Note 2 — Chapter XVII · THE JESUS-FIGURE OF M. LOISY

It may be worth while for me here to note that a study of the Pauline epistles, on the view that “the four” were probably genuine in the main, was a determining factor in my own resort to the mythical hypothesis. The critical situation created by realizing that Paul practically knew nothing of the Gospel narratives save the detachable item of the resurrection was for me almost exactly analogous to that created by realizing that the Israel of the Book of Judges knew nothing of the Pentateuchal life in the wilderness. So far from being a witness against the myth theory, the Pauline literature was one of the first clear grounds for that theory. The school of Van Manen can realize, what M. Loisy cannot, that the spuriousness of the whole Pauline literature, so far from being “imperiously required” by the myth theory, sets up for that a certain complication.2 As a matter of fact, Van Manen took exactly the converse view to that of M. Loisy:—