Note 41 — VII SYMBOLS OF THE MESSIAH: THE LAMB AND THE CROSS THE CHRISTIAN JESUS I THE PAULINE JESUS

It is evident that in reality it was merely a new setting to the old conception of the representative self-sacrifice of God—in which the genitive is to be taken both in its subjective and objective sense. No historical personality, who should, so to say, have lived as an example of the God-man, was in any way necessary to produce that Pauline development of the religion of Jesus. For the chance personalities of the men representing the God came under consideration just as little for Paul as for the heathens; and when he also, with the other Jews, designated the Messiah Jesus as the bodily descendant of David “according to the flesh,”41 i.e., as a man; when he treated him as “born of woman,” he thought not at all of any concrete individuality, which had at a certain time embodied the divinity within itself, but purely of the idea of a Messiah in the flesh; just as the suffering servant of God of Isaiah, even in spite of the connection of this idea with an actually accomplished human sacrifice, had possessed only an ideal imaginary or typical significance. The objection is always being raised that Paul must have conceived of Jesus as an historical individual because he designates him as the bodily descendant of David, and makes him “born of woman” (Gal. iv. 4). But how else could he have been born? (Cf. Job xiv. 1.) The bringing into prominence the birth from woman, as well as the general emphasis laid by the Apostle on the humanity of Jesus, is directed against the Gnostics in the Corinthian community, but proves nothing whatsoever as to the historical Jesus. And the descent from David was part of the traditional characteristics of the Messiah; so that Paul could say it of Jesus without referring to a real descendant of David. But even less is proved by Paul’s, in Gal. iii. 1, reproaching the Galatians with having seen the crucified Christ “set forth openly”; we would then have to declare also that there was an actual devil and a hell, because these are set forth to the faithful by the “caretakers of their souls” when preaching. Here then lies the explanation for the fact that the “man” Jesus remained an intangible phantom to Paul, and that he can speak of Christ as a man, without thinking of an historical personality in the sense of the liberal theology of the present day. The ideal man, as Paul represented Jesus to himself—the essence of all human existence—the human race considered as a person, who represented humanity to God, just as the man sacrificed in his rôle had represented the Deity to the people—the “Man” on whom alone redemption depended—is and remains a metaphysical Being—just as the Idea of Plato or the Logos of Philo are none the less metaphysical existences because of their descent into the world of the senses and of their assuming in it a definite individual corporality. And what Paul teaches concerning the “man” Jesus is only a detailed development and deepening of what the Mandæi believed of their Mandä de hajjê or Hibil Ziwâ, and of what the Jewish religions under the influence of the Apocalypses involved in their mysterious doctrines of the Messiah. For Paul the descent, death, and resurrection of Jesus represented an eternal but not an actual story in time; and so to search Paul for the signs of an historical Jesus is to misunderstand the chief point in his religious view of the world.