Note 6 — Chapter IV · THE METHOD OF BLUSTER

Names of persons are rare: even Jairus is not named in [codex] D. Among the dramatis personæ it is only Jesus who distinctively speaks and acts; the antagonists provoke him; the disciples are only figures in the background. But of what he lived by, how he dwelt, ate, and drank, bore himself with his companions, nothing is vouchsafed. It is told that he taught in the synagogue on the Sabbath, but no notion is given of the how; we get only something of what he said outside the synagogue, usually through a special incident which elicits it. The normal things are never related, only the extraordinary.... The scantiness of the tradition is remarkable.6