The Historical Jesus: A Survey of Positions. J. M. Robertson
who have not gone very deeply into problems of normal history, however they may have specialized in the Biblical, are still wont to assert that the historicity of non-supernatural data in the Sacred Books is on all fours with that of the subject matter of “profane” history. Indeed it is still common to hear it claimed that the Resurrection is as well “attested” as the assassination of Julius Cæsar, or even better. In exactly the same tone and spirit did the traditionalists of a previous generation assert that the stoppage of the sun and moon in the interest of Joshua was better attested than any equally ancient historical narrative. Those who have decided to abandon the supernatural reduce the claim, of course, to the historicity of the Trial and Crucifixion; but as to these they confidently repeat the old formulas. Yet in point of fact they have made no such critical scrutiny of even these items as historians have long been used to make, with destructive results, into many episodes of ancient history—for instance, the battle of Thermopylæ and the founding of the Spartan constitution by Lycurgus. Men who affect to dismiss the myth theory as an ungrounded speculation are all the while taking for granted the historicity of a record which is a mere tissue of incredibilities.
It has been justly remarked that serious risk of error is set up even by the long-current claim of naturalist critics to “treat the Bible like any other book.” Even in their meaning the phrase should have run: “like any other Sacred Book of antiquity”; inasmuch as critical tests and methods are called for in the scrutiny of such books which do not apply in the case of others. But inasmuch, further, as the Christian Sacred Books form a problem by themselves, a kind of scrutiny which in the case of other books of cult-history might substantially reveal all the facts may here easily fail to do so.
The unsuspecting student, coming to a narrative in which supernatural details are mingled with “natural,” decides simply to reject the former and take as history what is left. It is the method of the amateur mythologists of ancient Greece, derided by Socrates, and chronically resuscitated in all ages by men seeking short cuts to certitude where they have no right to any. If the narrative of the Trial and Crucifixion, thus handled, is found to be still incredible in point of time-arrangement, the adaptor meets the difficulty by reducing the time-arrangement to probability and presenting the twice redacted result as “incontestable” history. All this, as will be shown in the following pages, is merely a begging of the question. A scientific analysis points to a quite different solution, which the naïf “historical” student has never considered.
He is still kept in countenance, it is true, by “specialists” of the highest standing. The average “liberal” theologian still employs the explanatory method of Toland; and anthropologists still offer him support. Thus Sir James Frazer, by far the most learned collector of mytho-anthropological lore in his age, positively refuses to apply to the history of the Christian cult his own express rule of mythology—formulated before him1 but independently reiterated by him—that “all peoples have invented myths to explain why they observed certain customs,” and that a graphic myth to explain a rite is presumptively “a simple transcript of a ceremony”; which is the equivalent of the doctrine of Robertson Smith, that “in almost every case the myth was derived from the ritual, and not the ritual from the myth,” and of the doctrine of K. O. Müller that “the mythus sprang from the worship, and not the worship from the mythus.” What justification Sir James can give for his refusal to act on his own principles is of course a matter for full and careful consideration. But at least the fact that he has to justify the refusal to apply in a most important case one of the best-established generalizations of comparative mythology is not in this case a recommendation of the principle of authority to scientific readers.
General phrases, then, as to how religions must have originated in the personal impression made by a Founder are not only unscientific presuppositions but are flatly contradictory, in this connection, of a rule scientifically reached in the disinterested study of ancient hierology in general.
It is a delusion, again, to suppose, as do some scholarly men, that there is such a consensus of view among New Testament scholars as to put out of court any theory that cancels the traditionalist assumption of historicity which is the one position that most of them have in common. As we shall see, the latest expert scholarship, professionally recognized as such, makes a clean sweep of their whole work; but they themselves, by their insoluble divisions, had already discredited it. Any careful collection of their views will show that the innumerable and vital divergences of principle and method of the various schools, and their constant and emphatic disparagement of each other’s conclusions, point rather to the need for a radically different theory and method. A theory, therefore, which cancels their conflicts by showing that all the data are reducible to order only when their primary assumption is abandoned, is entitled to the open-minded attention of men who profess loyalty to the spirit of science.
There is need, thirdly, to bring home even to many readers who profess such loyalty, the need for a really critical study of the Gospels. I have been blamed by some critics because, having found that sixty years’ work on the documents by New Testament scholars yielded no clear light on the problem of origins, I chose to approach that by way (1) of mythology, (2) of extra-evangelical literature and sect-history, and (3) of anthropology. The question of the order and composition of the Gospels, in the view of these critics, should be the first stage in the inquiry.
Now, for the main purposes of the myth-theory, the results reached by such an investigator as Professor Schmiedel were quite sufficient; and though at many points textual questions had to be considered, it seemed really not worth while to discuss in detail the quasi-historical results claimed by the exegetes. But it has become apparent that a number of readers who claim to be “emancipated” have let themselves be put off with descriptions of the Gospel-history when they ought to have read it attentively for themselves. A confident traditionalist, dealt with hereinafter, writes of the “pretentious futilities into which we so readily drop when we talk about them [the Gospels] instead of reading them.” The justice of the observation is unconsciously but abundantly illustrated by himself; and he certainly proves the need for inducing professed students to read with their eyes open.
Early in 1914 there was published a work on The Historical Christ, by Dr. F. C. Conybeare, in which, as against the myth hypothesis, which he vituperatively assailed, a simple perusal of the Gospel of Mark (procurable, as he pointed out, for one penny) was confidently prescribed as the decisive antidote to all doubts of the historicity of the central figure. The positions put were the conventional ones of the “liberal” school. No note was taken of the later professional criticism which, without accepting the myth-theory, shatters the whole fabric of current historicity doctrine. But that is relatively a small matter. In the course of his treatise, Dr. Conybeare asserted three times over, with further embellishments, that in the Gospel of Mark Jesus is “presented quite naturally as the son of Joseph and his wife Mary, and we learn quite incidentally the names of his brothers and sisters.” Dr. Conybeare’s printers’ proofs, he stated, had been read for him by Professor A. C. Clark. I saw, I think, fully twenty newspaper notices of the book; and in not a single one was there any recognition of the gross and thrice-repeated blunder above italicized, to modify the chorus of uncritical assent. A professed Rationalist repeated and endorsed Dr. Conybeare’s assertion. Needless to say, not only did Dr. Conybeare not mention that Joseph is never named in Mark, he never once alluded to the fact that in the same Gospel Mary is presented as not the mother of Jesus; and the brothers and sisters, by implication, as not his brothers and sisters.
When aggressive scholars and confident reviewers thus alike reveal that they have not read the Gospels with the amount of attention supposed to be bestowed on them by an intelligent Sunday-school teacher, it is evidently inadvisable to take for granted any general critical preparation even among rationalistic readers. Before men can realize the need for a new theoretic interpretation of the whole, they must be invited to note the vital incongruities (as apart from miracle stories) in each Gospel singly, as the lay Freethinkers of an earlier generation did without pretending to be scholars.
Those Rationalists are ill-advised who suppose that, in virtue of having listened to latter-day publicists who profess to extract a non-supernatural “religion” from the supernaturalisms