Note 498 — II. THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. (continued 2)

Grätz (III. p. 233) considers this narrative an interpolation made from a Pauline point of view (‘eine paulinistische Tendenz-interpolation’). This theory of interpolation, interposing wherever the evidence is unfavourable, cuts up all argument by the roots. In this instance however Grätz is consistently carrying out a principle, which he broadly lays down elsewhere. He regards it as the great merit of Baur and his school, that they explained the origin of the Gospels by the conflict of two opposing camps, the Ebionite and the Pauline. ‘By this master-key,’ he adds, ‘criticism was first put in a position to test what is historical in the Gospels, and what bears the stamp of a polemical tendency (was einen tendentiösen polemischen Charakter hat). Indeed by this means the element of trustworthy history in the Gospels melts down to a minimum’ (III. p. 224). In other words the judgment is not to be pronounced upon the evidence, but the evidence must be mutilated to suit the judgment. The method is not new. The sectarians of the second century, whether Judaic or anti-Judaic, had severally their ‘master-key.’ The master-key of Marcion was a conflict also—the antagonism of the Old and New Testaments. Under his hands the historical element in the New Testament dissolved rapidly. The master-key of the anti-Marcionite writer of the Clementine Homilies was likewise a conflict, though of another kind—the conflict of fire and water, of the sacrificial and the baptismal systems. Wherever sacrifice was mentioned with approval, there was a ‘Tendenz-interpolation’ (see above p. 136). In this manner again the genuine element in the Old Testament melted down to a minimum.