Note 8 — Chapter VI · THE ART OF CRITICISM

Mr. Smith denies all historicity to Acts and Epistles More consistently, however, than Mr. Robertson, Professor Smith denies that there are any allusions to the real Jesus in the rest of the New Testament. The Acts and Epistles do not, he says (p. 23), “recognize at all the life of Jesus as a man,” though “their general tenour gives great value to the death of Jesus as a God.” This is a new reading of the documents in question, for the Pauline conviction was that Jesus had been crucified and died as a man, and, being raised up from death by the Spirit, had been promoted to be, what he was antenatally, a super-human or angelic figure8—a Christ or Messiah, who was to come again on earth and judge mankind. Of his mere humanity while on this earth, and as long as he was associating with human disciples, Paul entertained no doubts. How could he, inasmuch as he had stayed with them at Jerusalem? Mr. Robertson, as we saw, although he dissipates Jesus in the Gospels into a Sun-God-Saviour Joshua, nevertheless is so impressed by the Pauline “references to a crucified Jesus” (p. 364) that he resuscitates Jesus Ben Pandira out of the limbo of the Talmud. Perhaps he strains at a gnat after swallowing a camel. Anyhow, I will leave Mr. Smith to settle accounts with him, and turn to a fresh point, which has not occurred to either of them.