Note 31 — Chapter V · THE FIRST VISIT TO THE TEMPLE, AND THE EDUCATION OF JESUS.

But how this anecdote can be numbered among mythi is found by some altogether inconceivable. It bears, thinks Heydenreich,31 a thoroughly historical character (this is the very point to be proved), and the stamp of the highest simplicity (like every popular legend in its original form); it contains no tincture of the miraculous, wherein the primary characteristic of a mythus (but not of every mythus) is held to consist; it is so remote from all embellishment that there is not the slightest detail of the conversation of Jesus with the doctors (the legend was satisfied with the dramatic trait, sitting in the midst of the doctors: as a dictum, v. 49 was alone important, and towards this the narrator hastens without delay); nay, even the conversation between Jesus and his mother is only given in a fragmentary aphoristic manner (there is no trace of an omission); finally, the inventor of a legend would have made Jesus speak differently to his mother, instead of putting into his mouth words which might be construed into irreverence and indifference. In this last observation Heydenreich agrees with Schleiermacher, who finds in the behaviour of Jesus to his mother, liable as it is to be misinterpreted, a sure guarantee that the whole history was not invented to supply something remarkable concerning Jesus, in connexion with the period at which the holy things of the temple and the law were first opened to him.32