Note 30 — Chapter VII · GOSPEL-MAKING

In this connection, finally, it has to be noted that Professor Schmiedel finds an à priori authenticity in a prediction in which Jesus claims supernatural status, though the ostensibly unhistorical character of such claims was his avowed ground for positing the “pillar-texts” which alone defied all skepticism. And the formula in both cases is the same—“it could not have been invented.”30 The major premiss involved is: “No passage could be invented which would stultify the position of the believers.” But do none of the admitted inventions31 in the gospels stultify the position of the believers? The two genealogies do; the anti-Davidic passages stultify these; the pro-Samaritan teaching stultifies the anti-Samaritan; and so on through twenty cases of contradiction. M. Loisy, indeed, claims the pro-Samaritan passage as genuine: does he then admit the anti-Samaritan to be spurious?