Note 6 — Chapter II · THE CENTRAL MYTH

The biographical school, as one may inoffensively term the variously minded champions of the historicity of the record, abandon the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection as impossibilities. That is to say, they accept the myth-theory as regards those two cardinal items of the Christian legend. They also in general recognize that the fourth gospel, in so far as it differs vitally from the synoptics, is in the main a process of myth-making. But, clinging to the alleged substratum, most members of the school adhere to the fundamental historicity of the Crucifixion. Here they stand with Strauss, who found in the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate a solid historical fact. Strauss is generally explicit as to his reasons for accepting and rejecting; and while he resolves into myth at least nine-tenths of the gospel narratives, finding them mere inventions to “fulfil” supposed Old Testament predictions, he finds the testimony of Tacitus unquestionable as to the execution.6