Note 5 — Chapter I · THE APPROACH

Before coming to the main matter, it is necessary to elucidate the charge as to a “crude principle” applied to Paul and the evangelists. The “principle” really applied was this, that if “Paul” in all his writings, apart from two interpolated passages, shows no real knowledge whatever of the gospels, and no knowledge whatever either of the life or the teachings of Jesus as there recorded, we are compelled to infer either that these details were not in any form known to Paul, or that, if he knew them, he did not believe them. It is not a matter of his not knowing “a thing”: that is the sophism of the critic; it is a matter of his not knowing anything on the subject. And so with the synoptics and the fourth gospel. When one side relates something vital to the record, of which the other side shows no knowledge whatever5—as, for instance, great miracles—we are bound to infer that the silent side, when it is the earlier record, either did not know or did not believe the story. Or, again, when John alleges that the disciples baptized freely and the synoptics make no mention of it, it is clear that we cannot suppose them, in the alleged circumstances, to have been ignorant of such a fact; while, if they are supposed to have known it and yet to have kept silence, their credit as historians is gravely shaken. The “principle,” in fact, is that of critical common-sense; and the critic’s version of it is a forensic perversion.