak thus : " Come unto me, ye that
desire me, and sate yourselves with my fruits. For the
thought of me is better than sweet honey, and the
possession of me better than virgin honey. They that
eat me shall ever hunger after me, and they that drink
me shall ever thirst after me. He that heareth me shall
not be ashamed, and they that use me shall not sin "
(xxiv, 19) . The idea of the supper in which the blood of
the Lord is drunk and his body eaten, to purify from sin,
is perceived in these words. But we fully realise that
these words of Jesus were really taken from the Scriptures
and put into the mouth of Jesus by the Evangelist when
we find that the first conception goes back once more to
the prophet Isaiah, the great source of the gospels :

Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and
he that hath no money ; come ye, buy, and eat ; yea,
come, buy wine and milk without money and without
price.

Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not
bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not?
hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good,
and let your soul delight itself in fatness.

Incline your ear, and come unto me ; hear, and your
soul shall live ; and I will make an everlasting covenant
with you, even the sure mercies of David (Isaiah lv, 1-3).

In this sense Jesus sends away the rich young man
who cannot bring himself to abandon his wealth for the
sake of the kingdom of heaven : " Verily, I say unto you,
That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of

heaven It is easier for a camel to go through the eye

of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom
of God " (Matthew xix, 23). This, again, is a familiar



262 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

saying of the rabbis, in which the man who pretended to
believe some impossibility was asked : " Are you from
Pombeditha [in Babylonia], where they can drive an
elephant through the eye of a needle?" And when
Jesus says to the disciples, who ask about their reward
for following him : " Everyone that hath forsaken houses,
or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or
children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an
hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life " (Matthew
xix, 29), he is merely repeating the blessing of Moses
(Deut. xxxiii, 9) : " Who said unto his father and to his
mother, I have not seen him ; neither did he acknowledge

his brethren, nor knew his own children bless, Lord,

his substance, and accept the work of his hands." " Many
that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first,"
Jesus continues. And the Talmud supports him, saying :
" Whoso lowereth himself, him doth God exalt ; whoso
exalteth himself, him doth God lower ; whoso seeketh
greatness, from him it flees ; whoso fleeth greatness, it
runneth after him " (Erubim, 136 ; cf. Baba Bathra,
fol. 10, col. 3).

(d) Jesus' 's Belief in God the Father. But Jesus,
theologians assure us, taught a new and unheard-of
conception of God, and in this especially is the " unique-
ness" and unsurpassable greatness of his teaching; for
such an achievement is only possible to a supreme
religious genius namely, Jesus. God as a loving father,
in contrast to the wrathful and stern God of Judaism !

1 Bdha mezia, fol. 38, col. 2 ; see also Bereschit, fol. 55, col. 2. We
saw previously how the story of the rich youth is regarded by Schmiedel
as one of the " pillars of a really scientific life of Jesus," because it contains
the disavowal of the epithet "good" on the part of Jesus. But, as Smith
has shown in his Ecce Deus, there is question only of a parable. The rich
youth is a symbol of Judaism, which must renounce its property its
prerogatives and prejudices and share them with the Gentiles, and " goes
away sorrowful " because it has not the courage to do so. The words,
"And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved" (Mark x, 22),
are, as Smith has shown, strikingly based upon the words of Isaiah Ivii, 17,
where the Greek translation says of Israel: "And he was grieved, and
went his way sadly." May not the whole story be merely a paraphrase of
the words of Isaiah ?



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 263

" God and the soul, the soul and its God " since Harnack
published his Wesen des Christentums the refrain has
echoed in every chapel and in all the publications of the
evangelical and liberal theological school. They take it
for granted, of course, that the " son of God," whether
this is meant in the metaphysical or merely in the
metaphorical sense, must have had a quite new con-
ception of God, throwing in the shade all earlier ideas,
and they talk themselves into an ecstatic admiration of
Jesus's conception of God. Yet the idea of God the
Father is common to all religions; and it is sheer theo-
logical prejudice to say that, when a Greek prayed to
" Father Zeus " or a German to " All-father Odin," there
was no corresponding sentiment in his soul, and his piety
was not coloured by a childlike trust in the goodness, the
surpassing wisdom, and the power of God conceived as a
father. 1 Long before the time of Jesus the idea of God
as the Father was quite common among the Jews.
Wendt, in his System der christlichen Lehre (1906),
counts no less than twenty-three passages in the Old
Testament in which God is conceived as Father in just
the same sense as we find in Jesus. 2 Isaiah exclaims, for
instance (Ixiii, 16 ; Ixiv, 7) : " Doubtless thou art our

father thou, Lord, art our father, our redeemer."

It may be urged that the Jewish Jahveh is a stern
God, who visits the sins of the fathers on the children
down to the third and fourth generation (Exodtcs xxxiv, 7) .
But we also read in the Old Testament : " The fathers
shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall
the children be put to death for the fathers " (Deut.
xxiv, 16) ; and, on the other hand, the idea of God as a
stern, punishing father is not foreign to Jesus. And
where shall we find in the words of Jesus a finer utter-
ance on God than this : " The Lord God, merciful and

1 See A. Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie (1903), p. 141.

2 Cf . Exodus xxxiv, 6 ; Deut . viii, 5 ; xxxii, 6 ; Sir. xxiii, 1 ; Ps. ciii ;
Wisdom ii, 16, etc.



264 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and
truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity
and transgression and sin " (Exodus xxxiv, 6 and 7) ? Or
where shall we find more fervent thanksgiving for God's
fatherly goodness and mercy than in the psalmist
(Psalm ciii) ?

Bless the Lord, O my soul ; and all that is within me,
bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul ; and forget not all his
benefits ;

Who forgiveth all thine iniquities ; who healeth all thy
diseases ;

Who redeemeth thy life from destruction ; who crowneth
thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies ;

Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and
plenteous in mercy.

He will not always chide ; neither will he keep his
anger for ever.

He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded
us according to our iniquities

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth
them that fear him.

For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we
are dust.

As for man, his days are as grass ; as a flower of the
field, so he flourisheth.

For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone ; and the
place thereof shall know it no more.

But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to ever-
lasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness
unto children's children.

As regards the relation of God the Father to the
individual soul, this " religious individualism," as it is
called, is not peculiar to Jesus or Christianity, but a
fundamental feature of all deeper religions, and especially
of the mystery-cults. In all of them the individual
sought to enter into a direct personal relation to the deity,
and the subjective feeling of the presence of God in them
was not less strong and deep than in the case of Jesus.

In point of fact the God of Jesus is merely the God of



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 265

the Old Testament, the one God of Israel (Mark xii, 29),
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matthew xxii, 32).
Jesus himself, as described in the gospels, is so little con-
scious of teaching anything new in this respect that he
makes no claim to do so. Wrede destroyed the theo-
logical legend that Jesus had taught a new and deeper
conception of God. 1 Even Wendt, when he does attempt
to define the difference between the God of Jesus and the
God of Judaism, has at length to confess the truth, and
admit, in regard to the idea of God the Father : " Jesus
was not the first to strike this note ; it was heard before
his time both in the Jewish and Greek religious worlds."
It is true that he adds that the belief in God the Father
had never before been " conceived with such confidence
and plainness, such power and exclusiveness, as here, and
never brought into such definite relation to the personal
life " (p. 25) ; but R. Griitzmacher has rightly charac-
terised these as " statements which, apart from their really
great modesty as a description of something new and
epoch-making, which Christianity is supposed to have
introduced into the religious history of mankind, are not
capable of proof." 2

The God and Father of Jesus is the common God of
the Jews. " Not a sparrow shall fall on the ground
without your Father," says Jesus in Matthew (x, 29) ; and
he adds : " The very hairs of your head are all numbered."
We read the same in the book of Job : " Doth not he see
my ways and count all my steps?" (xxxi, 4). "Without
the will of God no bird falls from heaven," says the
Talmud; "how much the less shall danger threaten a
man's life, unless the creator himself make it?" ! And it
is the same in Pesikta (fol. 18, col. 4) : " Do I not number
every hair of every creature?" "No man strikes here
below with his finger but it is known above " (Chulin, 7).

Much stress has been laid on the fact that Jesus does

1 Paulus, p. 91. 2 Gegen den religiosen Rilckschritt (1910), p. 4.

3 Bereschit rabba, 79, fol. 77, col. 4.



266 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

not speak of God in general as the father of all men, but
specifically as his father. But in Mark (viii, 38 ; xiii, 32)
Jesus calls God not so much his father as the father of
the Christ. It is only in Matthew and Luke that we find
that intimacy and familiarity in the words of Jesus
respecting his relation to God, and in John it assumes a
thoroughly mystical character. 1 But that he calls God
his father is, as we saw, an expression taken from the
book of Wisdom, where the wicked hate the " just,"
because he speaks of God as " his father " (ii, 16).

 Love of Neighbours and of Enemies. We cannot,
therefore, find in their conception of God the extra-
ordinary feature that would justify us in ascribing the
words of the gospels to so extraordinary a man as Jesus.
Is it in their ethical ideas ?

According to Mark (xii, 29), Jesus answers the scribe
who asks him which is the chief commandment : " Hear,
Israel ; The Lord our God is one Lord : and thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength ;
this is the first commandment. And the second is like
namely, this : Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
The words are found in Deut. vi, 4, and Levit. xix, 18.
Jesus himself is well aware that in this he is not express-
ing any new idea. The way in which the scribe at once
agrees with him shows that he is only putting a common
opinion, and this is shown also by the parallel passage,
Luke x, 25, where Jesus makes the scribe quote the
words as a commonplace of the law. In Matthew xxii, 40,
Jesus adds : " On these two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets." Further, we read in Tobias
iv, 16 : " What thou dost not wish any man to do unto
thee do thou not unto another "; and we find the saying
in the same negative form in the Talmud : "A heathen
came to Hillel and said to him : I will embrace Judaism

1 Ernest Havet, Le Christianisme et ses origines (1884), iv, p. 37.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 267

on condition that thou teachest me the whole doctrine
during the time that I stand on one leg. And Hillel
said : What thou dost not like do not to thy neighbour ;
that is the whole doctrine. All the rest is only explana-
tion; go thou and learn." 1 If this is supposed to be less
than Jesus demands, we must remember that the maxim is
in a negative form in the older editions of the gospels. In
this respect, therefore, the " love " which Jesus demands
is merely the Old Testament love of one's neighbour.

In Matthew v, 43, however, it is said : " Ye have
heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neigh-
bour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love
your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them
that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use
you and persecute you." Here the love of one's neigh-
bour seems to be elevated into a command to love one's
enemies. Weiss is astonished that I have " overlooked
this, and so many other things" (p. 166). I should have
thought that Christian apologists would have been better
advised not to touch the point. If Jesus really spoke
these words, he betrayed an astonishing ignorance of the
Mosaic law. Where is it written that the Jews must
hate their enemies ? In Levit. xix, 18, where the love of
one's neighbour is prescribed, it is expressly said : " Thou
shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children
of thy people," and " Thou shalt not hate thy brother
in thine heart ; thou shalt not in any wise rebuke thy
neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him [thou shalt
freely call thy neighbour to account, that thou bear no
sin on his account] ." Not only towards their own people,
but even towards strangers, the Jews must not be without
love : " Thou shalt not oppress a stranger ; for ye know
the heart of a stranger, seeing that ye were strangers in
the land of Egypt " (Exodus xxiii, 9), and " The stranger
that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born

1 Tract. Schabboth, 31a.



268 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself " (Levit.
xix, 34). Even the love of enemies is commanded in the
law : " If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going
astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again. If
thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his
burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt
surely help with him " (Exodus xxiii, 4 and 5). " Bejoice
not," says Proverbs (xxiv, 17), "when thine enemy
falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he
stumbleth." " If thine enemy be hungry, give him
bread to eat ; and if he be thirsty, give him water to
drink ; for thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head,
and the Lord shall reward thee" (xxv, 21 and 22). In
Job it is represented as a crime against God to rejoice
over the misfortune of one's enemy (xxxi, 29), and the
psalmist boasts of having saved one who had been his
enemy without cause (vii, 5). "Say not thou, I will
recompense evil," it is said in Proverbs (xx, 22) ; " but
wait on the Lord, and he shall save thee." " Let them
curse, but bless thou," says the psalmist (cix, 28). And
Jesus Sirach says : " Forgive thy neighbour the injury he
has done thee ; then will thy sins be forgiven thee when
thou prayest " (xxviii, 1).

Not only the Old Testament but the Talmud is full of
demands of love of one's enemies and examples of good
feeling towards opponents. " Thou shalt not hate, not
even internally" (Menachot, 18). "Love him that
punisheth thee" (Derech Erez Sutha,c.9). "How is
it possible for one that fears God to hate a man and
regard him as an enemy?" (Pessachim, 113). A rabbi
used, before he went to bed, to forgive all who had
injured him during the day. Another, Kabbi Josua,
wished to bring the divine judgment upon a heretic who
tormented him, but went to sleep, and when he awoke
reflected : This sleep was a warning that the just should
never call the punishment of God on the guilty (Berachot,
76, also 10a). "When," says the Talmud (Sanhedrim,



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 269

396), "the angels wished to sing a chant of joy because
the Egyptians were destroyed in the sea, God said to
them: My creatures are drowned, and would ye sing?"
Finally Job says (xxxi, 13) : "If I did despise the cause
of my manservant or of my maidservant, when they
contended with me ; what then shall I do when God

riseth up ? Did not he that made me in the womb

make him ? and did not one fashion us in the womb?"

The Talmud by no means restricts this love of one's
enemies to members of one's own people. As man is
bidden to pray to God for sinners (Sohar to Genesis,
fol. 67), so God says to Moses: "Israelite or Gentile,
man or woman, slave or free, all are alike for you"
(Jalkut, c. 20&). In accordance with this, and in agree-
ment with Levit, xix, 9, the Talmud commands them
not to prevent the Gentile poor from gleaning in the
fields (Gittin, c. 5), and repeatedly represents Abraham
the Israelite as a model of tolerance. The best is,
however, that the words of Jesus, " Bless them that
curse you, do good to them that hate you," are not found
at all in the older manuscripts of the gospels, but are
found in the Talmud, where we read : " It is better to be
wronged by others than to wrong" (Sanhedrim, fol. 48),
and " Be rather among the persecuted than the perse-
cutors" (Baba mezia, 93). "Where in the world," asks
Weiss, " is there a Jewish writing or a Jewish community
that has ever made love of one's enemy a fundamental
rule of commerce? And wherever it has been put in
practice whence came the impulse, who inspired men
thereto ? The Talmud, or the Old Testament, or the
figure of him who sealed his word on the cross?" (p. 165).
The answer is found in the above.

It is sheer theological prejudice and perversion of
history to say that Jesus was " the first " to preach love
of enemies, that men owe to his example alone that love
of one's neighbour has become the supreme principle of
moral conduct, as Weinel claims. As if the Stoics had



270 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

not preached universal love of mankind long before the
time of Jesus ; not merely as a passive endurance, but as
an active interest in the lot of others and disinterested
helpfulness on the basis of descent from a common
divine Father and as members of a common humanity !
As if Jesus had not violated his own command in his
conduct towards the Canaanite woman (Mark vii, 27), his
refusal to allow the disciples to go and preach the gospel
to the Gentiles and the Samaritans (Matthew x, 5), his
curse of the places that would not be converted, and his
anger against the Pharisees and scribes on account of
their opposition to him ! It is an empty theological
phrase to say that Jesus " raised the altruistic ideal to a
pitch of supreme intimacy " and " destroyed in principle
the barriers between peoples and sects"; 1 it is anything
but the outcome of candid religious-scientific inquiry it
is a resolute closing of one's eyes to the facts to exalt
Jesus, in face of the above quotations from the Old
Testament and the Talmud, for a merit which does not
belong to him, but to them, and to maintain the fiction
that love of enemies was made a " fundamental rule of
trade " by Jesus in any higher sense than we find in the
rest of Judaism. As long as theologians continue to
praise the moral maxims of Jesus in this way at the
expense of non-Christian ethics, we must decline to
regard their efforts as impartial, in spite of that claim of
" honourableness " which they repeat so pitifully, and
however proudly they may wrap themselves in the

1 " Jesus by no means ' discovered ' altruism in ethics. Hellenistic
moralists urged altruism long before the birth of Jesus. If the ethic of
Jesus seems particularly altruistic, this is due, apart from theological
suggestion, to the fact that the altruistic maxims of Jesus may seem less
restricted and more impressive than in the case of the Greeks, because the
scientific capacity, and therefore the scientific control of a new ethic,
were slighter in the case of the Jews and Jesus than among the Greeks and
their leading thinkers" (Schneider, p. 476). We may add that, when
religious education and the Church do all they can to impress on the
people this false view of the ethic of Jesus, they rely not only on the
thoughtlessness of the masses, but on the fact that very few know any-
thing about Greek or Hindoo philosophy and religion.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 271

mantle of their scientific infallibility. We do not
question their subjective honour, but we do question their
ability, in their atmosphere of theological hypnotism, to
see things as they really are. And if they grant that
the precept of love of enemies has in it nothing peculiarly
characteristic of Jesus, there is an end of the proof of
" uniqueness " that was based on it, and the historical
reality of the Jesus of the gospels falls to the ground.

(/) The Sermon on the Mount. Careful inquiry shows
that the remaining moral precepts and edifying sayings of
Jesus have no more title to originality than the command
to love one's neighbours and enemies. Take the Sermon
on the Mount, for instance, which is wanting in Mark,
and was certainly never delivered in the form in which
we have it; this collection of the quintessence of the
ethical teaching of Jesus is a "mere compilation of
existing Jewish literature," and does not contain a single
idea that we do not otherwise find in Jewish proverbial
literature. Robertson, following Rodriguez (Les origines
du Sermon de la Montague, 1868), has given in his
Christianity and Mythology a whole series of parallels;
and from the work of the Rabbi Dr. Emanuel Schreiber,
Die Prinzipien des Judentums, verglichen mit denen des
Christentums (1877), it will be seen that the number of
coincidences, not merely with the Talmud, is incalculable. 1

" Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the king-
dom of heaven," Jesus begins the Sermon ; and the
psalmist (cxvi, 6) says : " The Lord preserveth the
simple ; I was brought low, and he helped me." " Blessed
are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted," is the
next sentence ; and Isaiah says (Ixvi, 13), "As one whom
his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you," to those
who mourn the loss of their country, and announces to
them the glorious fulfilment of the divine promises.

1 See also Nork, RabbiniscJie Quellen und Parallelen zu neutestamentl.
Schriftstellen (1839) ; T. Eschelbacher, Das Judentum und das Wesen des
Christentums, 1908.



272 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

" Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,"
is the third maxim; and Isaiah says (Ivii, 15) : " I dwell
in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a
contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the
humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones."
" A man's pride shall bring him low," says Proverbs
(xxix, 23), "but honour shall uphold the humble in
spirit." " My son," says Ecclesiasticus (iii, 17), " do
thy work in humility ; the greater thou art do thou the
more humble thyself, and thou shalt find favour in the
eyes of the Lord." Babbi Jochanan says : " When a
man has acquired meekness, then will he also acquire
honour, wealth, and wisdom " (Midrash Jalkut Mischle,
22) ; and the psalmist says (xxxvii, 11) : " But the meek
shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the
abundance of peace."

" Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness," Jesus continues, "for they shall be filled."
" He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly,"
says Isaiah (xxxiii, 15), " shall dwell on high "; and the
Talmud says : " Any age in which the doctrine is not
found that is to say, in which a righteous life, conform-
able to the law, is not possible lives in hunger " (Schemot
rabba, cap. 31 ; see also Psalm cxviii, 19) . In Proverbs
we read (xxi, 21) : " He that followeth after righteousness
and mercy findeth life, righteousness, and honour." This
also agrees in substance with the fifth beatitude : " Blessed
are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." Pity and
sympathy, even for animals, are urged and praised both
in the Old Testament and the Talmud. 1 " Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God," is the sixth
beatitude. " Who shall ascend into the hill of the
Lord? " says the psalmist (xxiv, 3), "or who shall stand
in his holy place ? He that hath clean hands and a pure
heart." " Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be

1 Deut. xxv, 4 ; xxii, 6 and 10.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 273

called the children of God." But the psalmist also
exclaims (xxxiv, 14) : " Seek peace, and pursue it."
Indeed, peace is lifted to so lofty a position by the
Talmudists that they call the Messiah himself "peace,"
and Isaiah has described him as above all a bringer and
prince of peace. Finally, the eighth beatitude, " Blessed
are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven," has an echo in the
Talmud : " They who are persecuted and persecute not,
who sustain ridicule and injury and themselves do no
injury, are the elect of God, of whom it is said : They
shine like the sun" (Schabbeth, 886). We have already
seen, moreover, that persecution because of their righteous-
ness is a mark of the good in the book of Wisdom, and
secures heaven for them.

It is not necessary to go into other details of the
Sermon on the Mount. It contains, as we said, nothing
whatever beyond the common Jewish ethic, in spite of
the trouble the Evangelists have taken to set up an
artificial contrast between the ethic of Jesus and the
Jewish morality of the time, and the effort of Christian
theologians to obscure the real relation of the Christian to
the Jewish ethic. Thus the prohibition of anger against
one's brother (Matthew v, 22) is from Lev. xix, 17. 1 The
maxim that merely to look upon another's wife is equal to
adultery (Matthew v, 28) is covered by Job xxxi, 1, and
Ecclus. ix, 5 and 8, and similar strict maxims in the
Talmud, such as : " Whoever regards even the little finger
of a woman has already violated matrimony in his heart "
(Bereschit, 24 and 24a). When Jesus insists on purity
and goodness of heart before a man approaches the altar
to offer sacrifice (Matthew v, 23), he is merely following
Isaiah and the other prophets who place piety of heart
above the external piety of sacrifices and good works. 2

1 See also Gen. xlix, 7 ; Prov. xii, 16, and xiv, 16.

2 Isaiah i, 11 ; Jer. vi, 20 ; vii, 22 ; Hosea vi, 6 ; Amos v, 22 ; Micah
vi, 6 ; Mai. i, 10 ; Eccles. vii, 9, etc.

T



274 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

Indeed, it seems that the much-quoted maxim, that one
must not resist evil, but present the other cheek to the
smiter (Matthew v, 39), can be traced to Isaiah 1, 6, and
the description of the servant of God, who presents his
back to those who beat him and his cheeks to those who
plucked the hair. There is, moreover, a famous Jewish
proverb : "If any demand thy ass, give him the saddle
also" (Baba kama, 27).

Again, the advice as to almsgiving, doing good in secret
(Matthew vi, 1-4), praying and fasting (5), and forgiving
injuries (14) is founded on Jewish teaching, and is echoed in
similar maxims of the Old Testament and the Talmud.
Isaiah demands an inward, not an external, fast (Iviii) . The
preacher bids his readers avoid many words in praying
(v, 1 ; see also Ecclesiastic us vii, 14). As to the " Lord's
Prayer," not only are the several phrases contained in the
Old Testament 1 and in the Talmud, but it is certain that
it was not uttered by Jesus in its present form. 2 The
warning against the accumulation of earthly treasures
and against the dangers of wealth (Matthew vi, 19), and
the counsel to look first to the kingdom of God, are quite
in accord with the prophets (Ecclesus. xxvii, 1, xxxi, 3 ;
Eccles. v, 9, xii). The saying, "Judge not, that ye be
not judged" (Matthew vii, 1), runs in the Talmud:
" Judge everyone as favourably as possible " (Abot, i, 6),
and " Judge not thy neighbour until thou hast stood in
his place" (Abot, ii, 4), and "With the measure with
which a man measures shall it be meted unto him "
(Sota, 86). The saying about the beam and the mote
(Matthew vii, 4) is found word for word in the Talmud
(Baba bathra, 15), and runs, in the mouth of the Rabbi
Nathan : " The fault from which thou art not free blame



1 See, for instance, Ecclesiasticus xxviii, 2.

2 See Robertson, p. 450, and the above note concerning the Lord's
Prayer. It is quite unintelligible to me how, in face of this plain fact,
a Jewish rabbi like Klein can say : " Students of the evolution of religion
have not as yet made any attempt to bring forward parallels to this unique(!)
prayer. It is the most personal thing that we have of Jesus " (p. 34).



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 275

not in another " (Baba mezia, 59). The sentence, "Ask,
and it shall be given to you ; seek, and ye shall find ;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you," corresponds to
the words of the prophet Jeremiah (xxix, 13) : " And ye
shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me
with all your heart," and to " The doors of prayer are
never closed" of the Talmud (So ta, 49). Jeremiah, like
Jesus, warns against false prophets, and urges to true
repentance and good deeds.

In view of all this one does not see why the people
should be " astonished " at the teaching of Jesus (Matthew
vii, 28), since all the moral principles which the Evangelists
put in the so-called Sermon on the Mount had long been,
as Kenan says, "the small change of the synagogues."
Perhaps it will be suggested that the finest sayings of
Jesus which are also found in the Talmud have been taken
by the latter from the gospels. But at the time of the
compilation of the Talmud the mutual hatred of the two
parties was so great that a pious Jew would quite certainly
not have admitted into his collection sayings which he
knew to be represented by the Christians as the " words
of Jesus." If it were done unwittingly, it would only
show how slight the difference was from the first between
the Jewish and the Christian morality ; and it would be
difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Christians had
taken their "words of Jesus" from the common pro-
verbial wisdom of the Jews.

Naturally, it was only the best in the available literature
that seemed to the Christians good enough to be put in
the mouth of Jesus. We are, of course, dealing with a
" spiritualised and intimate Judaism," a philosophy of
life and deity that had, among the dispersed Jews, been
permeated by the finer thought and feeling of the Greek
spirit. Anyone who doubts the possibility of this must
have in mind only the description of Judaism in the pages
of the gospels themselves, and take it to be an historical
fact that Judaism was in the time of Jesus as fossilised



276 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

and spiritless as it is described in the gospels. Such an
assumption is a sheer petitio principii, and runs counter
to the familiar experience that, when the religious leaders
of a people lapse into formalism, the stream of inner
religious life runs freely in other channels, and may
produce new and remarkable phenomena. Eemember
the ancient mystics in the time of the scholastics of the
Middle Ages, or the pietists during the predominance of
the driest theological rationalism.

It is usually among the laity, the secret sects and con-
venticles, that the religious life pulses all the more
vigorously and becomes all the deeper in proportion to
the formalism of the official religion. Certainly, in
contrast to the spirit of the Pharisees and scribes about
the beginning of the second century, it is a " new spirit "
that lives in the Jesus-sect, and finds expression in the
words and ideas which Jesus is supposed to have uttered.
But it is not a new spirit in the creative sense, since all
that it contains of moral value has been derived from the
great fund of Jewish proverbial wisdom, not produced by
itself. They are the ideals of men who, no one knows
how long before, had brooded over the writings of the
prophets, especially Isaiah, lit the fire of the inner
religious world from the plain and penetrating piety of
the psalms and proverbs, absorbed their spirit, and never
ceased to remain in continuous contact with the " ever-
living in the Scriptures." They could not, it is true, have
transferred these finer flowers of Judaism to their own
garden if they had not been personally disposed to this
religious intimacy. But that one single personality gave
them this spirit, as theologians say, it is just as super-
fluous to suppose as in similar cases of the rise of a
pietistic and mystic fervour among the laity by the side
of the official teaching of the sect. These first Christians
had not to seek the pearls the true and eternal in the
wilderness of official knowledge of the law, as they had
never expressly looked there for them. And when it is



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 277

said that only a quite exceptional religious genius like
Jesus could have done this, it is forgotten that the words
of Jesus which have come down to us were not selected by
him, but by the Evangelists, out of tradition ; since they
certainly represent only an insignificant part of what
Jesus could have taught.

Thus the fall of Jerusalem, the collapse of the political
and national conditions of the Jewish religion, the in-
creasingly bitter antagonism of the legal piety of the
Pharisees to the Christian sectaries, and their inner
conception of the Jewish faith, wholly sufiice to explain
not only the outburst of Messianic hope among them,
but why the Christians precisely at this time a time of
the deepest humiliation and trouble announced that the
Messiah was coming immediately, and directed all their
efforts to a preparation for his coming. All the lofty
moral maxims and promises on which the community
had long brooded, and which they may possibly have
gathered into a collection of so-called " Sayings of the
Lord," now sprang to the lips of the Christians, in
contrast to the official legal righteousness, took the form
of sayings of the expected Messiah himself, of warnings,
consolations, and promises given during his earthly life,
which they regarded as a condition of his coming again
in splendour as the Messiah ; and while the vague image
of the Isaian servant of God and Saviour that lived in
their hearts, perhaps fed by visionary experiences,
assumed the shape and features of an historical Jesus,
the word and image blended involuntarily, not con-
sciously, in their inflamed imaginations into an insepar-
able unity, just as religious sects are accustomed to regard
the most profound and important of their rules and
customs as revelations of the deity or of their supposed
founder.

(g) Further Parallel Passages. Thus we see that
from the words of Jesus no proof can be drawn of his
historicity ; indeed, even Weiss admits that it is "possible"



278 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

that " not a single word of Jesus has been preserved, and
that everything has been put into his mouth" (p. 168).
We think that we are quite justified in assuming this
when we find that it would be hard to quote a single
expression of Jesus that might not be taken from the
Talmud or the Old Testament. To what even apparently
small details this extends is seen in Matthew viii, 22 :
" Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead." This
corresponds to the command in the Talmud to postpone
the burial of the body of a relative to reading in the law
(Megillah, fol. 3). In fact, the peculiar expression of
Jesus can only be understood when we learn that the
godless living are said in the Talmud to be " dead "
(Jalkut Rubeni, fol. 177, col. 3). Even such a saying
as that in Matthew x, 40-42, and Luke x, 16, is found
in the Talmud : " He who takes his neighbour into his
house has the same reward as if the Schechina [divine
spirit] itself entered his house " (Shir hashirim rabba,
fol. 13, col. 3). "He who feeds one learned in divine
things will be blessed by God and men " (Sohar to Gen.,
fol. 129, col. 512). " If ye give ear to my angel, it is as
if ye hearkened unto me" (Schemoth rabba Abschn., 32,
fol. 131, col. 3). " If thou honourest my commandments,
thou honourest me ; if thou despisest them, thou despisest
me in them" (Tanchuma, fol. 16, col. 3).

Take such a saying as that in Matthew x, 35 : "I am
come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law," and compare it with Micah
vii, 6 : " For the son dishonoureth the father, the
daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter-in-
law against her mother-in-law ; a man's enemies are the
men of his own house." The advice of Jesus as to the
method of reconciliation with a brother who has offended
(Matthew xviii, 15-17) corresponds to the procedure
enjoined by Joma (fol. 87, col. 1), except that in the one
case it is the injured, and in the other the injurer, who



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 279

must act. Matthew xviii, 20 " Where two or three are
gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst
of them " runs in the Talmud : " Where there are two
persons, and they make not the law the subject of their
discourse, is the seat of the scoffer [Ps.. i, 1]; but where
the law is the subject of discourse, there also is the
Schechina" i.e., the spirit of God (PirJce Aboth, col. 3).
Jesus says in Luke x, 18 : "I beheld Satan as lightning
fall from heaven." In Isaiah it is similarly said of
Babylon : " How art thou fallen from heaven, Lucifer,
son of the morning ! how art thou cut down to the
ground, which didst weaken the nations!" (xiv, 12), and
the context makes it clear how easily the words might be
applied to Satan.

We have previously shown how the Talmud agrees as
to the story of the coin of the taxes and the answer of
Jesus to the question of the Pharisees, whether it was
lawful to give tribute to Caesar or no. The story of the
anointing of Jesus at Bethany has obviously grown out
of Psalm xxiii, 5 (" Thou preparest a table before me in
the presence of mine enemies ; thou anointest my head
with oil ; my cup runneth over "), and Deut. xv, 11 (" For
the poor shall never cease out of the land"). The scene
in the garden of Gethsemane is provoked by Genesis
xxii, 3 and 5, where Abraham takes with him his son
Isaac and two servants, and bids them wait and pray
while he goes with Isaac to sacrifice the boy. There is
also a reference to the story of Elisha, when he falls
asleep under a bush as he flies before Ahab, and is twice
awakened by an angel, who gives him a loaf and a vessel
of water, and bids him strengthen himself for the journey.
It is significant that we find here the words which occur
in the gospels : " It is enough. Take now my life,
Jahveh " (Mark xiv, 36 and 41). Then there is the
phrase : " My soul is exceeding sorrowful." " Why art
thou cast down, my soul ? and why art thou disquieted
in me ? hope thou in God ; for I shall yet praise him for



280 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

the help of his countenance "; so runs Psalm xlii, 5, in
accord with Mark xiv, 34. And verses 35 and 36 suggest
Ecclesiasticus (xxiii, 1 and 4) : "0 Lord, my Father and
the author of my life, let me not fall through them [my

sins] abandon me not to the attack they plan

against me."

10. THE PAEABLES OF JESUS.

The parables come after the phrases of the Sermon on
the Mount as the most important of the sayings of Jesus.
They are so greatly esteemed, and have such a repute for
" uniqueness " and unsurpassable excellence that in the
opinion of many they would suffice of themselves to
establish the authorship of Jesus.

All these parables deal with " the kingdom of heaven,"
the manner of its spread, the way to become worthy of it,
and the attitude which the Jews and Gentiles assume in
regard to the promise of it in the Jesus-cult. The con-
nection with Isaiah is thus obvious.

" Go and tell this people," Jahveh bids the prophet,
" Hear ye indeed, but understand not ; and see ye indeed,
but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and
make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes ; lest they see
with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand
with their heart, and convert, and be healed " (vi, 9 and 10) .
" With stammering lips and another tongue will he speak
to this people. To whom he said, This is the rest where-
with ye may cause the weary to rest ; and this is the
refreshing ; yet they would not hear " (xxviii, 11 and 12).
These words have had a general influence on the descrip-
tion of the conduct of the Jews to Jesus, but they have
had the special effect of causing the Evangelists to make
Jesus speak in parables (Matthew xiii, 13). In this way
we can understand the otherwise unintelligible saying in
Mark iv, 12, that the Saviour speaks in parables to the
people in order that they may not understand him and be
converted and receive forgiveness for their sins. There is



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 281

simply question of a quotation from Isaiah. More than
elsewhere we here recognise the mystery-character of the
original Christianity of the Jessaeans, who thus reveal
their dependence on Isaiah. The doctrine is communi-
cated in parables which are unintelligible to " outsiders "
and are not intended to be understood by them. Only
the disciples or initiated are permitted to perceive " the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven." Hence we read in
Matthew xiii, 34 and 35 : " All these things spake Jesus
unto the multitude in parables ; and without a parable
spake he not unto them ; that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth
in parables ; I will utter things which have been kept
secret from the foundation of the world " (Psalm Ixxviii, 2).
Mark, moreover, says that he explained all to his disciples
(iv, 34).

In these circumstances we are not surprised to find one
of the chief parables, that of the sower (Matthew xiii, 3 ;
Luke viii, 5), first among the Naassenes, the pre-Christian
Gnostic sect, the close relation of which to Christianity
we have already pointed out. In this parable, however,
we have, as W. B. Smith has shown at length, a modifica-
tion and adaptation of a much older allegory in which the
Gnostic teaching illustrated the sowing by God of the seed
springing from the Logos which produces the world. 1 In
the case of many other parables of Jesus, also, the source
can be traced, and they are not reproduced as sayings of
Jesus with any great improvement. Thus the parable of
the merchant who exchanges all his goods for a single
pearl is found in the Talmud (Schabbat, fol. 119, col 1),
and goes back to Proverbs viii, 10 : " Receive my instruc-
tion, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice

1 Der vorchristliche Jesus (1906), pp. 108-135. Moreover, we read in
the first Epistle of Clement : " The sower went forth and cast all his seed
on the earth. They fall dry and naked on the soil, rot, and then the care
of the Lord causes them to rise again out of their corruption, and from the
one many are produced, and they bring forth fruit" (xxiv, 5). We see
that the parable was told in many forms. Which form comes from Jesus ?



282 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

gold. For wisdom is better than rubies ; and all the
things that may be desired are not to be compared to it."
Even the parable of the net, which follows it in Matthew,
seems to be inspired by the same passage in the Talmud,
according to which the pearl is lost in a storm, swallowed
by a fish, and recovered by the catching of the fish, and
restored to its original owner, who sells it and obtains
great wealth.

We read as follows in the Talmud : " God said to man :
How great is thy guilt for betraying me ? Thou sinnest
against me, and I have patience with thee. Thy soul
comes daily to me, when thou sleepest, and renders its
account, and remains my debtor. Yet I give thee back
thy soul, which is my property. So do thou each evening
return his pledge to thy debtor." It is not difficult to
see in this passage the parable of the dishonest servant
(Matthew xviii, 23).

Again, we read in the Talmud : "To whom shall I
liken the Babbi Bon, son of Chaija ? To a king that hath
hired labourers, among whom was one of great power.
This man did the king summon to himself, and held
speech with him. And when the night fell, the hired
labourers came to receive their hire. But the king gave
to the favoured labourer the same hire which he had
given unto the others. Then they murmured and said :
We have laboured the whole day, and this man hath
laboured but two hours, yet there is given unto him the
same wage that we have received. And the king sent
them away, saying : This man hath done more in two
hours than ye have done during the whole of the day.
Even so had the Eabbi Bon done more in the study of
the law in the twenty-eight years of his life than another
would have done who had lived an hundred years "
(Berachoth, fol. 5, col. 3). The parable is quite con-
sistent and unassailable. But the Biblical parallel the
parable of the workers in the vineyard is clearly dis-
tasteful, since the king attempts to justify his conduct by



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 283

a purely arbitrary feeling, and regards his lack of justice
as a virtue (Matthew xx, 15). It has not been improved
in the mouth of Jesus, where it is made to illustrate the
theme that in the kingdom of heaven the last shall be
first, and the first last ; that many are called, but few
chosen (xx, 16).

The parable of the two sons recalls the saying of the
Talmud : " The just promise little, but do much " (Baba
mezia, fol. 76, col. 2). The parable of the rebellious
vine-workers is inspired by Isaiah v :

My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill.

And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof,
and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in

the midst of it and he looked that it should bring forth

grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of
Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.

What could have been done more to my vineyard, that
I have not done it ? Wherefore, when I looked that it
should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes ?

And now go to : I will tell you what I will do to my
vineyard. I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall
be eaten up ; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall
be trodden down :

And I will lay it waste For the vineyard of the

Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah
his pleasant plant ; and he looked for judgment, but behold
oppression ; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

The parable of the royal marriage-feast runs in the
Talmud : "A king held a great banquet, to which many
guests were invited. They were requested to bathe,
anoint themselves, and put on their festive garments, in
order to appear worthily before the king. But the hour
of the banquet was not definitely fixed. The more shrewd
were seen walking up and down before the door of the
palace about the ninth hour of the day, awaiting the
moment when they should be permitted to enter. The
more short-sighted thought otherwise, and each one went
about his business, as on other days. Suddenly the
summons was sent forth that those who were invited



284 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

should come to the king's table. Then the former came in
splendid garments, but the others in their soiled workday-
clothes, on account of the haste of the summons. The king
looked with friendly eye on those who had shown themselves
prepared at his invitation ; but the others, who had paid
less regard to the king's command and had entered the
palace in unfitting garments, had to receive as their
reward the displeasure of the king. Those who were
successful had a place at the royal table ; the unsuccessful
had to witness this, and had in addition to undergo severe
punishment." 1 The parable is not very happy, on account
of its many improbabilities ; but in the New Testament
it is altogether absurd. The invitation to a banquet
already prepared ; the reluctance of the guests to go to
the marriage-feast, so that they even kill some of the
servants ; the blind fury of the king, who burns the town
in revenge ; his anger against one who is brought in from
the road because he has not on the wedding-garment,
and the terrible punishment inflicted on him all this is
so unnatural, grotesque, and ridiculous that it can only
be pronounced a complete perversion of the Talmud
original.

The parable of the ten virgins (Matthew xxv, 1) , which
embodies the same ideas, is no better. Ten maidens
going out to meet a bridegroom at night, and some of
them forgetting (!) the oil for their lamps and being
rejected by the bridegroom for this slight negligence
these are not pictures taken from life, but untrue con-
structions of a flighty imagination. The same may be
said of the master in the parable of the loan of the
talents (Matthew xxv, 14), who is angry with the servant
who brings back his talent without interest, deals hardly
with him, and casts him into the darkness, where there
was weeping and gnashing of teeth. We may note in
passing that Matthew xxv, 29, is a rabbinical proverb

1 Koheleth rabba, 9, 8. See also Bereschit rabba, sect. 62, fol. 60, col. 3 ;
and Sohar Levit., fol. 40, col. 158.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 285

from the Talmud, where we read : " He who gathers
shall have more added unto him ; but he who suffers a
loss, from him shall yet more be taken." 1

Of the parables in Luke, that of the lost sheep (xv, 4)
runs as follows in the Talmud : "A muleteer drove twelve
span before him, all laden with wine. One of them
strayed into the yard of a Gentile. Then the driver left
the others, and sought the one that had broken loose.
Asked how he had ventured to leave the others for the
sake of one, he answered : The others remained on the
public road, where there was no danger of any man
seeking to steal my property, as he would know that he
was observed by so many. So it was with the other
children of Jacob [besides Joseph]. They remained
under the eye of their father, and were moreover older
than Joseph. He, however, was left to himself in his
youth. Hence the Scripture says that God took special
care of him." 2

The parable of the lost piece of silver (xv, 8) repeats
and weakens the same idea, and is likewise found in the
Talmud : " When a man loses a piece of gold, he lights
many lamps in order to seek it. If a man takes all this
trouble for the sake of temporal things, how much the
more should he when there is question of treasures that
keep their worth in the world to come ?" (Midrash Schir
hashirim, fol. 3, col. 2). It is also the theory of the
rabbis 3 that penitent sinners are dearer to God than the
virtuous (Luke xv, 10).

The parable of the unjust steward (Luke xvi, 1) runs
as follows in the Talmud : "A king had appointed two
overseers. One he chose as master of the treasure ; the
other he put in charge of the straw-store. After a time
the latter fell under suspicion of unfaithfulness. Never-



1 Tikkunim in Sohar Chadash, fol. 75, col. 4.

2 Bereschit rabba, sect. 86, fol. 84, col. 3.

3 See Sohar to Gen., fol. 29, col. 1113, where it is said that the penitent
was a stage above the pious ; and Sohar to Lev., fol. 7, col. 56.



286 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

theless he complained that he was not promoted to the
post of master of the treasure. Then was he asked, in
astonishment at his words : Fool, thou hast incurred
suspicion in charge of the stores of straw : how couldst
thou be entrusted with the treasure?" (Jalkut Simeoni,
(sect. 1, fol. 81, col. 1). The parable is not profound;
but it is not quite inconceivable, as is the case with the
parable in the gospel, when it says: "And the lord
commended the unjust steward," and " Make to your-
selves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness He

that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in
much ; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also
in much. If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the
unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust
the true riches ? And if ye have not been faithful in that
which is another man's, who shall give you that which is
your own?" (8-12). One asks in astonishment how
such a parable could find admission into the New
Testament.

The parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus (Luke
xvi, 20) reminds us of the Talmud story of two men who
died at the same time, one of whom had lived virtuously
and the other viciously, and whom a rabbi saw, the one
enjoying great delight, the other painfully licking with his
tongue the edge of a spring, the water of which he could
not reach. 1 We read much the same in Midrasch
Kohekth, fol. 86, col. 14 : " Of two sinners one had
been converted before his death ; the other remained in
sin. When the latter went to hell, he marvelled to see
the former companion of his evil deeds taken into heaven.
Then he heard a voice : Fool, know that thy frightful
death brought thy companion to repentance ; why didst
thou refuse during thy life to turn thy heart to penance ?
To this the sinner replied : Let me do penance now.
Fool, the voice cried once more, knowest thou not that

1 Tractat. Chagiga, fol. 77, col. 4, Jerusalem Talmud.



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 287

eternal life is like the Sabbath ? He who does not
prepare his food for the Sabbath on the day of prepara-
tion [Friday] , whereof will he eat on the Sabbath ? He
who does not penance before he dies shall have no share
in eternal life." In fact, the very words of Luke xvi, 25,
are found in the Talmud, where it is said of the godless :
" Because you have no share in that life you receive your
reward in this world " (Berachoth, fol. 61, col. 2).

In order to illustrate the words, " Ask, and it shall be
given you; knock, and it shall be opened unto you"
(Luke xi, 9), Jesus tells the parable of a man who goes
to a friend at midnight and asks for three loaves, which
he at length receives, not from good-feeling or affection,
but because of his importunity. The widow also (Luke
xviii, 1) obtains her deliverance from her adversary after
long entreaty only because she was so troublesome to the
judge. These parables are harmless in themselves, but
what an unworthy idea of God is embodied in them !

The comparison of the Messiah to a bridegroom
(Matthew ix, 15 ; John iii, 29), and his coming to that of
a thief in the night (Luke xii, 39), must have been very
common among the Jews, as we find it also in Revelation
(iii, 3, and xix, 7), and we saw that this was originally a
Jewish work, subsequently modified in the Christian
sense ; perhaps it belonged to the circle of Gnostic sects
from which Christianity issued. 1

After all this it is impossible to say that the parables
of Jesus could not be " invented " or are " unsurpassable."
On the contrary, they are often defective, sometimes
quite inconceivable, and are closely related to the Jewish
parables both in form and contents ; indeed, they are in
part imitations of the latter, and are at times weakened,
instead of being improved, in reproduction. It is mere
theological hypnotism, which more or less affects all of
us, that makes so much of the parables of Jesus. And

1 Also compare Isaiah Ixi, 10, and Mark ii, 19.



288 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

when Fiebig says, in his Die Gleichnisreden Jesu (1899),
that these parables " have in themselves the guarantee that
no one but Jesus could have created them " (p. 162), we
know what to think of such extravagances.

The parables of the good Samaritan (Luke x), the
prodigal son (Luke xv), and the Pharisee and the publican
(Luke xviii) are really beautiful and important. The
first, however, has a parallel in a Buddhistic parable
which is believed to have had some influence on the
gospel story; 1 the coincidence proves at all events that
such a parable could be " invented." The parable of the
good Samaritan corresponds in substance with Deut. xxii, 1.
It is in harmony with Jewish morality, but not with the
command which Jesus laid on his disciples not to go to
the Samaritans. Possibly it is a later invention belonging
to the time when the Christian mission was extended to
non-Jewish places. Both of the first two parables give
ground for reflection in the fact that they are found only
in Luke, not in Matthew and John. This looks as if
they were not in the so-called collection of sayings. As
to the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, so
excellent a story may have been invented late, just as
well as that of the woman taken in adultery (John viii, 3).
How can we say that it was impossible for any but Jesus
to have told the story ?

11. GENERAL RESULT.

This examination of the parables contained in the
gospels confirms our conclusion that it is impossible to
see in the words of Jesus any proof of his historicity.
Theologians are shocked that the Christ-Myth is unable
to agree with the usual unrestrained admiration of the
ethical principles of Jesus. Yet it has a companion in
this in Schneider, who writes :

Jesus remains pre-Hellenic in ethic. He is a prophet,

1 Pfleiderer, Urchristentum (1902), i, p. 447; Van den Bergh van
Eysinga, IndiscJie EinflUsse auf evang. Erztthlungen (2nd ed. 1909, p. 57).



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 289

not a philosopher ; an instrument of God, not a free-
thinker. His highest conceptions are anthropomorphic ;
his whole nature is semi-scientific, scholastic, clear in
collecting instances to support his statement, but incapable
of appreciating and properly presenting instances to the
contrary. If we look only at details, we imagine that
Jesus has exhausted all the possibilities of ethics ; if we
regard the whole, we see that he skims the surface and
thinks he can hold all things, because he can penetrate
none. It is only children that can unite everything.
Thus Jesus is not the highest and freest personality of
history, but only the highest in ancient Judaism, restricted
and not free in comparison with the greatest Greek thinkers.
If, in spite of this, he had succeeded to their heritage with
his ethic, he owes this to his reactionary character. The
romanticists of Hellenism, sated with the rational, were
impressed by the irrationality, the paradox, the authori-
tative and primitive, the sentimental-social element in his
teaching ; romanticists easily become Catholics. To the
masses the prophet of Nazareth becomes a Tammuz-form ;
the authoritative foundation of his ethic becomes a blunt
command of a strong God to weak men ; the utilitarian
idea of redemption in this world (?) becomes a common
(immoral, in the sense of the highest Greek morality) and
material hope as regards the other world, of which Jesus
himself knew, and could know, nothing (p. 478).

Thus we can sufficiently understand the " mighty, life-
controlling impression" which the gospel figure of Jesus
has made on millions of people. " Some magic or power
must have gone forth from him," says Weiss, and he
points to the fact that art has at all times gone to the
gospels for material. " The true artist has a sure feeling
for the sincere and living ; he is for us an impartial
witness that" Jesus was an historical personality?
No, no ; but that " the gospel tradition, however it
arose, is not an insignificant thing, but something alive
and true " (p. 46). As if that were in contradiction to
our thesis that the " words of the Lord," because they
are supposed to come from Jesus, are immeasurably
overrated and their defects overlooked, and therefore
in no circumstances can they be used to prove the
historical reality of the god-man Jesus in the usual

u



290 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

sense ! This argument we cannot repeat it too often
runs in a circle, like all the others. No one betrays this
more clearly than Weiss himself when he exclaims to
the reader at the close of his work : " Take and read !

Bead the words of Jesus, as if they came from

Jesus, and thou wilt recognise that this is not merely the
simplest, but the safest, theory" (p. 170). That is
exactly what we charge against theology, even when it
professes to be critical : it has hitherto always read the
words of the gospels as if they came from Jesus, without
considering the opposite theory. This may very well be
the " simplest " and most convenient way of dealing with
the gospels ; but is it on that account the correct way ?
In such circumstances theologians naturally find what
they assumed in advance, just as the believer finds in the
gospels the Jesus whom he seeks the Jesus that heredity,
education, and custom have suggested to him. But that
this is a " scientific method," or has anything whatever
to do with sound historical research, is exactly what
we deny.

12. THE "STEONG PEKSONALITY."

When we regard all that we have seen as to the
mythic, Old Testament, and Talmudic character of the
actions and words of Jesus, it is difficult to maintain
with good conscience the existence of an historical Jesus.
Of which of his actions or words could it be said with
confidence that they really go back to an historical Jesus ?
The situation is not that certain things in the gospels
are found to be fictitious, and that this by no means robs
all the rest of historical value. The fact is that there is
nothing, absolutely nothing, either in the actions or words
of Jesus, that has not a mythical character or cannot be
traced to parallel passages in the Old Testament or the
Talmud, and is therefore under suspicion of being derived
from them. Let us hear no more of the " uniqueness "
of and " impossibility of inventing " the Jesus of the



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 291

gospels ! Until the passages in the gospels are positively
shown to us on which such a claim is made, we are justified
in ignoring it.

It is a complete misunderstanding of the facts to say
that this admitted " mythical woof " of the gospels proves
nothing against their substantial accuracy, and to attempt
to convict those who reject the historical Jesus of defective
method. The wrong method is altogether on the side of
those who believe in an historical Jesus, although there
is not a single passage in the gospels they can show to be
historical. " When the throne falls, the duke must go."
If all the details of the gospel story are resolved in
mythical mist, as they are resolved in the hands of
historical criticism, then, precisely from the methodo-
logical point of view, we lose all right, not merely to say
what Jesus was, but to make the bare assertion that
there ever was such a person. "It is uprooting the
foundations of history, we are told, not to believe in the
existence of Christ and the truth of the narratives of his
apostles and the sacred writers. Cicero's brother also
said : ' It is uprooting the foundations of history to deny
the truth of the Delphic oracles.' I would ask Christians
if they think they destroy the foundations of history
when they reject these oracles, and whether the Roman
orator would have thought that he was destroying the
foundations of history if he had rejected their oracles,
supposing that he had known them. Each man fights
for his own chimera, not for history." 1

But " our confidence in tradition and in historical
reason will be profoundly shaken if there never was such
a person as Jesus," exclaims Herr von Soden and hun-
dreds echo the lament. For in that case " the whole of
civilisation has been deceived for 2,000 years" (p. 8).
The answer to this difficulty so profoundly penetrated
with the "historical sense" was given by Steudel. 2 It

1 Dupuis, Ursprung des Gottesverehrung, p. 228.
a Wir Gelehrten vom Fach, p. 8.



292 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

almost looks as if the old French scholar Dupuis had
foreseen von Soden when he says that " in matters of
religion the belief of many generations proves nothing but
their own credulity ; Hercules was assuredly the sun,
whatever the Greeks may have believed and said of him.
A great error is propagated more easily than a great truth,
because it is easier to believe than to reflect, and men
prefer the wonders of romance to the plain facts of
history. If we were to adopt that rule of criticism, we
might urge against Christians that the faith of any people
in the miracles and oracles of its religion proved its truth ;
I doubt if they would admit the argument, and we will do
the same with theirs. I know that they will say that they
alone have the truth ; but the other people say the same-
Who shall judge between them ? Sound reason, not pre-
formed faith or pre-formed opinion, however widespread
it may be " (p. 227). For the rest, have not nearly
eighteen centuries believed in the " god-man " Christ,
and died in the belief, though a more enlightened age has
shown that the belief was a mythological illusion, and our
liberal theologians have succeeded it with their human
Jesus? Our confidence in historical reason will be
shaken if there never was such a person as Jesus !
But must not this confidence in reason be shaken if it
should be true that a man has been made a god, and for
centuries has been honoured as Jesus was in Christianity ?
One defends, so to say, the honour of human reason,
when one shows it the error of what liberal theology calls
history and the origin of Christianity. Liberal theo-
logians would do well to reflect before they cut the ground
from under their own feet with such arguments.

There is still one difficulty to consider, and, although
it has not a very firm basis in our opponents, it has
played a great part in the public discussion the difficulty,
namely, that so mighty a spiritual movement as Chris-
tianity can only be explained by a " strong personality,"
who must, of course, have been Jesus. This difficulty



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 293

also may be described as " simple." It assumes some-
thing that needs proving that only a great individual
personality can bring about a spiritual movement, and
that such a movement must in all circumstances be traced
to a single outstanding personality. What instances are
there of this in history? Are we referred to the per-
sonality of Luther in relation to the Reformation ? But
historians are agreed that Luther would never have
accomplished his task if he had not been preceded by
Huss, Jerome of Prague, Savonarola, the mysticism of
Eckehart and Tauler, etc. And beside Luther are other
" strong " personalities, such as Zwingli, Calvin, and
Hutten, men who helped to clear the stifling religious
atmosphere of the time by their contemporary appearance
and work in the direction of the Reformation. And
would all these men together have done anything if they
had not found the masses prepared for their ideas, and an
age that pressed for the settlement of a crisis ?

Great personalities are by no means always the initiators
of a new spiritual movement. It is usually prepared in
numbers of individuals, and at length the inner need
reaches its height and a few clear-minded and energetic
personalities take the lead, though these need not at all be
the " greatest " of their age. When the harvest is ripe, the
seed falls, and no superhuman force is needed. It may
be questioned whether Luther could have established the
Reformation if he had been born fifty years earlier. The
importance and power of a movement, therefore, are by
no means proportionate to the importance of the per-
sonalities in whom it takes shape, and who give the first
impulse to its becoming an open force. If the time has
come, a slight impulse will often suffice to discharge the
accumulated energy ; just as a small stone detached on
the precipice suffices to launch an avalanche that thunders
down the mountain and sweeps away forests, houses, and
men. So mighty a movement as the Renascence, which
entirely changed the intellectual condition of Europe in



294 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

less than two centuries and ended the Middle Ages, did
not start from a single personality. The French Revolu-
tion was essentially the work of the masses, from which a
few gifted, but by no means " powerful," personalities
Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, etc. stood out ; and they
were, to some extent, rather swept along by it than
leaders of it.

Who was the founder of the Babylonian, the Egyptian,
or the Greek culture ? Who created the ancient religions
of Zeus, Dionysos, and Osiris ? Who founded Judaism ?
Was it Moses? The more advanced representatives of
science have long since given up the historicity of Moses,
and even those who still adhere to it are compelled to
restrict his significance to such an extent that it is quite
absurd to call him the "founder " of the Jewish religion.
Post-exilic Judaism was created, quite independently of
this legendary Moses, by the joint work of the priests at
the temple of Jerusalem who, under the influence of the
prophetic reform, codified and elaborated " the law ";
only a few names have come down to us, and even in
their case we have no guarantee that even the smallest
share of the work can be ascribed to them. In the case
of the religion of Mithra even these few names are
wanting. Yet Mithraism was a religious movement that
spread with irresistible force from the east over Europe
about the beginning of the present era, and was the most
dangerous rival of Christianity in the fourth century. It
has been said that Mithraism failed, in contrast with
Christianity, precisely because it did not spring from a
strong personality such as Jesus. There is this much
truth in the statement, that the Persian Mithra was a
very shadowy form beside Jesus, who came nearer to the
heart, especially of women, invalids, and the weak, in his
human features and on account of the touching descrip-
tion of his death. But that shows at the most that the
more concrete idea has the better prospect of triumphing
in a spiritual struggle than the more abstract ; it proves



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 295

nothing as regards the historical reality of the idea.
Moreover, history teaches us that it was quite different
causes partly external and accidental causes of a political
nature, such as the death in the Persian war of the
Emperor Julian, one of the most zealous followers of
Mithra that gave Christianity the victory over
Mithraism. 1

There is, therefore, no proof whatever in such general
assertions as that only a great and powerful personality
like Jesus could have given birth to Christianity. That
is a very convenient way of proving one's thesis. It is
merely a relic of the childlike conception of history that
we often find in elementary schools the conception that
history is "made" exclusively by what are called heroes,
among whom must be numbered the ancestors of the
ruling house. A great spiritual movement may be
brought into being by strong personalities, but need not
be ; and the claim that such a movement must have
been brought about by a single outstanding personality
is a monstrous absurdity, and the absurdity only increases
when this individual is supposed to be so " unique " as to
transcend all human levels, as Jesus is represented by
theological "historians."

Naturally, the early Christian movement had " great "
personalities to give it a definite aim, control its organisa-
tion and direction, and defend its right to be heard.
Peter, James, John, etc., may have been among these
individuals, whose merits were so much appreciated by
a later Christian generation that they became direct
disciples of Jesus in the "history" of the Saviour. But

1 Of. J. M. Robertson, Pagan Christs, 2nd ed., 1911, 327 ff. As
Robertson shows in this work also, the historicity of Zarathustra and
Buddha is not so well founded as one commonly thinks. Only of one
single great religion (Mohammedanism) do we know positively that its
founder was an historical person. But Mohammedanism is in its
essence not an original religious creation, but an eclectic composition of
ancient Arabic and Jewish fragments, and the great influence which it
exerted in history depends upon quite other things than its inner
religious truth.



296 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

it does not follow that they were inspired in their work
by an historical Jesus, any more than that the Virgin
Mary must be an historical personality because a French
peasant-girl thought that she saw her with her bodily
eyes in a lonely grotto, and in consequence thousands go
every year to Lourdes to be healed of their maladies.
For the rest, if anyone persists in thinking that Chris-
tianity must have been founded by a single powerful
personality, may it not have been Paul ? If not Paul,
have not our inquiries shown that in the long run the
contents of the gospels may be traced to the prophet
Isaiah, whose " predictions," sayings, penitential appeals,
and promises reappear in the gospels, in the form of a
narrative ? Hence Isaiah, not Jesus, would be the
powerful personality to whom Christianity would owe its
existence.

13. THE HISTOEICAL JESUS AND THE
IDEAL CHEIST.

If, then, the historical individual Jesus cannot be
regarded as the founder of Christianity and the one who
inspired the followers of the new religion and impelled
them to sacrifice their lives for their faith, what can we
substitute for him as the determining principle of the
whole movement? Isaiah's suffering servant of God,
offering himself for the sins of men, the just of Wisdom
in combination with the mythic ideas of a suffering,
dying, and rising god-saviour of the nearer Asiatic religions
it was about these alone, as about a solid nucleus, that
the contents of the new religion crystallised. The ideal
Christ, not the historical Jesus of modern liberal theology,
was the founder of the Christian movement, and made it
victorious over its opponents. It is more probable that
Jesus and Isaiah are one and the same person than that
the Jesus of liberal theology brought Christianity into
existence ; that the first Christians, the Jessaeans, were
followers of the prophet ; and that in their over-heated



297

imaginations the figure of the prophet himself was trans-
formed into the Saviour and Bedeemer. 1

From the first we find Christianity as the religion, not
of the historical man Christ, but of the super-historical
god-man Jesus Christ, who merely passes through history.
It is he who is supposed to have appeared to Paul and
revealed himself as the true Saviour (Gal. i, 12 and 16).
His figure is discerned clearly enough beneath the human
clothing in the gospels, the purpose of which it is, not " to
raise to a higher sphere the life of the historical Jesus
by means of fanciful myths and stories of miracles, but
to bring home to readers by an historical representation
the superhuman divine nature of Jesus." a That God
himself has exchanged his heavenly glory for the lowli-
ness of earth ; that Christ became " the son of God " and
descended upon the earth ; that God divested himself of
his divinity, took on human form, led a life of poverty
with the poor, suffered, was crucified and buried, and
rose again, and thus secured for men the power to rise
again and to obtain forgiveness of sins and a blessed life
with the heavenly father that is the mystery of the figure
of Christ ; that is what the figure conveyed to the hearts
of the faithful, and stirred them to an ecstatic reverence
for this deepest revelation of God. There is not in the
centre of Christianity one particular historical human
being, but the idea of man, of the suffering, struggling,
humiliated, but victoriously emerging from all his
humiliations, " servant of God," symbolically represented
in the actions and experiences of a particular historical
person. How much grander, loftier, and more spiritual
is this idea than the prosy belief of liberal theologians in
the " unique " personality of Jesus of Nazareth of 1,900

1 As is known, there was a legend of Isaiah having been taken up
into heaven, like Moses, Elijah, Enoch, etc. a proof that about the
beginning of the present era the figure of the prophet had actually
assumed superhuman characters.

a Ferd. Jak. Schmidt, Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der
Geschichte (1910), p. 29.



298 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

years ago, which has played hardly any part in the whole
Christian development, and which, on account of its
temporal, national, and temperamental limitations, would
never have been able to fill the religious thought of nearly
two thousand years.

Those who believe in an historical Jesus tell us that
personalities, not ideas, make history. Apart, however,
from the fact that this is no proof of the historicity of
Jesus, as, of course, the idea of the Christian Saviour had
to be made the centre of the new religion by person-
alities, until three generations ago the personality was
not prominent at all in the historical conception of Chris-
tianity, but was used merely as an "illustration" in
explaining the unfolding of the divine idea, without having
any independent significance as the leading and shaping
factor in history.

In his work, Idee und Personlichkeit in der Kirchen-
geschichte (1910), Walther Kohler has shown by means
of historical facts how little interest Christianity has in
" great " personalities, since the most distinguished
members of the religion, such as Augustine, Thomas
Aquinas, Eckehart, Tauler, Huss, Luther, etc., conceived
the world-process as a divine phenomenon, made the
individual secondary to the development of ideas, and
merely introduced it occasionally to illustrate the ideal
history. When Master Eckehart speaks of Christ, he is
by no means thinking of the historical individual, but
merely of the idea of the Christ, whose actions and sayings
in the gospels he interprets symbolically, and converts
into the super-historical of his speculative mysticism.
When Lessing pens the famous words, " The accidental
truths of history can never furnish proof of the necessary
truths of reason," he shows that he attaches no importance
in his religious feeling to the historical person of Jesus.
According to Kant, the historical serves " only to illustrate,
not to demonstrate." In his work, Die Religion inner halb
der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Christ is to him nothing



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 299

but " the ideal of human perfection," and he says that it
contains its reality " in itself " for practical purposes :
:| We need no example from experience to serve as a
model to us of the idea of a man morally pleasing to
God; it is found as such in our reason." Indeed, Kant
regards it as " the utmost absurdity conceivable " to take
an historical belief, like that in Jesus, however pro-
portioned it be to human capacity, and however deeply
it may be rooted in the hearts of men on account of its
long prevalence, as a condition of a universal and
exclusively saving faith (p. 280).

How far from this view are our modern liberal theo-
logians who, nevertheless, swear by Kant when they
make the belief in the historical man Jesus, the " personal
life of Jesus," in their fine phrase, the essential element
of Christianity ! What they really appreciate in Kant is
his hostility to metaphysics, which enables them to
refrain from positive statements on transcendental things,
and continue to use Biblical expressions because no more
correct expressions are yet available. Liberal theology
is an offspring of the time which chose science for a
leader after the collapse of speculative philosophy about
the middle of the last century, and, under the banner of
modern empiricism and positivism, branded the belief in
ideas as a superstition. It was the time when the
emphasis of personality, which had begun with Erasmus,
and increased in the pietism of the eighteenth century,
in Schleiermacher, Humboldt, Neander, and others, at
length became generally popular. The idea is nothing ;
the individual is everything. Man, Feuerbach had taught,
creates the idea, not the idea man. From the psychology
of the academic school and the general appreciation of
facts of experience theologians adopted a new way of
looking at things. A tendency got the upper hand
among them which, apart from religious speculation,
rejected the hitherto prevailing view of Christianity as
obsolete, and substituted the mere man Jesus for the dis-



300 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

carded dogma. " Personalities, not ideas, make history."
The cult of the " great man " began. By introducing
personality as the decisive factor in the mechanism of
history, it was hoped to find the necessary foundation for
the cult of " the greatest personality in history," the
historical Jesus. The fact was overlooked that modern
empiricism and psychology are merely the complement
of scientific materialism. It was not noticed that to do
away with the belief in the objective idea was to destroy
the foundation of the belief in providence and a divine
control of human events ; and with this belief all religion
disappears. People talked themselves into an ecstatic
reverence for the " unique " personality of Jesus, although
the advancing criticism of the new figure of Jesus left
less and less positive historical facts in support of it, and
it became increasingly difficult to maintain this reverence.
How did it fare with the professors when they found the
traditional figure of Jesus becoming fainter and fainter
as their " historical criticism " advanced ? The clergy
continued to breathe new life into the fading figure, and
found it possible still to feel themselves personally " over-
powered " by their Jesus. They were proud that they
now knew the real " essence of Christianity " for the first
time. And when an objection was raised at times to this
methodical Jesus-cult, they consoled themselves resignedly
with the words of Carlyle : " Man knows nothing more
sacred than heroes and reverence for heroes."

In this condition of self-sufficient ecstasy about Jesus,
in which it was no longer thought necessary to trouble
about the great questions of general philosophy from some
excessive tenderness about the " supersensuous," and the
" unknowable " was silently ignored, The Christ-Myth
fell like a bomb, with startling effect. The inadequacy of
their own theory began to dawn even upon the simplest of
them. A certain nervousness and insecurity spread among
theologians, and took the form of furious bitterness and
hatred when the author of that work endeavoured, by



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 301

means of lectures, to interest the general public in his
denial of the historicity of Jesus. Now the whole Press
is engaged against the disturber of the peace ; it is the
easier as the word " liberal " confuses the liberal in the
theological and the political sense, in spite of enormous
differences, and the " orthodox " Press is readily gained.
Opposing lectures and Protestant meetings are organised,
and J. Weiss publicly declares that the author of the
book has " no right to be taken seriously." But among
his fellows, within the four walls of the lecture-hall, and
in the printed version of his lectures, Weiss assures his
readers that he has taken the matter "very seriously,"
and speaks of " the fateful hour through which our [theo-
logical] science is passing" (p. 170). Bousset declares in
the Scientific Congress of Preachers at Hanover that the
question of the historicity of Jesus " is not worthy of
occupying public attention." But at the World-Congress
for " Free Christianity and Eeligious Progress " he grants
that the ideas of The Christ-Myth, which " have not even
been made approximately plausible," have nevertheless (?)
awakened a conviction of the need for a " certain revision "
of liberal theological views. Indeed, this protagonist of
the modern Jesus-cult, who is supposed to have proved
so " triumphantly " against Kalthoff the correctness of
his views, acknowledges that " intensive historical work
has made the situation of the present theological position
acute, and laid insupportable difficulties on the theo-
logian," and that history, " when it is pressed resolutely
to the end, leads to a region beyond itself "; and, appealing
to Kant and Lessing, he demands a different foundation
for belief than history namely, "reason." 1

14. IDEA AND PERSONALITY: SETTLEMENT
OF THE EELIGIOUS CRISIS.

If liberal theologians are really in earnest in attempts
to attain a philosophical system, they can only realise

1 Die Bedeutung der Person Jesu fUr den Glauben, pp. 6, 10, etc.



302 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

their aim by a renewal of belief in reason in the universe,
in a metaphysical " sense " of existence, in the denning
and controlling power of the " idea," and the co-ordination
and subordination of human personality to the system of
ends, the recognition of which is the essence and condition
of all religious belief. The chief danger that has come
to our time, especially to religion, under the influence of
science is the denial of objective purpose in the universe.
Let men be taught to believe again in ideas, and then
Monism, in its idealistic form, will become the first
principle of all deep religious life. From this point of
view personality ceases, however great it may be, to claim
an independent and unique significance in the world-
process ; even the great individuals of history sink to
the condition of mere means and instruments ; " agents,"
as Hegel says, of a purpose that represents a stage in the
advance of the general mind. Liberalism is content with
the mere cult of the great historical personality, as if it
had any value as such. But when we ask how the per-
sonality stands out from its environment, what it is that
raises an individual to world-significance, whence its
great influence and power over men come, we find that,
as Hegel says, the world-spirit is especially active in such
an individual, and leads his will.

In other words, it is the idea that attains consciousness
in such men and stirs them to action ; they are what they
are only by the living power of the divinity within them.
In this sense it is true that in the last resort ideas, not
personalities, rule the world ; and this is the one really
religious view, because we cannot see why Christianity,
too, may not have come into being from the idea living in
its adherents of a suffering, dying, and rising saviour.
We see how this idea created the religions of Attis,
Adonis, Osiris, Dionysos, and similar gods ; how Christian
mysticism has at all times drawn fresh strength from it,
and German speculative philosophy has derived from it a
system that, by its depth, amplitude, and religious content,



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 303

has thrown all previous systems into the shade, and which
has only been prevented by its scientific form from exer-
cising an uplifting and ennobling influence on life. It
is said that a purely ideal religion of this kind cannot
satisfy the religious needs of humanity without historical
guarantees of its truth. But it has satisfied immense
numbers even setting aside India, where idealistic
Monism forms the nucleus of all religious life in the
mysticism and piety of Eckehart and Tauler, in that
humble and self-sacrificing surrender to the all, such as we
find in the institutions of the later Middle Ages, the care
of the sick and the poor, which owed their origin, not to
the official religion of the Church, but to the mystics ; it
has satisfied the best minds of Germany Lessing,
Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, etc. How, then, can
we be asked to admit that the salvation of modern times
depends on a belief that has, in the Churches, degenerated
into a stupid superstition ? All the best that the German
mind has ever conceived or felt, for which it has struggled
and suffered, all the deepest aspirations of its native
religious spirit, which were early quenched by the
missionary work of the Christian Church, owe their
emergence into light to this Monistic religion of our
great thinkers and poets. Why, then, should we be com-
pelled to take our religious possessions from the past?
Are the ideas of a remote age and a degenerate culture
to keep us under their power for ever ? Much zeal is
shown against materialism ; as if it were not just as
crude a materialism to make the belief in religious truth
dependent on its visible realisation in a single human
individual of ancient times, and as if what is called the
" ideal Christ," the working of the divine spirit in us, the
one source and centre of all religious life, could be replaced
and vanquished by a belief in the historical Jesus. 1

1 See my work, Die Religion als Selbst-Beiuusstsein Gottes (1906), and
the second Berliner Religions-gesprttch about the question, "Lebt Jesus?"
1911.



304 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

The question of the historicity of Jesus is, as things
are, not merely an historical, but an eminently philo-
sophical, question. In it is reflected the struggle of two
hostile philosophical systems, which have stirred the
human mind from the dawn of thought : on one side
the belief in the idea as the ultimate determining
principle of the world-process, to which the great person-
alities of history are related as the servants, instruments,
and realisers of its content ; on the other side, the view
that personalities as such are the determining factors of
the world-process, and something ultimate and original.
On the one hand is the idealistic philosophy of history in
the sense of Plato and Hegel ; on the other the Leibnitzian
doctrine of monads in the shape of modern psychologism
and empiricism. In essence it is only the old antagonism
of realism and nominalism which absorbed the Middle
Ages the question whether the personality is the product
of the idea, or the idea the product of the empirical
personality that has come to a head in the question of
the historical personality of Jesus. And, just as surely
as the profoundly religious thinkers have adopted the
realistic view and contended for the priority of the idea
over the individual, so the opposite theory of the nomin-
alist has led to the dissolution of religion and the decay
of belief in the ideal connectedness of the world-process
in a " providence " in which all religious life is rooted,
and with which it stands or falls ; just as surely, again,
the religious settlement of the problem will be found only
in a return to the belief in the idea, and a renunciation
of the prevailing theological theory of the absoluteness,
originality, and independence of personality. If it is a
matter of experience that the value of religion increases
in proportion to the decay of the belief in the absolute
significance of the individual, then modern religion will
only be raised to its highest pitch of intensity when we
cease to elevate a single personality of history to the grade
of the absolute, and to raise other human individuals



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 305

above the significance of mere varying phenomena and
embodiments of the idea. If modern mankind cannot be
restored to a belief in the idea, if Plato, Plotinus, and
Hegel are now merely figures in history, then all effort in
connection with the further development of religion will
be fruitless, and the doom of religion is sealed.

The desperate efforts of liberal theologians to give a
central significance in faith and life to the historical Jesus,
for the sake of continuity with the historical past and of
the Church, seem, from the religious point of view, to
be as absurd as they are superfluous. Jesus is said to be
" the greatest personality in the history of the world,"
the " realised ideal of man," the creator of Christian
symbolism (?) , and even a symbol of the Christian life of
faith (Bousset) ; he is glorified as " the ever newly issuing
embodiment of higher religious power, whose heart-beat
pulses throughout Christendom " (Troltsch) ; his historical
existence is guaranteed to us by the " immediate results "
of his action. Yet it is merely self-deception and con-
fusion of ideas to say that in this way his relation to
Christianity can be honestly maintained. It is precisely
the aim of religion to free man from dependence on the
world, and therefore from the dependence and relative-
ness of temporal existence. Hence a single historical
fact, like the life and death of a man Jesus, cannot in any
sense be made a ground of faith. In religion the indi-
vidual avoids history ; " he shakes it off, to live his own
life." Neither in the last resort nor in the ultimate aim of
his life does he tolerate this " entanglement in the confused
lines of history. ' ' 1 How, then, can the historical man Jesus
be made the foundation or keystone of religion ? And how
can the salvation of man be made dependent on his attitude
to this supposed founder of the Christian religion ?

At the base of all the deeper religions lies the idea of
a suffering god, sacrificing himself for humanity, and

1 S. Eck, Religion und Geschichte (1907), p. 14.



306 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

obtaining spiritual healing for man by his death and his
subsequent resurrection. In the pagan religions this
idea is conceived naturalistically : the death of the sun,
the annual dying of nature, the happy revival of its forces
in spring, and the victorious conquering of the power of
winter by the new sun this is the realistic background
of the tragic myth of Osiris, Attis, Adonis, Tammuz,
Dionysos, Balder, and similar deities. The great advance
of Christianity beyond these nature-religions is that it
spiritualised this idea by applying it to the man Jesus
Christ, blended the many saviour-gods in the idea of the
one god-man, and gave it the most plausible form by
connecting it with an historical reality. But this stand-
point is not yet the best. The historical clothing of the
Christian idea of redemption is ruined as soon as it is,
as in our time, made the express object of scientific inquiry
and historical criticism, on account of the rise of historical
science and the stimulation of the sense of reality. The
purely historical conception of Jesus cannot satisfy the
religious consciousness of our age. It owes its prestige
in reality to the effects of a way of thinking that is
regarded by its adherents themselves as obsolete. A
single historical personality can no longer be the redeem-
ing principle of a humanity that has not merely broken
with the geocentric and anthropocentric view of the origin
of Christianity, but has seen through the superstitious
nature of ecclesiastical Christology. What was once the
prerogative of Christianity that it superseded the poly-
theism of pagan antiquity, and conceived the idea of the
divine Saviour in the singular and historically is to-day
the greatest hindrance to faith. Modern humanity has,
therefore, the task of again universalising the idea of divine
redemption, or enlarging the idea of a god-ma?i, which is
common in Christendom, to the idea of a god-humanity.

With this belief in a plurality of "god-men," religious
development returns in a certain sense to pre-Christian
religion and its numerous " god-men," but enriched with



THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS 307

the partial truths of Christianity, through which it has
passed, filled with the idea of the one reality and its
spiritual nature, to which the various individuals are
related only as modi, phenomena, or revelations, confiding
in the divine control of the world, and therefore in its
rationality and goodness, in spite of all the apparently
accidental obstacles which the world-process encounters
here and there. Thus man secures a faith in himself, in
the divine nature of his being, in the rationality of exist-
ence ; thus he is placed in a position to save himself,
without a mediator, simply on account of his own divine
nature. Self-redemption is not a redemption of the ego
by itself, as our opponents misrepresent, but of the ego
by the self, of the phenomenon by the divine fund of being
in man. Christianity recognises only one redemption
through Christ; it makes the possibility of redemption
dependent on belief in the reality and truth of the
historical god-man. The religion of the future will
either be a belief in the divine nature of the self, or will
be nothing. And if there is no other redemption of man
than redemption by himself, by the spiritual and divine
nature of the self, no Christ is needed for it, and there is
no ground for concern that religion may perish with the
denial of the historicity of Jesus.

In a Monistic religion, which alone is compatible with
modern thought, the idea of a religious significance of
Christ is not only superfluous, but mischievous. It loads
the religious consciousness with doubtful historical ballast ;
it grants the past an authority over the religious life of
the present, and it prevents men from deducing the real
consequences of their Monistic religious principles. Hence
I insist that the belief in the historical reality of Jesus is
the chief obstacle to religious progress ; and therefore the
question of his historicity is not a purely historical, but
also a philosophic-religious, question.

The more progressive theologians would be ready to-day
to accept this Monistic broadening and deepening of



308 THE WITNESS OF THE GOSPELS

religion if they were not compelled by their clerical con-
dition, and the connection of the Church with the State,
to adhere to Jesus in some sense or other, no matter how
slender it be. They support this position with the claim
that a religion without Jesus would not do justice to the
importance of the great personality and of history for
religious life. In reply to this objection we hardly need
to appeal to Hegel, the philosopher of historical develop-
ment, to whom this high appreciation of the present
above history may be traced, as well as this vindication of
" personalities of world-history." The great personality
has clearly a value even in our own view : in it the unity
of God and man, the God-humanity, attains a clearer
expression. It serves as proof to the religious conscious-
ness that God raises up the right man at the right time.
It reveals the living connection of the common individual
life with the universal spiritual life. In the chain of
historical events the pious mind finds a guarantee of a
pervading rational control and a purposive development
of earthly life, however obscure the paths of this develop-
ment may be, and however difficult it may be at times to
recognise the sense in existence. The divinity lives in
history, and reveals itself therein. History is, in union
with nature, the sole place of divine activity. The
divinity, however, does not chain itself to history in
order to unite past and future to a single historical
event ; but one continuous stream of divine activity flows
through time. Hence it cannot wish that men shall be
bound up with some such single event ; in virtue of its
divine character the detail may at any point of history be
raised above the conditions of time and nature.

To bind up religion with history, as modern theo-
logians do, and to represent an historical religion as the
need of modern man, is no proof of insight, but of a
determination to persuade oneself to recognise the
Christian religion alone. 1

1 See my Die Religion als Selbst-Bewusstsein Gottes.



APPENDIX



IN the course of the work we have many times drawn
attention to the remarkable details which Psalm xxii supplies
in connection with the crucifixion of Jesus. The psalm is one
of those that have presented very great difficulties to inter-
preters. It is obvious that it deals with the lament of one who
is in dire straits. Hitzig connects the psalm with Jeremiah
xxxvii, 11-21, and the story narrated there of the captivity of
the prophet. 1 According to Olshausen the situation it describes
fits best with the Maccabaean period, and it pictures the prayers
and plaints of the sufferers according to the experience of the
poet and the other faithful. 2 More recent scholars despair of
determining the age, and would see in the words of the psalm
only the general sufferings and laments of the great mass of
the despised and maltreated " pious or quiet of the land."

Whatever one may think, the enumeration of the animals
that surround the sufferer is in any case striking and curious.
The composition and peculiar choice of surroundings for the
ill-treated, and the minute description of his sufferings and the
threats made to him, suggest that we have here a very unusual
case. The original Hebrew text seems to say nothing of fetters
on the sufferer. In verse 14, however, it is said : " All my
bones are out of joint"; and verse 16 is translated in the
Septuagint : " They pierced my hands and my feet " ; and the
early Christians, who applied the psalm to their saviour, had in
mind a crucifixion, and, like Justin and Tertullian, saw in the
" horns of the unicorns [wild oxen] " (verse 21) the arms of the
martyr's stake.

If we now glance at the globe of the heavens, at the spot
where Orion is found, we see at once that all the details of the
psalm agree and are intelligible, if an astral interpretation is
put on it.

1 Die Psalmen (1836), p. 60. 2 Die Psalmen (1853), p. 121.

309



310 APPENDIX

On the " world-tree," the Milky Way, which plays the part
of a tree elsewhere in the astral myth, hangs Orion with arms
and legs outstretched in the form of a cross. 1 Above his head
he is threatened by the Bull with gaping jaws, the Hyades,
which are in the corner on his left ; we may also recall the
lion's jaws in the constellation Leo, which is distant ninety
degrees from the Hyades, and is therefore astrally related to
them. Behind Orion are the " wild oxen," the herd of re'ems,
which on the celestial globe take the form of the Unicorn,
which seems about to pierce the hanging figure with its horn.
In harmony with this are the words of the psalm : " Many
bulls have compassed me : strong bulls of Bashan have bepet
me round " (verse 12).

I am poured out like water," says the sufferer. Does not
the river Eridanus flow beneath the feet of Orion ? It seems
to flow from his raised left foot ; and the Milky Way also may
be taken as water. See also Psalm Ixix, 2 and 15.
Dogs have compassed me " (Sirius and Procyon).

" The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me " the Bulls,
the Dogs, the Hare, the Heavenly Twins, who are described
as " wicked " (criminals, robbers) in the astral myth. (Cf.
Gen. xlix, where they are related to the twins Simeon and Levi
and are called " bull- slayers," because they drive the Zodiacal
bull before them and push him out of the heavens.)

" Like the lion are my hands and feet," the original Hebrew
text of verse 16 continues. The phrase has hitherto eluded
explanation. It may mean that the " wicked " surround the
hands and feet of the sufferer in the fashion of the lion (sicut
leo), as is usually understood by interpreters. But the words
may possibly contain a cryptic reference to the constellation
Leo : whether because the chief stars of that constellation are
distributed as in Orion, and represent a lying Orion, or because
of the astral relation of Orion to the Lion which we have
previously mentioned, or with reference to the lion's-skin which
Orion carries on his left arm and which recalls the lion's-skin
of Hercules. The Septuagint substituted the words : " They
pierced my hands and my feet." Now the hand of Orion

1 Also Job xxxviii, 31. Orion is represented as a giant fastened to the
heavens with chains. (Cf. Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des
alien Orients, 560.)



APPENDIX 311

which carries the lion's skin goes with the arrow of one of the
Twins (Castor), piercing the hand ; and in the period of
Taurus the constellation of the Arrow is in opposition to the
arrow of Castor, the arrow rising in the east when the former
sets in the west.

The sword in verse 20 is the sword of Orion, which is drawn
up against his body. The dogs are Sirius and Procyon once
more. The lion's mouth (verse 21) refers again to the Hyades
or to the constellation Leo, which seems to be coming on from
a distance, while the " wild oxen " indicate the herd of re'ems. 1

We may even go further, and explain other details of the
psalm with reference to its fundamentally astral character.
Thus, when we read in verse 17, " I may tell all my bones," we
recall that no other constellation shows as plainly as Orion, on
account of the number and distribution of its stars, the shape
of a human being with extended limbs. At the same time the
shape may be regarded as a cup, with the three stars of the belt
as dice in it. In this sense we may read verse 18 : " They part
my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture."
The vesture of Orion is the heavens, which are often conceived
as a starry mantle," and seem to be divided among the
various constellations. Or we may take the Milky Way as
his garment, the " seamless robe," because it runs continuously
across the sky, which is divided at the Twins into two halves
by the passage of the sun.

We are now in a position to understand the real meaning of
the psalm. The constellation Orion is in astral mythology an
astral representative both of the sun and the moon. 2 In it



1 The Septuagint translates re'ems as monokeros, and this is translated
" unicorn " in the German [and English] versions ; in point of fact, our
celestial globes have, instead of the " wild oxen," the constellation of the
" Unicorn," the remarkable beast of which Ktesias (about 400 B.C.) writes.
This must, as Eberhard Schrader has shown, be due to a misunderstanding,
the Greek writer having mistaken the figure of a buffalo with one horn on
the forehead in the ruins of Persepolis for a peculiar animal, whereas the
one horn is really due to the inability of the artists of that people to draw
with perspective. See details in F. Delitsch's second lecture on Babel and
Bible (1904). In view of the astral significance of the psalm, Luther was
right in inserting "unicorn," and the real meaning of the passage is lost
when people learned in philology insist that the " unicorn " was really a
buffalo.

a Compare the identity of Orion with the sun and moon-god Osiris
among the Egyptians. Boll, Sphaera, 1903, p. 164.



312 APPENDIX

their fate is symbolised or vicariously represented. Orion,
says Fuhrmann, has many names in astral mythology. Like
the moon, he is the "many-shaped" (Proteus), giving to all
the gods their particular harmonic form, and astrology sees
the most diverse forms of the myth in the constellation Orion.
Thus we have already recognised in it John the Baptist at
the Jordan, about whom the " people " gather (p. 192), and the
water-wheel (p. 211). It is Noah coming with his animals out
of the ark (Argo), and stretching his hands gratefully to heaven,
while the Milky Way (rainbow) arches over the earth as a
sign of the new covenant (year). It is PhaBton sinking with
uplifted arms in the waters of Eridanus, the Hyades and
Pleiades hastening in flight at his fall, and lamenting his death,
while his " chariot " runs, wheelless and uncontrolled, round
the pole of the heavens. It is Jason landing in Colchis with
the Argo, fighting the bronze oxen of JEtes and hurrying after
the Earn ("golden fleece "=the sun at the vernal point). It
is Prometheus fastened cross-wise to the rocks. It is also
Mithra fighting the Bull, which the Scorpion makes harmless
by biting its organs of generation, as the Bull disappears when
the sun enters the sign of the Scorpion.

In these cases there is question of the sun and the moon
when they are distressed and need help ; that is to say, of the
lowest altitude of the sun during the year, or of the moon
before its temporary disappearance.

The sun is far away ; it is in the winter half of the ecliptic.
Orion seems to cry for help with raised arms : " My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me ? Why art thou so far from
helping me, and from the words of my roaring ? O my God,
I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not ; and in the night
season, and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou that
inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee :
they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto
thee, and were delivered : they trusted in thee, and were not
confounded. But I am a worm, and no man." Orion, the
most human-looking of all the constellations, is the sun, which
in the winter-time, pale and despised, creeps over the earth
like a worm. 1 " A reproach of men and despised of the people.

1 It has also been pointed out that the Milky Way, in which Orion is,



APPENDIX 313

All they that see me laugh me to scorn ; they shoot out the
lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that
he would deliver him ; let him deliver him, seeing he delighted
in him." Thus also it is said of the scoffing " wicked ": " They
gaze on me, and show their pleasure in me." In point of fact,
they look down on Orion from the higher point of the ecliptic. 1

Why should not the Twins at the highest point of the
ecliptic "mock" the sun, as it moves heavy and dull on the
lowest stretch of its annual path? Compare also Psalm
Ixix, 7-16. 2 Now it crosses the equator, and rises higher and
higher. The situation changes. God has heard the cry of
the abandoned. The better season begins : " The meek shall
eat and be satisfied." In fervent strains of praise the delivered
sings, amid the chorus of stars ("in the great congregation "),
the grace of the Lord. Jahveh resumes the lordship of the
world, and all peoples gladly praise his name. 8

Thus the interaction of earth and heaven, man and God,
which was so familiar to the whole of antiquity, is reflected
in the heavens, both the enchained and enfeebled sun (moon)
and Orion corresponding to " the son of man," who cries for
help against the dangers of the winter that threaten him.
From this point of view the twenty-second psalm may, as I



stretches like a worm across the sky when Orion sets in the beginning of
winter. In the Babylonian myth the Milky Way was a worm (Tiamat),
which the sun (Marduk) split into two halves.

1 The Twins are the little boys who in 2 Kings ii, 23, scoffed at Elisha,
when he had divided the " Jordan " with the " mantle " of Elijah, crossed it
dry-shod, reached the "city of the moon," Jericho, at the "source of the
waters" (watery region of winter, the vessel of Aquarius), and is now
rising again. They cry to him: "Go up, thou bald head," because the
sun has lost its hair at the lowest part of its path (Samson and Hercules,
see p. 165). In this connection also we must take the "fifty men " who
sought the vanished Elijah (Helios) in vain for three days (months), and
the " miscarriage " that is supposed to cause the water of the city. The
men refer to the weeks of the year (compare the fifty sons of Danaus, the
waterman), and the latter to the sterile season which is ended by the sun.

2 It is admitted that verse 21 (" They gave me gall for my meat, and in
my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink ") has been taken literally from
the psalm and applied to the crucifixion of Jesus, like the second verse of
the twenty-second psalm. In view of the affinity of the psalms this is a
fresh proof that the sentence, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
is not historical. (See also Ixix, 9.)

8 I would ask the reader not to pass judgment on all this until he has
studied the constellations. There are too many who shrug their shoulders
at astral mythology and never glance at the heavens or have the least
idea about the corresponding speculations of the ancients.



314 APPENDIX

pointed out in The Christ-Myth, be a song of the cult to the
suffering and rising son-god Grossman sees a similar song in
the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah whether the movements
described are taken to be purely celestial or whether they had
an earthly counterpart in a corresponding cult-action after the
manner of the festivals of Attis, Tammuz, Adonis, Osiris, etc.
If we substitute for the " crucified " Orion of the twenty-
second psalm the two other important celestial crosses the
vernal cross with the Ram (Lamb) and the autumnal cross
with the Cup (skull) below it, the Virgin, Berenice's Hair
(megaddela'M.etfy Magdalene), etc. we have all the astral
elements of what Niemojewski calls the " astral via dolorosa "
(p. 413). May we suppose, in fine, that Orion itself plays the
part of the crucified Saviour? In that case the (weeping)
women at the cross are represented by the Pleiades (the " rain-
sisters"), one of which bears the name of Maja (Maria). The
Pleiades also are hair-dressers (megaddela), as they are repre-
sented in medieval manuscripts on the basis of an old tradition, 1
and they culminate when Berenice's Hair rises above the
eastern horizon. Electra is supposed to be the centre of the
Pleiades. She is the mother of Jasios (Jesus), and is repre-
sented as a mourner with a cloth over her head, just in the
same way as the Christian Mary. But as Jasios was also
regarded, according to another genealogy, as the son of Maja,
the mourning Pleiad may also stand for her. As is known, the
mother of Jesus also is a dove (peleids, Pleiad) in the early
Christian conception.

According to Niemojewski, the cup (gulguleth=8k.vdl)
represents the heavenly Golgotha. But we may refer it to
the skull of the Bull and the head of Medusa, and regard " the
place of skulls " as the region of the heavens where Orion is
found. On this supposition the two evil-doers are recognised in
the Twins, which wehave already ascertained to be the astral
criminals. Castor is regarded as evil on account of his relation
to winter, and Pollux good on account of his relation to
summer. Niemojewski sees the two evil-doers in the Dogs
(Sirius and Procyon). The difference is not great, as the Dogs



1 Boll, Spcera, p. 380. Compare the drawing in Thiele's Antike
Himmelsbilder (1898), p. 112.



APPENDIX 315

culminate at the same time as the Twins, and may therefore
be substituted for them.

Here we have firm ground on which to establish the originally
astral and mythical character of the remainder of the story of
Jesus, and we seem to have a very strong proof that there was
a cult of " the crucified " before the time of Jesus, and that the
nucleus of the figure of Jesus is in reality purely astral.

All the oriental religions, including Judaism, are essentially
astral religions. We have previously (p. 223) shown that
Revelation is a Jewish-Gnostic work, the Jesus of which is
more primitive than the Jesus of the gospels. But Revelation
is entirely and certainly of an astral character. It is a further
proof that Christianity is no exception to the rule.



INDEX



ABGAB, letter of Christ to, 1
Acts of Peter, 30, 35
Acts of Pilate, the, 1
Adonis, 67, 163, 209, 214
Akiba, R., 15, 16
Ambrosian Choral, 190
Annas, 158, 212
Apollonius of Tyana, 177
Apostolic Fathers, 132
Aquarius, 190, 211
Asclepios, 78, 196, 199
Attis, 67, 163
Augustus, 164, 213

BASILEDES, 112

Bethany, 144

Bracciolini, Poggio, 46, 47

Brahma, 22

Brothers of Jesus, 10, 84-91, 146

Bull, the, 310

CAIAPHAS, 158, 212

Capernaum, 212
Celsus, 57

Children, love of, 259
Chrestiani, 49, 50, 52
Chrestus, 19, 49, 53
Christianity, beginning of, 233-5
Ghristus, the name, 43
Clement of Borne, 27, 29, 31, 72
Cluvius Eufus, 23, 24
Crucifixion, date of the, 215

DANAIDS, 29, 30

Dio Cassius, 31, 42
Dionysios of Corinth, 32
Dionysos, 67
Divorce, 236

EASTER-STORY, the, 163, 164, 166

Bbionite gospel, 129

Elias, 78

Emmanuel, the name, 195

Enemies, love of, 266-70

Epiphanius, 196, 217, 218

Eridanus, 191, 192, 211, 212, 310



Essenes, the, 2, 218, 220
Ethic of Christ, 94-7, 258-62
Eusebius, 9, 32, 33, 87, 125

PISHES, 190, 211
Flavius Subrius, 42
Frederick the Great, 130, 133

ADARENE swine, the, 140, 178
Galilee, 209

amaliel, R., 14

enesareth, Sea of, 212

ethsemane, 208-9
Gibbon, 25
Gnostics, the, 55, 67, 68, 107, 111-

17, 216, 227
Golgotha, 209

Gospels, chronology of the, 212
style of the, 156-7, 160

HADRIAN, 52

Hannas, 109

Heavenly Twins, 159, 310, 311, 314

Hegel, 302

Hegesippus, 27, 32, 87

Heracles, 67, 136, 292

Hermes Necropompos, 192, 196

Psychopompos, 191

Herod, 158

Herod Antipas, 193

Herodotus, 191

Hosea, 198

Hyades, the, 203, 211, 310

IDEAS and realities, 304-6

Isaiah, 69, 72, 169, 174, 175, 184,

189, 241, 246, 258, 296
Isis, 50, 51

JAIRUS, daughter of, 140

James, the Apostle, 89, 90

James, Epistle of, 183

Jasios (see Jason)

Jason, 67, 164, 191, 196, 197, 312

Jerusalem, 205-9

destruction of, 243, 247



317



318



INDEX



Jessseans (see Jessenes)
Jessenes, the, 2, 42, 44, 217
Jesus, birth of, 161

death of, 159, 164, 213

the name, 195

son of Ananus, 215, 247

Jews at Rome, the, 44, 51

and Christians, 6, 12, 40, 108,

231

Job, 179

Job's Testament, 181
John the Baptist, 183-194
Jonah, 165
Jordan, the, 191, 312
Joseph, 214

Josephus, Flavins, 3-10
Joshua, 164, 165, 191, 195, 197,

199, 218, 222, 226
Judas the Betrayer, 83

the Gaulonite, 5

Julius, 197
Justin, 198
Justus of Tiberias, 2

KANT, 298, 299
Krishna, 214

LAST SUPPER, the, 80-4
Leo X., 130
Leasing, 298
Longinus, 55
Lysanias, 158

MAIA, 164, 197

Marcion, 112

Marcus Aurelius, 19, 32

Marduk, 67

Mark, 123, 124, 125

Martha, 144

Martyrs, number of the, 40

Mary, 86, 90, 91, 164, 314

Matthew, 127

Matthew, original gospel of, 13, 14

Melito of Sardis, 32

Messiah, the name, 195

Milky Way, the, 191, 192, 211, 300

Miracles of Jesus, 137-40, 175-8

218

Mithraism, 294
Monism, 303, 307
Moses, 78, 198

NAASSENES, 220, 281

Nasiraeans, 204

Nave, 197, 198

Nazarenes, the, 2, 42, 44, 201-4, 217

Nazareth, 200-5, 211

Nazoraeans (see Nazarenes)



Neighbour, love of, 266-70
Neronian persecution, the, 21-48

CANNES, 190, 191
Ophites, 220, 221
Origen, 9, 35
Orion, 192, 211, 309-13
Orosius, P., 37
Osiris, 67, 163

PALESTINE, 159

Papias, 123, 124, 126, 127

Parables, the, of Jesus, 280-8

Paul, conversion of, 114-16

Paul, death of, 28-9

Paul, historicity of, 61-5

Paul not a Jew, 117-19

Paul, style of, 102, 103

Paul, theology of, 65

Paul, vision of, 78

Pauline Epistles, the, 62-4, 101,

102-21

Pentecost, 166
Perseus, 165

Personality in history, 293
Peter, 124, 125
Peter, death of, 28-9
Pharisees, the, 230, 235-45, 253-4
Philo, 2, 67, 225
Phoenix, the, 213, 214
Photius, 3

Pilate, 4, 22, 55, 158
Plato, 170
Pliny, 18-19, 26
Porphyry, 18, 57
Pre-Christian Jesus, 200, 216-28
Presbyter Johannes, 124
Primitive Mark, 128
Primitive Matthew, 13, 14
Procyon, 311

RABBIS, the, 11
Resurrection, the, 77-80, 163-6
Revelation, 223-5

SABBATH, the, 236, 254

Sadducees, the, 230, 255

Samaritans, the, 270, 288

Saviour, expectation of, 67, 68, 162

Schmiedel's Main Pillars, 144-55

Scribes, the, 235-45

Serapis, 50, 52, 78

Sermon on the Mount, the, 271-5

Shakespeare, 159

Sibylline Oracles, 34, 222

Simon the Magician, 30, 54

Sirius, 311

Socrates, historicity of, 133



INDEX



319



Solomon, 219
Stoics, the, 269
Suetonius, 19-20, 49
Sulpicius Severus, 43, 45

TACITUS, 20-56

manuscripts of, 47, 49

Talmud, the, 10-17

Talmud (quoted), 92, 95, 96, 97,

236, 237, 258, 259, 262, 265, 268,

269, 272-4, 278, 281-7
Tammuz, 232
Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,

223, 252
Tertullian, 33
Therapeuts, 218, 220, 225
Theudas, 5
Tiberius, letter to, 1



Tongues, gift of, 107-8
Trajan, 18
Trypho, 16

UNIQUENESS of Jesus, 142-4

VALENTINE, 112
Vopiscus, FL, 51

WATEB-WHEEL, the, 211
Wisdom, 69, 170, 173
Words of the Lord, the, 91, 127,
249-53

XIPHILINUS, 42
ZECHAKIAH, 238



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A i

M



THE WITNESSES

TO THE

HISTORICITY OF JESUS



BY THE SAME A UTHOR



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Thesis | Mountain Man