Note 82 — II THE JESUS OF THE GOSPELS

Of course, Wrede has already warned us “not too hastily to consider clearness a sign of historical truth. A writing may have a very secondary, even apocryphal character, and yet show much clearness. The question always is how this was obtained.”82 Wernle and Wrede quite agree that at least in Mark’s production the clearness is of no account at all, while clearness in the other Gospels is found just in those parts which admittedly belong to the sphere of legend. And how clearly and concretely do not our authors of the various “Lives of Jesus,” not to mention Renan, or our ministers in the pulpits describe the events of the Gospels, with how many small and attractive traits do they not decorate these events, in order that they should have a greater effect on their listeners! This kind of clearness and personal stamp is really nothing but a matter of the literary skill and imagination of the authors in question. The writings of the Old Testament, and not merely the historical writings, are also full of a most clear ability for narration and of most individual characteristics, which prove how much the Rabbinical writers in Palestine knew of this side of literary activity. Or is anything wanting to the clearness and individual characterisation, to which Kalthoff also has alluded, of the touching story of Ruth; of the picture of the prophet Jonah, of Judith, Esther, Job, &c? And then the stories of the patriarchs—the pious Abraham, the good-natured, narrow-minded Esau, the cunning Jacob, and their respective wives—or, to take one case, how clear is not the meeting of Abraham’s servant with Rebecca at the well!83 Or let us consider Moses, Elijah, Samson—great figures who in their most essential traits demonstrably belong to myth and religious fable! If in preaching our ministers can go so vividly into the details of the story of the Saviour that fountains of poetry are opened and there stream forth from their lips clear accounts of Jesus’ goodness of heart, of his heroic greatness, and of his readiness for the sacrifice, how much more would this have been so at first in the Christian community, when the new religion was still in its youth, when the faith in the Messiah was as yet unweakened by sceptical doubts, and when the heart of man was still filled with the desire for immediate and final redemption? And even if we are confronted with a host of minor traits, which cannot so easily be accounted for by religious motives and poetic imagination, must these all refer to the same real personality? May they not be based on events which are very far from being necessarily experiences of the liberal theology’s historical Jesus? Even Edward v. Hartmann, who is generally content to adhere to the historical Jesus, suggests the possibility “that several historical personages, who lived at quite different times, have contributed concrete individual characteristics to the picture of Jesus.”84 There is a great deal of talk about the “uninventable” in the evangelical representation. Von Soden even goes so far as to base his chief proof for the historical existence of Jesus on this individuality that cannot be invented.85 As if there was any such thing as what cannot be invented for men with imagination! And as if all the significant details of Jesus’ life were not invented on the lines of the so-called Messianic passages in the Old Testament, in heathen mythology, and in the imported conceptions of the Messiah! The part that is professedly “uninventable” shrinks continuously the more assiduously criticism busies itself with the Gospels; and the word can at present apply only to side-issues and matters of no importance. We are indeed faced with the strange fact, that all the essential part of the Gospels, everything which is of importance for religious faith, such as especially the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is demonstrably invented and mythical; but such parts as can at best only be historical because of their supposed “uninventable” nature are of no importance for the character of the Gospel representation!