Note 9 — Chapter XVII · THE JESUS-FIGURE OF M. LOISY

This transformation, then—the long current dream of Jewry—was to be a vast miracle, and in that miracle Jesus believed he was to play the part of the Messiah, the divine representative. That expectation sustained him till the moment of his death.9 Nevertheless “his idea of the reign of God was not a patriotic hallucination or the dream of an excited [exalté] mystic. The reign of God is the reign of justice.”10 (As if the second sentence proved the first.) And yet, all the while: “On the whole, the Gospel ethic is no more consistent than the hope of the kingdom.... Considered in themselves, as the Gospel makes them known to us, they are not mythic but mystic.”11