All of these variant dreams were gradually accepted by the piety of the people as authoritative. Attempts to reconcile them were, of course, hopeless; but different groups pinned their faith to different aspects of the picture — while many, of course, were skeptical altogether. When and where and how should appear this Messiah? This prophet and that was looked to eagerly, but the Great Event came not yet; and the people, intense with expectation, exhorted by their prophets to repent of their sins before it should be too late to have a part in the New Order, chafing under their bondage, awaited their hero and savior. Orthodox Jews still await Him; liberal Jews have long ago become disillusioned and given up the fantastic hope.' But at the time when that hope was most intense, a small band, mostly of Galilean peasants, believed they had found this Messiah, this Christ, in the person of a young prophet named Jesus.

J. P. Peters, Religion of the Hebrews. H. P. Smith, Religion of Israel. R. L. Ottley, Religion of Israel. W. E. Addis, Hebrew Religion. A. Loisy, Religion of Israel. K. Marti, Religion of the Old Testament. A. Duff, Theology and Ethics of the Hebrews. J. C. Todd, Politics and Religion in Ancient Israel. L. B. Paton, Primitive Religion of Israel. K. Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile. T. K. Cheyne, Jewish Religion, after the Exile; The Two Religions of Israel. C. Cornill, Prophets of Israel. W. R. Smith, Prophets of Israel. L. W. Batten, The Hebrew Prophet. M. Buttenwieser, Prophets of Israel. G. Santayana, Reason in Religion, chap. v. S. Reinach, Orpheus, chap. VII. W. Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, chap. I. New World, vol. 4, p. 98. Biblical World, vol. 42, pp. 234, 305, 373; vol. 43, p. 44. Kautsch, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, extra volume, p. 612.

1 For the present status of the Jewish religion see New World, vol. 4, p. 601.

For the period between the Testaments, see C. H. Toy's Judaism and Christianity. W. Fairweather, Background of the Gospels. R. H. Charles, Religious Development between the Old and New Testaments.

CHAPTER V

JESUS THE CHRIST

What are the sources of our knowledge of the life of Christ?

IN studying the history of the founding of Christianity, as in the case of all religious history written by the believers themselves, we must beware of accepting at its face value whatever is told us by the narrators. As notably in the traditions of their own history that the Jews treasured in their sacred books, so in the Christian tradition legendary material has crept in, and events have been unconsciously colored and warped in accordance with later religious conceptions. If we honestly desire to know what can now be known of the Great Teacher whose name has become, to us of 'Christendom," synonymous with virtue itself, we must be willing to look through the veil of mist which the religious veneration of centuries has drawn about him and study the records that remain to us of his life as we would study those of any other great religious leader - Buddha, Confucius, St. Francis sifting the historical from the legendary, allowing for the evident bias of biographers, and deducing only what can legitimately be deduced from the confused and scanty material we have to draw upon.

66

At the outset we must face the fact that outside of a small band of followers, mostly illiterate fisher- and peasant-folk, Christ made no impression upon his times. His public career lasted probably not over a year and a half, and was spent, except for the last few days or weeks, in the out-of-the-way province of Galilee. To the priests and Jewish upper classes, as to the Roman officials, that brief and humble career was

not distinguishably different from those of the numerous other contemporary reformers and agitators. The outside references to Christ brief allusions by the Jewish historian Josephus (by many considered spurious) and the Roman authors Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny — are scarcely enough even to testify to the fact of his existence, since they doubtless merely accept the belief of the early Christians in a historic Jesus who was crucified by Pontius Pilate. But the witness of Paul, our earliest source, is quite enough to guarantee his historicity; for Paul, though he never knew Jesus in the flesh, must have talked, a very few years after his death, with many who had known him well. He tells us, in his few extant letters, nothing to speak of about the earthly life of Jesus; but he is witness to the extraordinary impression that Jesus had made upon his little circle of disciples. And fortunately there is material enough in the three Synoptic Gospels to enable the skilled historian to reconstruct with considerable assurance the historic figure of Jesus and the main events of his public life. Such a reconstruction has been made, with infinite pains and loving care, by the coöperative efforts of many modern scholars. Except for a few mooted points - and principally those affected by dogmatic considerations there is now a pretty general agreement among reliable historians as to the probable facts of his career and the cardinal points of his teaching.

Besides the Synoptic Gospels there are some fragments of non-canonical narratives; these, however, are mostly late and of very dubious authenticity; at best they add little of importance to the picture. The Fourth Gospel is now generally conceded to be later than the Synoptics, and rather theological than historic in its interest. Written to set forth the view of the author1 as to the nature and mission of

1 The author's name may have been John; but (pace some conservative scholars who still cling to the traditional view) he was certainly not the

Christ, it is valuable in showing the tendencies of early Christian theology, for its intrinsic charm and sweetness, and for its insight into the meaning that Christ's life had and was to have for his followers. But it is of little value in helping us to get an idea of the real Jesus as he lived and taught on earth. The book was probably not intended to be taken as a literal record of events, but as a dramatic picture illustrating and explaining the author's conception of Jesus as the Logos (Word) or Earthly Manifestation of God. The literary device, by which speeches and acts are attributed to Christ in accordance with what the author conceived that he might have said and done, was not uncommon or considered illegitimate in those days. Indeed, it was the common practice of ancient historians.

We are thrown back, then, upon the three Synoptic Gospels, as, practically speaking, our only source. The first and third of these were composed by combining the Mark biography (itself evidently a compilation of traditions rather than a first-hand narrative) with a collection of Sayings of Christ (together with certain other scattering material, particularly in the Third Gospel). The collection of Sayings, which tradition attributes to the Apostle Matthew (whence his name has become attached to the Gospel that makes greatest use of it) exists now only as it has been incorporated into our Gospels. As they stand, "Mark" dates from 70-75 A.D., “Matthew" and "Luke" from five to twenty years later. That is to say, the earliest extant document recording the facts of Christ's life and teaching dates from about forty or forty-five years after his death. The repetition of its incidents in the parallel narratives of the other Gospels is of no corroborative value, since the authors

disciple. See E. F. Scott, The Fourth Gospel, its Purpose and Theology. J. Warschauer, The Problem of the Fourth Gospel. B. W. Bacon, The Fourth Gospel in Research and Debate.

simply copied from Mark. No one of the Gospels was written by a personal friend of Christ or eyewitness of the events of his life.1

What were the salient events in his life?

Jesus was the oldest of at least seven brothers and sisters.2 Wherever he may have been born,3 he was brought up, as a carpenter, or house-builder, at Nazareth in Galilee, and known all his life as a Nazarene. Of his youth we know practically nothing, save that he must have become deeply versed in his national Scriptures and filled with the expecta

1 It is needless to point out that forty years is long enough for the legendary element to have grown to any length. Witness Bonaventura's life of St. Francis, dating likewise from forty years after that Saint's death, and replete with marvel and miracle. Parallel cases could be cited from every field of religious history.

See P. Wernle, Sources of Our Knowledge of the Life of Jesus. V. H. Stanton, The Gospels as Historical Documents. F. C. Burkitt, Earliest Sources for the Life of Jesus; The Gospel History and its Transmission. E. F. Scott, The Apologetic of the New Testament.

The best Introductions to the New Testament in English are those of G. A. Jülicher, B. W. Bacon, J. Moffatt, G. B. Gray, and A. S. Peake. The translation of the New Testament by J. Moffatt (3d ed., 1914) is perhaps the best to date. The Twentieth Century New Testament (F. H. Revell Company) and R. F. Weymouth's Modern Speech New Testament are versions in modern colloquial English, useful in clarifying obscure sayings. See further the remarks on editions of the Bible on pp. 49-50. A good Harmony of the Gospels is useful in making it easier to trace the development of the tradition from Gospel to Gospel; J. M. Thompson's Synoptic Gospels is the best to date.

2 Mark 6:3.

3 The birth- and infancy-stories with which the First and Third Gospels are now prefaced are later than the bulk of those Gospels; together with the resurrection-stories at the end, they are called by scholars The Outer Envelope. See Holtzmann, chap. Iv; Réville in New World, vol. 1, p. 695 (also in his Vie de Jésus, unfortunately not translated). For the question of the virgin birth see P. Lobstein, Virgin Birth of Christ. J. E. Carpenter, Bible in the Ninteenth Century, pp. 480-97. O. Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, Eng. tr., vol. 11, pp. 504-10; also American Journal of Theology, vol. 10, p. 1.