Pagan Christs: Chapter II. The Teaching God: § 6. Collapse of the Constructive Case

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§ 6. Collapse of the Constructive Case.

First, then, he has not recognised (1) the primary reason for doubting the genuineness of every detail of teaching set forth in the gospels—namely, the total ignorance of those teachings shown in the

1 that "the details of the life of Jesus had so little interest for Paul that" he fails to quote him when he effectively might. To reason thus is to ignore a far greater difficulty than many which the exegete admits to be insuperable. (2) He makes his arguments at some points 2 turn on the assumption of the general certainty of the whole narrative as to Jesus being a teacher with disciples, who established his cult; whereas the existence of the disciples is no better proved than many of the data already surrendered. (3) He is evidently biassed to his illicit inference (that Jesus really existed) by other inferences which, on his own showing, he was not entitled to draw. For instance, he decides 3 that Jesus probably accomplished faith-healing as distinguished from miracles, because "this power is so strongly attested throughout the first and second centuries that, in view of the spiritual greatness of Jesus and the imposing character of his personality, it would be indeed difficult to deny it to him." What then proved the spiritual greatness and the imposing character of Jesus? The nine credible texts? Clearly they amount to no such proof, even if they were genuine: a thousand rabbis might have uttered them. What, again, is the value of the "strong attestation" of the first and second centuries in the face of the silence of Paul, ostensibly the first witness? The first and second centuries, that is to say the gospels (which certainly did not exist within thirty years of the date alleged for Jesus’ death), and the people who believed them, equally attest the prodigies which Professor Schmiedel rejects. Is a witness who solemnly affirms twenty impossibilities to be believed whenever he happens to assert something that might be true, while a more important witness, who in the terms of the case ought to have heard of it if it happened, has evidently never heard of it at all?

Such reasoning, we may say without hesitation, cannot stand: it is negated by the tests on which Schmiedel has proceeded as against the source-finders; and the latter might very well turn upon him with a confident tu quoque. Take, for instance, the passage 4 in which he presses the point of the obvious untrustworthiness of the reports of Jesus’ discourses, and yet lets pass the assumption that these reports may be genuine condensations:—

In what remains, however, it can hardly be sufficiently emphasised that we possess only an excessively meagre précis of what Jesus said—namely, only so much as not only made an immediate impression when first heard, but also continued to survive the ordeal of frequent repetition In this process not only was an extraordinary number of utterances completely lost, but a large number of the sayings of Jesus now received for the first time that consecutive and pointed form which made them seem worthy of further repetition. Without doubt Jesus must very often have repeated himself, but what he assuredly often repeated in many variations has been preserved to us only in a single form.