The Christ Myth

Op. cit.

460

Cf. H. Jordan, “Jesus und die modernen Jesusbilder, Bibl. Zeit- u. Streitfragen,” 1909, 38.

461

Mark vi. 1 sq.

462

Mark xiii. 32.

463

Mark iii. 20.

464

1 Kings xix.; cf. also Isa. xlii. 4.

465

Cf. Brandt, op. cit., 553 sq.

466

Hertlein treats of these Bases of Schmiedel in the “Prot. Monatsheften,” 1906, 386 sq.; cf. also Schmiedel’s reply.

467

Op. cit., 141.

468

Bousset agrees with this in his work “Was wissen wir von Jesus?” (1901). “Jesus’ speeches are for the most part creations of the communities, placed together by the community from isolated words of Jesus.” “In this, apart from all the rest, there was a powerful and decided alteration of the speeches” (47 sqq.).

469

Cf. Robertson, “Christianity and Mythology,” 424 sqq., 429.

470

Op. cit., 43.

471

“Protest. Monatshefte,” 1903, Märzheft.

472

Op. cit., 161 sq.

473

Matt. xviii. 15 sqq.

474

Id. xxix. 3 sqq.

475

Cf. Pfleiderer, “Urchristentum,” i. 447 sq.; van den Bergh van Eysinga, op. cit., 57 sqq.

476

Smith, op. cit., 107 sqq.

477

Cf. Nork, “Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen zu neutestamentlichen Schriftstellen,” 1839.

478

Cf. Robertson, “Christianity and Mythology,” 440–457.

479

Cf. v. Hartmann, op. cit., 131–143. It will always be a telling argument against the historical nature of the sayings of Jesus that Paul seems to know nothing of them, that he never refers to them exactly; and that even up to the beginning of the second century, with the exception of a few remarks in Clement and Polycarp, the Apostles and Fathers in all their admonitions, consolations, and reprimands, never make use of Jesus’ sayings to give greater force to their own words.

480

V. Hartmann, op. cit., 44 sq.

481

Let us hear what Clemen says against this: “In its reduction of the Law to the Commandment of love, though this was already prominent in the Old Testament [!] and even earlier had here and there [!] been characterised as the chief Commandment, Christianity is completely original [!]. And for Jesus the subordination of religious duties to moral was consequent on this, though in this respect he would have been equally influenced by the prophets of the Old Testament” (op. cit., 135 sq.).

482

“We must (as regards the moral ideals of Jesus) pay just as much attention to what he does not treat of, to what he set aside, as to what he clung to, indeed, setting it in opposition to all the rest. At least this wonderfully sure selection is Jesus’ own. We may produce analogies for each individual thing, but the whole is unique and cannot be invented” (v. Soden, op. cit., 51 sq.). This method, practised by liberal theology, of extolling their Jesus as against all other mortals, and of raising him up to a “uniqueness” in the absolute sense, can make indeed but a small impression on the impartial.

483

Wrede, “Paulus,” 91.

484

We admit that besides the eschatological grounding of his moral demands, Jesus also makes use occasionally of expressions that pass beyond the idea of reward. But they are quite isolated – as, e. g., Matt. v. 48, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect,” a phrase which is, moreover, in accord with Lev. xi. 44 and xix. 3 – and without any fundamental significance. In general, and in particular even in the Sermon on the Mount, that “Diamond in the Crown of Jesus’ ethics,” the idea of reward and punishment is prevalent (Matt. v. 12 and 46; vi. 1, 4, 6, 14, 18; v. 20; vi. 15; vii. 1, &c.). Views may still differ widely as to whether it is historically correct to estimate, as Weinel would like to, Jesus’ ethics in this connection really by the few sayings which go beyond that idea. (Cf. v. Hartmann, op. cit., 116–124.) The favourite declaration, however, is quite unhistorical, that Jesus was the first who introduced into the world the principle of active love; and that the Stoics, as Weinel represents, only taught the doing away with all our passions, even that of love; or indeed that Jesus, who wished salvation only to benefit the Jews, who forbade his people to walk in the ways of the Gentiles, and who hesitated to comply with the Canaanite woman’s prayer, “raised to the highest degree of sincerity” the “altruistic ideal,” and that in principle he broke down the boundaries between peoples and creeds with his “Love thy enemy,” (Weinel, op. cit., 55, 57). As against this cf. the following passage from Seneca: “Everything which we must do and avoid may be reduced to this short formula of human obligation: We are members of a mighty body. Nature has made us kindred, having produced us from the same stuff and for the same ends. She has implanted in us a mutual love, and has arranged it socially. She has founded right and equity. Because of her commands to do evil is worse than to suffer evil. Hands ready to aid are raised at her call. Let that verse be in our mouths and our hearts: I am a man, nothing human do I despise! Human life consists in well-doing and striving. It will be cemented into a society of general aid not by fear but by mutual love. What is the rightly constituted, good and high-minded soul, but a God living as a guest in a human body? Such a soul may appear just as well in a knight as in a freedman or in a slave. We can soar upwards to heaven from any corner. Make this your rule, to treat the lower classes even as you would wish the higher to treat you. Even if we are slaves, we may yet be free in spirit. The slaves are men, inferior relatives, friends; indeed, our fellow-slaves in a like submission to the tyranny of fate. A friendship based on virtue exists between the good man and God, yes, more than a friendship, a kinship and likeness; for the good man is really his pupil, imitator, and scion, differing from God only because of the continuance of time. Him the majestic father brings up, a little severely, as is the strict father’s wont. God cherishes a fatherly affection towards the good man, and loves him dearly. If you wish to imitate the gods, give also to the ungrateful; for the sun rises even on the ungodly and the seas lie open even to the pirate, the wind blows not only in favour of the good, and the rain falls even on the fields of the unjust. If you wish to have the gods well-disposed towards you, be good: he has enough, who honours and who imitates them.” Cf. also Epictetus: “Dare, raising your eyes to God, to say, Henceforth make use of me to what end thou wilt! I assent, I am thine, I draw back from nothing which thy will intends. Lead me whithersoever thou wilt! For I hold God’s will to be better than mine.” (Cf. also Matt. xxvi. 39.)

485

Kautsky, “Ursprung des Christentums,” 17.

486

Op. cit., 3.

487

“How is it conceivable,” even Pfleiderer asks, “that the new community should have fashioned itself from the chaos of material without some definite fact, some foundation-giving event which could form the nucleus for the genesis of the new ideas? Everywhere in the case of a new historical development the powers and impulses which are present in the crowd are first directed to a definite end and fastened into an organism that can survive by the purpose-giving action of heroic personalities. And so the impulse for the formation of the Christian community must have come from some definite point, which, from the testimony of the Apostle Paul and of the earliest Gospels, we can only find in the life and death of Jesus” (“Entstehung des Chr.,” 11). But that the “testimony” for an historical Jesus is not testimony, and that the “definite fact,” the “foundation-giving event,” is to be looked for, if anywhere, in Paul himself and nowhere else – such is the central point of all this analysis.

488

Op. cit., 61 sq.

489

“Von Reimarus bis Wrede,” 396.

490

ii. 44.

491

“Gesch. Israels,” ii. 1 sqq.

492

Holtzmann, “Zum Thema ‘Jesus und Paulus’” (“Prot. Monatsheft,” iv., 1900, 465).

493

Parerga, ii. 180.

494

Neutest. Theol. ii. 4. Cf. R. H. Grützmacher: “Ist das liberale Christusbild modern? Bibl. Zeit- und Streitfragen,” 39 sq.

495

Pfleiderer, “Entstehung d. Chr.,” 108 sqq.

496

Cf. Stendel, op. cit., 22.

497

“Von Reimarus bis Wrede,” 313.

498

Gal. i. 24.

499

1 Cor. ii. 1; 2 Cor. xix. 9.

500

Acts i. 3, x. 41.

501

Acts i. 21 sq.

502

Seufert, “Der Ursprung und die Bedeutung des Apostolates in der christlichen Kirche der ersten Jahrhunderte,” 1887, 143. Cf. also my “Petruslegende,” in which the unhistorical nature of the disciples and apostles is shown, 50 sqq.

503

Op. cit., 42.

504

Cf. my work “Die Petruslegende.”

505

Cf. Hausrath, “Jesus und die neutestamentl. Schriftsteller,” ii. 203 sqq.

506

“Entstehung d. Chr.,” 239.

507

Cf. above, p. 31. sqq.

508

Cf. Arnold Meyer, “Was uns Jesus heute ist. Rel. Volksb.,” 1907 – a very impressive presentation of the liberal Protestant point of view; also Weinel, “Jesus im 19ten Jahrhundert.”

509

“Entstehung d. Chr.,” 98 sq.

510

Weinel, indeed, resolutely denies that this is a real characteristic of liberal Protestantism, and asserts that he has looked for it in vain in any liberal theologian’s book. But he need only look in A. Meyer’s work, which is cited by me, to find my idea confirmed. There it is said of Jesus inter alia: “Not only should we move and live in his love, but we are as he was, of the faith that this love will overcome the world, that it is the meaning, end, and true content of the world; that the power which uniformly and omnipotently fills and guides the world, is nothing but the God in whom he believed [was Jesus then a Pantheist?], and whom he calls his heavenly father. As he believed, so let us also, that whoever trusts in this God and lives in his love has found the meaning of life and the power which preserves him in time and in eternity. Jesus was the founder of our religion, of our faith, and of our inner life” (31). According to Meyer, Jesus attracts us by his manner, his Being, his love and his faith, we feel ourselves bound to him, become kin with him and so live by his strength; he is called “the voice of God to us,” “our redeemer,” and so forth. Those are simply expressions which applied to God have at least a valid meaning, but applied to the historical man Jesus are nothing but phrases, and are to be explained purely psychologically from the fact that liberalism in honouring the “unique” man Jesus does nevertheless unwittingly allow the belief in his divinity to come into play. In this atmosphere, obscured with phrases, the so-called “theology” of liberal Protestantism moves. Moreover, Weinel himself quotes a sentence of Herrmann with approval, which also gives expression to the idea that Jesus is for Protestant liberalism a kind of “demonstration of God” (80), and he adds himself: “It may indeed be that our conception of the significance of Jesus has often been expressed unskilfully enough. It may be that in discourses, lectures, or other popular ways of speaking something is at times said which may be so clumsily put as to give occasion for such things to be said.” Indeed, he himself maintains regarding Jesus: “Whoever places the ideal of his life in him, he experiences God in him” (84). He also finds that the desire for God of the Jews, Greeks, Semites, and Germans “could be stilled in him.” Taking into account these expressions and the whole tone which it pleases Herr Weinel to adopt towards the opponents of his standpoint, it appears time to remind him once again of E. v. Hartmann’s “Die Selbstzersetzung des Christentums” (it is obvious he has only a third-hand acquaintance with the author whose point of view he calls Neo-Buddhism, counting him among the supporters of the morality of pity!) and especially of the chapter on “Die Irreligiosität des liberalen Protestantismus.” Here, in connection with the lack of metaphysics displayed by liberal Protestantism (and admitted even by Weinel) and the latter’s principle of love, he says: “If we transform the whole of religion into Ethics and soften down the whole of Ethics into love, we thereby renounce everything that is in religion besides love, and everything which makes love religious. We thereby confess that the impulse of love is raised into religion since religion properly so called has been lost. It is true religion is not a shark, as the inquisitors thought, but at the same time it is not a sea-nettle. A shark can at least be terrifying, a sea-nettle is always feeble.” Liberal Protestantism, as Hartmann sums it up, consists “of a shapeless, poor, shallow metaphysic, which is concealed as far as possible from critical eyes; of a worship successfully freed from all mystery, but one that has become thereby by no means incapable of being objected to; of an Ethics forcibly separated from Metaphysics and on that account irreligious. It rests upon a view of the world which by its worldliness and optimistic contentment with the world is by no means in a position to give birth to a religion, and which sooner or later will allow the remnants of religious feeling which it brought with it to be smothered in worldly ease.”

511

Op. cit., 39.

512

Cf. E. v. Hartmann, “Die Selbstzersetzung des Christentums und die Religion der Zukunft,” 2nd ed., 1874, especially chaps. vi. and vii.

513

Cf. W. v. Schnehen, “Der moderne Jesuskultus,” 2nd ed., 1906; also “Naumann vor dem Bankerott des Christentums,” 1907.

514

Cf. my work, “Die Religion als Selbstbewusstsein Gottes,” 1906, 199 sq.

515

Cf. my work, “Die Religion als Selbstbewusstsein Gottes,” in which the attempt has been made to form a general religious view of the world in the sense mentioned.

516

Cf. “Der Monismus, dargestellt in Beiträgen seiner Vertreter,” 2 vols., 1908.