Note 13 — Chapter XV · THE METHOD OF M. LOISY

Met by such suggestions, M. Loisy tells us that we are superficial. But is he otherwise? Is he not simply evading his problem? Can he see nothing strange in the sudden mention of the carpenter in a “primary” gospel which had set out with a divine personage and had never mentioned his parents or upbringing? On the mythic theory the apparition of the Messiah without antecedents is precisely what was to be expected; if there was any clear Jewish expectation on the point, it was that he should come unlooked for, unheralded save, on one view, by “Elias.”13 Thus the Gospel record fits into the myth theory from the outset, while on the assumption of historicity it is but a series of enigmas.