Note 19 — Chapter VII · GOSPEL-MAKING

More complex is the second question, as to how the Ebionite view of Jesus emerged. But the answer has already been indicated in terms of the myth-theory. And the question really cannot be answered on the biographical view, for the canonical documents give no hint19 of a persistence of a “human” view among the early Christists as against a “divine” one. The Judaizers are represented equally with the Paulinists as making Jesus “Lord”; and it is on the Paulinist side that we hear of adherents who do not believe in the resurrection. That is really a divergence from the Judaistic view, for Jews in general accepted immortality. The moment, however, we put the hypothesis of a primitive cult of a Saviour-God whose sacrifice in some way benefits men, and whose Sacrament is the machinery of that benefit, we account for all the varieties of Jesuism known to us. The cult was primordially Semitic, a thing on the outskirts of later Judaism, which would be Judaized in so far as it came under Jewish influence, and then theologically re-cast for Gentilism by Gentilizing Jews. Thus there would be Judaistic Ebionites, and Jesuists such as those taught by the Didachê, who would insist on connecting Jesus only with the Eucharist, making him a subordinate figure, upon whose legend were slowly grafted moral teachings.