Chapter VI · EARLY BOOK-MAKING

§1. The “Didachê”

It is quite clear that in this form of Jesuism, visibly early as compared with that set forth in the gospels and the Acts, we have something different from that in its derivation. The Eucharist, here so called ostensibly for the first time, is only inferribly derived from a sacrament of the body and blood of the sacrificed Jesus. Eucharistia means thanksgiving or thank-offering, and this ritual-meal is intelligibly so named. Applied, as by Justin Martyr and later Fathers, to the sacrificial sacrament of the gospels and the epistles, the name is a false description: yet the false description becomes canonical. The licit inference appears to be that the cult of a Jesus who outside of Judaism was a Sacrificed Saviour-God had here, under Judaic control, been presented as that of a Hero-Jesus, connected like Dionysos with the gift of the vine, and associated with a ritual meal of thanksgiving to Yahweh, whose “servant” he is.

Taking the Didachê as a stage in the Christian evolution, we further infer that the conception and name of a “Eucharist” was thence imposed on another and older species of ritual-meal, in which the Jesus is slain as a sacrifice and commemorated in a sacrificial sacrament. The more Judaic form of the cult absorbs an older and non-Judaic form, forced to the front by a death-story which gives to its sacrament a higher virtue for the devotee. It is a case of competition of cult forms for survival, the weaker being superseded. And as the sacrament, so the Jesus, is developed on other lines. He of the Didachê is neither Son of God nor Saviour, as he is not the Messiah, though he has somehow conveyed “knowledge and faith and immortality.” What the Didachê does is to begin the process of a doctrinal and ethical teaching which coalesces with that of evolving the God.

In the eighth section, the “Lord’s Prayer” is introduced with the formula “Nor pray ye like the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in his gospel.” Now “the Lord” has in every previous mention clearly meant, not Jesus, who is mentioned solely in the “servant” passages, but “God,” “the Father,” the Jewish deity. Either, then, “the Lord ... in his gospel” refers to some “gospel” of Yahweh or, as is highly probable, the whole clause is a late interpolation. This is the more likely because the seventh section, prescribing baptism in the name of “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” is flagrantly interpolated. That being so, the provision at the end of c. 9, that no one shall partake of the Eucharist except those baptized in the name of the Lord, must be held to be also a late interpolation. Thus the document has been manipulated to some extent even in its early portions. The only other mentions of the gospel are in chapters 11 and 15, which follow after the “Amen” of the tenth, and represent the progressive provisions for the apostles and prophets of the growing church. The introduction of Jesuism in chapters 9 and 10 is pre-gospel.

It must be repeated, however, that the ninth and tenth sections of the Teaching are not to be taken as giving us “the” original Jesus of the Jesuist movement. We have posited, with Professor Smith, a “multifocal” movement; and concerning the Jesus here given we can only say that the document tells of the primary connection of the Jesus-Name with a non-sacrificial Eucharist. Whether the name stood historically for Joshua or for the Jesus of Zechariah, or for yet another, it is impossible to pronounce. What is clear is that it does not point to the Jesus of the gospels. When the Jesus-sections of the Teaching were penned, the gospels were yet to come; and the crucified Saviour-God of Paul was not preached, though his myth was certainly current somewhere.

§ 2. The Apocalypse

In these, as we have seen, the original God-Man is progressively humanized from the hieratic figure of the opening chapters of Mark, through Matthew and Luke, till in the fourth, which declares him Logos and premundane, he has close personal friends and (ostensibly) weeps for the death of one. But not even the thoughtless criticism which professes to find a recognizable human figure in Mark can pretend to find one in Revelation. There, admittedly on Jewish bases, there is limned an unearthly figure, who has been “pierced,” we are not told where; who has the keys of death and Hades, and carries on his right hand seven stars; and has eyes like a flame of fire and feet like unto burnished brass. With this pre-Christian apparatus, which on the astrological side goes back to Persia and Babylon, there is carried on a fierce polemic against certain of the “seven churches,” the sect of the Nicolaitans, and “them which say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.” The churches named are not those of the Acts and the Pauline epistles: Jerusalem and Antioch are not named, though Ephesus is. Jewish and pre-Jewish myth and doctrine overlay the Jesuist, which at many points is visibly a mere verbal interpolation; so that the question arises whether even the seven churches are primarily Christian or Jewish.

How much such a document stood for in the early building-up of the cult it is impossible to gather from the records, which indicate that it was long regarded askance by the gospel-reading and epistle-reading churches. But it gives a definite proof that the cult had roots wholly unlike those indicated in the “catholic” tradition, and wholly incompatible with the beginnings set out in the gospels and the Acts.

§ 3. Epistles

But the remaining epistles differ historically from this only in respect of their asseveration of a crucified Christ, by faith in whom men are saved. They too are devoid of biographical data. Neither parable nor miracle, doctrine nor deed, family history nor birthplace, of the Founder is ever mentioned in the epistolary literature, any more than in the Apocalypse or the Didachê. And yet the mass of the epistles are being, as aforesaid, more and more pressed upon by criticism as pseudepigraphic. Second Peter was always in dispute; and First Peter has few save traditionalist supporters. If First John is to be bracketed with the fourth gospel, it is dismissed with that as outside the synoptic tradition: and the second and third epistles are simply dropped as spurious. Hebrews is anonymous, though our Revisers saw fit to retain its false title; and that epistle too is utterly devoid of testimony to a historical Jesus. It tells simply of a human sacrifice, in which the victim “suffered without the gate,” in accordance with the regular sacrificial practice. Late or early, then, the epistles give no support to the gospels—or, at least, to the biographical theory founded on these.

From the point of view of the historical as distinguished from the documentary critic, all that need here be said on the issue is that the negative case may have to be restated if there is faced the hypothesis that the Jesuine movement was of comparatively old standing, and of some degree of development, when Paul came on the scene. Van Manen assumes the substantial historicity not only of Jesus but of the Jesuine movement as set forth in the Gospels; and whereas he found it hard to make that assumption on the view that any of the Paulines was genuine, he had no difficulty about it when he relegated them all to the second century. It should be asked, then, whether the view that the Jesus-cult is “pre-Christian” might not re-open the case for some of the Paulines.

Having put that caveat, the historical critic has simply to consider the question of the historicity of Jesus in relation to the Paulines from both points of view, asking what evidence they can be supposed to yield either on the view of the genuineness of some or on that of the spuriousness of all. And the outcome is that on neither view do they tell of a historical Jesus. If “the four” are genuine, Paul, declared to be so near the influence of the “personality” of Jesus, not only shows no trace of impression from it but expressly puts aside the question. In the Epistle to the Galatians he declares that he had not learned his gospel from the other apostles but received it by special revelation, actually avoiding intercourse with the other apostles apart from Peter—a proposition certainly savouring strongly of post-Pauline dialectic, as does the text (2 Cor. v, 16): “Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know [him so] no more.” Instead then of the Paulines, on the view of their genuineness, confirming the conception of a remarkable personality which had profoundly impressed those who came in contact with it, they radically and unmanageably conflict with that conception. So far Van Manen is justified.

If on the other hand we accept the strongly supported thesis that they are all pseudepigraphic, the historicity of the gospels is in no way accredited. We reach the view that early in the second century, when such early gospels as the Matthew and Mark of Papias may be supposed to have been current, even the devotees who wrote in Paul’s name took no interest in the human personality of Jesus, but were concerned simply about the religious significance of his death. The passages in First Corinthians (xi, 23 sq.; xv, 3 sq.) which deal with the Supper and the Resurrection expressly repudiate knowledge of the gospels; the first claiming to have “received of the Lord” the facts retailed, and the second, after a similar formula, proffering data not given in any gospel. And both passages have been demonstrably interpolated, even if we do not pronounce them, as we are entitled to do, interpolations as wholes. The first breaks the continuity of an exhortation as to the proper way of eating the Lord’s Supper; the second is introduced (xv, 1) with a strange profession to “make known unto you the gospel which I preached unto you.” And even the second passage, with its mention of “the twelve,” excludes knowledge of the story of Judas; while the first, at the point at which our revisers translate “was betrayed,” really says only “delivered up” (παρεδίδοτο), which may or may not imply betrayal.

How Van Manen could find in all this any support for the gospel story in general he never explained; and obviously no support is given. Historically considered, the epistles undermine the biographical theory whether we reckon them early or late, genuine or pseudepigraphic. If early, they discredit completely the notion of a historical Jesus of impressive personality. If as late as Van Manen makes them (120–140) they tell not only of indifference to the personality of Jesus but of ignorance of the gospel story as we have it, strongly suggesting that the complete story of the tragedy was yet unknown, and that only in still later interpolations, made before the Judas story was current, was it to be indicated.

What is more, the Paulines, like other Epistles, tell of vital unbelief as to the reality of Jesus. Paul is made to protest that “some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor. xv, 12). These Jesuists, then, held at most only a faith in future salvation by virtue of the sacrament. So in First John it is implied (iv, 2–3) that some of the adherents confess not that Jesus is come in the flesh, which is declared to be the doctrine of “the antichrist,” a type of which “many” (ii, 18) have arisen.

We are critically forced, then, to the conclusion that for a century after the alleged death of the Founder the Jesuist movement had either no literature whatever save one of primarily Jewish documents such as the Didachê or problematic short Pauline epistles which have either disappeared or been absorbed in much longer documents of later date, which in turn still tell of no Jesuine Sacred Books. All alike exclude the conception of a historical Jesus of remarkable personality. In the doctrinal quarrels which have already driven deep furrows in the faith, the personality of Jesus counts for nothing. In that connection no one cites any teaching of the Master. He is simply an abstract sacrifice; and even in that aspect he is not clearly present in the Jewish-Christian Didachê. Of his earthly parentage, domicile, or career, there is not a word. Everything goes to confirm our hypothesis that the cult is of ancient origin, rooted in a sacrament which evolved out of a rite of human sacrifice and connected with non-Jewish as well as Jewish myths which from the first tended to the deification of the Slain One.

It remains, then, to consider the gospels anew as compilations made in the second century of (1) previously current Jewish lore, written and unwritten; (2) doctrinal elements indicated by the sectarian disputes already active; (3) pseudo-historic elements justifying Messianic doctrine and practice; and (4) the Mystery-Drama, now developed under Gentile hands. Upon all this followed (5) the new theology and new pseudo-biography of the fourth gospel, which was but another stage in the general process of myth-making.