PREFACE TO THE FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS

In England John M. Robertson, in “Christianity and Mythology” (1900), in “A Short History of Christianity” (1902), as well as in his work “Pagan Christs: Studies in Comparative Hierology” (1903), has traced the picture of Christ in the Gospels to a mixture of mythological elements in heathenism and Judaism.

In France, as early as the end of the eighteenth century, Dupuis (“L’origine de tous les cultes,” 1795) and Voltaire (“Les Ruines,” 1791) traced back the essential points of the history of the Christian redemption to astral myths, while Émile Burnouf (“La science des religions,” 4th ed., 1885) and Hochart (“Études d’histoire religieuse,” 1890) collected important material for the clearing up of the origin of Christianity, and by their results cast considerable doubt upon the existence of an historical Christ.

In Italy Milesbo (Emilio Bossi) has attempted to prove the non-historicity of Jesus in his book “Gesù Christo non è mai esistito” (1904).

In Holland the Leyden Professor of Philosophy, Bolland, handled the same matter in a series of works (“Het Lijden en Sterven van Jezus Christus,” 1907; “De Achtergrond der Evangeliën. Eene Bijdrage tot de kennis van de Wording des Christendoms,” 1907; “De evangelische Jozua. Eene poging tot aanwijzing van den oorsprong des Christendoms,” 1907).

In Poland the mythical character of the story of Jesus has been shown by Andrzej Niemojewski in his book “Bóg Jezus” (1909), which rests on the astral-mythological theories of Dupuis and the school of Winckler.

In Germany the Bremen Pastor Kalthoff, in his work, “Das Christusproblem, Grundlinien zu einer Sozialtheologie” (1903), thought that the appearance of the Christian religion could be accounted for without the help of an historical Jesus, simply from a social movement of the lower classes under the Empire, subsequently attempting to remove the one-sidedness of this view by his work “Die Entstehung des Christentums. Neue Beiträge zum Christusproblem” (1904). (Cf. also his work “Was wissen wir von Jesus? Eine Abrechnung mit Professor D. Bousset,” 1904.) A supplement to the works of Kalthoff in question is furnished by Fr. Steudel in “Das Christusproblem und die Zukunft des Protestantismus” (Deutsche Wiedergeburt, 1909).

Finally, the American, William Benjamin Smith, in his work, “The Pre-Christian Jesus” (1906), has thrown so clear a light upon a number of important points in the rise of Christianity, and elucidated so many topics which give us a deeper insight into the actual correlation of events, that we gradually commence to see clearly in this connection.

In the meantime there are many voices which speak out against the existence of an historical Jesus. In wide circles the doubt grows as to the historical character of the picture of Christ given in the Gospels. Popular works written with a purpose, such as the investigations of the Frenchman Jacolliot, worked up by Plange into “Jesus ein Inder” (1898), have to serve to alleviate this thirst for knowledge and confuse views more than they clear them. In a short work, “Die Entstehung des Christentums” (1905), Promus has afforded a brief résumé of the most important matter bearing on the point, without any working up of it on its own account, and attacked the existence of an historical Jesus. Lately Karl Voller, the prematurely deceased Jena Orientalist, in his valuable work, “Die Weltreligionen in ihrem geschichtlichen Zusammenhange” (1907), voiced the opinion “that weighty reasons favour this radical myth interpretation, and that no absolutely decisive arguments for the historicity of the person of Jesus can be brought forward” (op. cit. i. 163).

The author of the present work had hoped until lately that one of the historians of Christianity would himself arise and extract the present results of the criticisms of the Gospel, which to-day are clear. These hopes have not been fulfilled. On the contrary, in theological circles religious views continue to be quietly drawn from the “fact” of an historical Jesus, and he is considered as the impassable height in the religious development of the individual, as though nothing has occurred and the existence of such a Jesus was only the more clearly established by the investigations of critical theology in this connection. The author has accordingly thought that he should no longer keep back his own views, which he long since arrived at out of the works of specialists, and has taken upon himself the thankless task of bringing together the grounds which tell against the theory of an historical Jesus.

If one keeps this before his eyes he will not be particularly moved by the talk about “method” and “lack of scientific system.” One could then at most wonder that it should be forbidden to philosophers particularly to have a say in theological matters. As though the peace at present reigning between philosophy and theology and their mutual efforts at a rapprochement did not clearly indicate that upon one of the two sides, or upon both, something cannot be in order, and that consequently it was high time, if no one else undertakes it, for a philosopher to notice theology in order to terminate the make-believe peace which is for both so fateful. For what does Lessing say? “With orthodoxy God be thanked one had arrived at a tolerable understanding. Between it and philosophy a partition had been raised behind which each could continue its way without hindering the other. But what is now being done? The partition is again being demolished, and under the pretext of making us reasonable Christians we are being made unreasonable philosophers.”

PROFESSOR DR. ARTHUR DREWS.

Karlsruhe, January, 1910.