Note 13 — Chapter VII · GOSPEL-MAKING

Either the first chapter of Mark is primordial gospel-writing or it is not. If it is, the biographical theory is as idle as those ridiculed by Socrates in the Phædrus. If it is not, upon what does the biographical theory found? The details of “mending their nets” and “in the boat with the hired servants”? Professor Schmiedel, conscious of the unreality of such narrative, falls back upon nine selected texts, seven of them in Mark, which he claims as “pillars” of a real biography of Jesus,13 on the score that they present him as (a) flouted in his pretensions or (b) himself disclaiming deity, or (c) declining to work wonders, or (d) apparently denying a miracle story, or (e) crying out to God on the cross that he is forsaken. Now, of all such texts, only b and e types can have any such evidential force as Schmiedel ascribes to them.14 Type a counts for nothing: not only the suffering Saviour-Gods but Apollo and Arês, to say nothing of Hephaistos, Hêrê, and Aphroditê, are flouted in the pagan literature which treats them as Gods. If to quote “he is beside himself” is to prove historicity, why not quote the taunts to Jesus in the fourth gospel, nay, the crucifixion itself?