XVIII. The Position Of The Subject At The Close Of The Nineteenth Century

The subordinates, it is true, do not allow themselves to be disturbed by the change of attitude at head-quarters. They keep busily at work. That is their right, and therein consists their significance. By keeping on trying to take the positions, and constantly failing, they furnish a practical proof that the plan of operations worked out by the general staff is not capable of being carried out, and show why it is so, and what kind of new tactics will have to be evolved.

Oskar Holtzmann declares that we cannot tell what was the size of the following which accompanied Jesus in His journey northwards, and is inclined to assume that others besides the Twelve shared His exile. The Evangelists, however, say clearly that it was only the μαθηταί, that is, the Twelve, who were with Him. The value which this special knowledge, independent of the text, has for the author, becomes evident a little farther on. After Peter's confession Jesus calls the “multitude” to Him (Mark viii. 34) and speaks to them of His sufferings and of taking up the cross and following Him. This “multitude” Holtzmann wants to make “the whole company of Jesus' followers,” “to which belonged, not only the Twelve whom Jesus had formerly sent out to preach, but many others also.” The knowledge drawn from outside the text is therefore required to solve a difficulty in the text.

But how did His companions in exile, the remnant of the previous multitude, themselves become a multitude, the same multitude as before? Would it not be better to admit that we do not know how, in a Gentile country, a multitude could suddenly rise out of the ground as it were, continue with Him until Mark ix. 30, and then disappear into the earth as suddenly as they came, leaving Him to pursue His journey towards Galilee and Jerusalem alone?

Another thing which Oskar Holtzmann knows is that it required a good deal of courage for Peter to hail Jesus as Messiah, since the “exile wandering about with his small following in a Gentile country” answered “so badly to the general picture which people had formed of the coming of the Messiah.” He knows too, that in the moment of Peter's confession, “Christianity was complete” in the sense that “a community separate from Judaism and centring about a new ideal, then arose.” This “community” frequently appears from this point onwards. There is nothing about it in the narratives, which know only the Twelve and the people.

Oskar Holtzmann's knowledge even extends to dialogues which are not reported in the Gospels. After the incident at Caesarea Philippi, the minds of the disciples were, according to him, preoccupied by two questions. “How did Jesus know that He was the Messiah?” and “What will be the future fate of this Messiah?” The Lord answered both questions. He spoke to them of His baptism, and “doubtless in close connexion with that” He told them the story of His temptation, during which He had laid down the lines which He was determined to follow as Messiah.

Of the transfiguration, Oskar Holtzmann can state with confidence, “that it merely represents the inner experience of the disciples at the moment of Peter's confession.” How is it then that Mark expressly dates that scene, placing it (ix. 2) six days after the discourse of Jesus about taking up the cross and following Him? The fact is that the time-indications of the text are treated as non-existent whenever the Marcan hypothesis requires an order determined by inner connexion. The statement of Luke that the transfiguration took place eight days after, is dismissed in the remark “the motive of this indication of time is doubtless to be found in the use of the Gospel narratives for reading in public worship; the idea was that the section about the transfiguration should be read on the Sunday following that on which the confession of Peter formed the lesson.” Where did Oskar Holtzmann suddenly discover this information about the order of the “Sunday lessons” at the time when Luke's Gospel was written?

It was doubtless from the same private source of information that the author derived his knowledge regarding the gradual development of the thought of the Passion in the consciousness of Jesus. “After the confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi,” he explains, “Jesus' death became for Him only the necessary point of transition to the glory beyond. In the discourse of Jesus to which the request of Salome gave occasion, the death of Jesus already appears as the means of saving many from death, because His death makes possible the coming of the Kingdom of God. At the institution of the Supper, Jesus regards His imminent death as the meritorious deed by which the blessings of the New Covenant, the forgiveness of sins and victory over sin, are permanently secured to His ‘community.’ We see Jesus constantly becoming more and more at home with the idea of His death and constantly giving it a deeper interpretation.”

Any one who is less skilled in reading the thoughts of Jesus, and more simple and natural in his reading of the text of Mark, cannot fail to observe that Jesus speaks in Mark x. 45 of His death as an expiation, not as a means of saving others from death, and that at the Lord's Supper there was no reference to His “community,” but only to the inexplicable “many,” which is also the word in Mark x. 45. We ought to admit freely that we do not know what the thoughts of Jesus about His death were at the time of the first prediction of the Passion after Peter's confession; and to be on our guard against the “original sin” of theology, that of exalting the argument from silence, when it happens to be useful, to the rank of positive realities.

In the end this supplementary knowledge destroys the historicity of the simplest sections. Oskar Holtzmann ventures to conjecture that the healing of the blind man at Jericho “is to be understood as a symbolical representation of the conversion of Zacchaeus,” which, of course, is found only in Luke. Here then the defender of the Marcan hypothesis rejects the incident by which the Evangelist explains the enthusiasm of the entry into Jerusalem, not to mention that Luke tells us nothing whatever about a conversion of Zacchaeus, but only that Jesus was invited to his house and graciously accepted the invitation.

But how was it that the Messianic enthusiasm on the part of the people did not lead to a Messianic controversy, in spite of the fact that Jesus “from the first came forward in Jerusalem as Messiah”? This difficulty O. Holtzmann seems to be trying to provide against when he remarks in a footnote: “We have no evidence that Jesus, even during the last sojourn in Jerusalem, was recognised as Messiah except by those who belonged to the inner circle of disciples. The repetition by the children of the acclamations of the disciples (Matt. xxi. 15 and 16) can hardly be considered of much importance in this connexion.” According to this, Jesus entered Jerusalem as Messiah, but except for the disciples and a few children no one recognised His entry as having a Messianic significance! But Mark states that many spread their garments upon the way, and others plucked down branches from the trees and strewed them in the way, and that those that went before and those that followed after, cried “Hosanna!” The Marcan narrative must therefore be kept out of sight for the moment in order that the Life of Jesus as conceived by the modern Marcan hypothesis may not be endangered.

“It is self-evident,” says von Soden in one passage, “in view of the inner connexion in which the Kingdom of God and the Messiah stood in the thoughts of the people ... that in all classes the question must have been discussed, so that Jesus could not permanently have avoided their question, ‘What of the Messiah? Art thou not He?’ ” Where, in the Synoptics, is there a word to show that this is “self-evident”? When the disciples in Mark viii. tell Jesus “whom men held Him to be,” none of them suggests that any one had been tempted to regard Him as the Messiah. And that was shortly before Jesus set out for Jerusalem.

From the day when the envoys of the Scribes from Jerusalem first appeared in the north, the easily influenced Galilaean multitude began, according to von Soden, “to waver.” How does he know that the Galilaeans were easily influenced? How does he know they “wavered”? The Gospels tell us neither one nor the other. The demand for a sign was, to quote von Soden again, a demand for a proof of His Messiahship. “Yet another indication,” adds the author, “that later Christianity, in putting so high a value on the miracles of Jesus as a proof of His Messiahship, departed widely from the thoughts of Jesus.”

Before levelling reproaches of this kind against later Christianity, it would be well to point to some passage of Mark or Matthew in which there is mention of a demand for a sign as a proof of His Messiahship.

When the appearance of Jesus in the south—we are still following von Soden—aroused the Messianic expectations of the people, as they had formerly been aroused in His native country, “they once more failed to understand the correction of them which Jesus had made by the manner of His entry and His conduct in Jerusalem.” They are unable to understand this “transvaluation of values,” and as often as the impression made by His personality suggested the thought that He was the Messiah, they became doubtful again. Wherein consisted the correction of the Messianic expectation given at the triumphal entry? Was it that He rode upon an ass? Would it not be better if modern historical theology, instead of always making the people “grow doubtful,” were to grow a little doubtful of itself, and begin to look for the evidence of that “transvaluation of values” which, according to them, the contemporaries of Jesus were not able to follow?

As if He had not answered that question in the petition “Thy Kingdom come”—supposing that such a question could ever have occurred to a contemporary—in the sense that the Kingdom was to pass from the beyond into the present!

This modern historical theology will not allow Jesus to have formed a “theory” to explain His thoughts about His passion. “For Him the certainty was amply sufficient; ‘My death will effect what My life has not been able to accomplish.’ ”

Is there then no theory implied in the saying about the “ransom for many,” and in that about “My blood which is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins,” although Jesus does not explain it? How does von Soden know what was “amply sufficient” for Jesus or what was not?

Otto Schmiedel goes so far as to deny that Jesus gave distinct expression to an expectation of suffering; the most He can have done—and this is only a “perhaps”—is to have hinted at it in His discourses.

But why should whatever is incomprehensible to us be unhistorical? Would it not be better simply to admit that we do not understand certain connexions of ideas and turns of expression in the discourses of Jesus?

But instead even of making an analytical examination of the apparent connexions, and stating them as problems, the discourses of Jesus and the sections of the Gospels are tricked out with ingenious headings which have nothing to do with them. Thus, for instance, von Soden heads the Beatitudes (Matt. v. 3-12), “What Jesus brings to men,” the following verses (Matt. v. 13-16), “What He makes of men.” P. W. Schmidt, in his “History of Jesus,” shows himself a past master in this art. “The rights of the wife” is the title of the dialogue about divorce, as if the question at stake had been for Jesus the equality of the sexes, and not simply and solely the sanctity of marriage. “Sunshine for the children” is his heading for the scene where Jesus takes the children in His arms—as if the purpose of Jesus had been to protest against severity in the upbringing of children. Again, he brings together the stories of the man who must first bury his father, of the rich young man, of the dispute about precedence, of Zacchaeus, and others which have equally little connexion under the heading “Discipline for Jesus' followers.” These often brilliant creations of artificial connexions of thought give a curious attractiveness to the works of Schmidt and von Soden. The latter's survey of the Gospels is a really delightful performance. But this kind of thing is not consistent with pure objective history.

Disposing in this lofty fashion of the connexion of events, Schmiedel and von Soden do not find it difficult to distinguish between Mark and “Ur-Markus”; that is, to retain just so much of the Gospel as will fit in to their construction. Schmiedel feels sure that Mark was a skilful writer, and that the redactor was “a Christian of Pauline sympathies.” According to “Ur-Markus,” to which Mark iv. 33 belongs, the Lord speaks in parables in order that the people may understand Him the better; “it was only by the redactor that the Pauline theory about hardening their hearts (Rom. ix.-xi.) was interpolated, in Mark iv. 10 ff., and the meaning of Mark iv. 33 was thus obscured.”

It is high time that instead of merely asserting Pauline influences in Mark some proof of the assertion should be given. What kind of appearance would Mark have presented if it had really passed through the hands of a Pauline Christian?

But how can Schmiedel and von Soden fail to see that they are heading straight for Bruno Bauer's position? They assert that there is no distinction of principle between the way in which the Johannine and the Synoptic discourses are composed: the recognition of this was Bruno Bauer's starting-point. They propose to find experiences of the Christian community and Pauline teaching reflected in the Gospel of Mark; Bruno Bauer asserted the same. The only difference is that he was consistent, and extended his criticism to those portions of the Gospel which do not present the stumbling-block of the supernatural. Why should these not also contain the theology and the experiences of the community transformed into history? Is it only because they remain within the limits of the natural?

But in that case how can a modern Life of Jesus be founded on the Marcan plan? How much of Mark is, in the end, historical? Why should not Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi have been derived from the theology of the primitive Church, just as well as the transfiguration? The only difference is that the incident at Caesarea Philippi is more within the limits of the possible, whereas the scene upon the mountain has a supernatural colouring. But is the incident at Philippi so entirely natural? Whence does Peter know that Jesus is the Messiah?

This semi-scepticism is therefore quite unjustifiable, since in Mark natural and supernatural both stand in an equally good and close historical connexion. Either, then, one must be completely sceptical like Bruno Bauer, and challenge without exception all the facts and connexions of events asserted by Mark; or, if one means to found an historical Life of Jesus upon Mark, one must take the Gospel as a whole because of the plan which runs right through it, accepting it as historical and then endeavouring to explain why certain narratives, like the feeding of the multitude and the transfiguration, are bathed in a supernatural light, and what is the historical basis which underlies them. A division between the natural and supernatural in Mark is purely arbitrary, because the supernatural is an essential part of the history. The mere fact that he has not adopted the mythical material of the childhood stories and the post-resurrection scenes ought to have been accepted as evidence that the supernatural material which he does embody belongs to a category of its own and cannot be simply rejected as due to the invention of the primitive Christian community. It must belong in some way to the original tradition.

Oskar Holtzmann is thus more cautious than von Soden. He is inclined to see in the material which he wishes to exclude from the history, not so much inventions of the Church as mistaken shaping of history by Mark, and in this way he gets back to genuine old-fashioned rationalism. In the feeding of the multitude Jesus showed “the confidence of a courageous housewife who knows how to provide skilfully for a great crowd of children from small resources.” Perhaps in a future work Oskar Holtzmann will be less reserved, not for the sake of theology, but of national well-being, and will inform his contemporaries what kind of domestic economy it was which made it possible for the Lord to satisfy with five loaves and two fishes several thousand hungry men.

Modern historical theology, therefore, with its three-quarters scepticism, is left at last with only a torn and tattered Gospel of Mark in its hands. One would naturally suppose that these preliminary operations upon the source would lead to the production of a Life of Jesus of a similarly fragmentary character. Nothing of the kind. The outline is still the same as in Schenkel's day, and the confidence with which the construction is carried out is not less complete. Only the catch-words with which the narrative is enlivened have been changed, being now taken in part from Nietzsche. The liberal Jesus has given place to the Germanic Jesus. This is a figure which has as little to do with the Marcan hypothesis as the “liberal” Jesus had which preceded it; otherwise it could not so easily have survived the downfall of the Gospel of Mark as an historical source. It is evident, therefore, that this professedly historical Jesus is not a purely historical figure, but one which has been artificially transplanted into history. As formerly in Renan the romantic spirit created the personality of Jesus in its own image, so at the present day the Germanic spirit is making a Jesus after its own likeness. What is admitted as historic is just what the Spirit of the time can take out of the records in order to assimilate it to itself and bring out of it a living form.

If the Jesus who owes His birth to the Marcan hypothesis and modern psychology were capable of regenerating the world He would have done it long ago, for He is nearly sixty years old and his latest portraits are much less life-like than those drawn by Weisse, Schenkel, and Renan, or by Keim, the most brilliant painter of them all.

For the last ten years modern historical theology has more and more adapted itself to the needs of the man in the street. More and more, even in the best class of works, it makes use of attractive head-lines as a means of presenting its results in a lively form to the masses. Intoxicated with its own ingenuity in inventing these, it becomes more and more confident in its cause, and has come to believe that the world's salvation depends in no small measure upon the spreading of its own “assured results” broad-cast among the people. It is time that it should begin to doubt itself, to doubt its “historical” Jesus, to doubt the confidence with which it has looked to its own construction for the moral and religious regeneration of our time. Its Jesus is not alive, however Germanic they may make Him.

But the historic Jesus and the Germanic spirit cannot be brought together except by an act of historic violence which in the end injures both religion and history. A time will come when our theology, with its pride in its historical character, will get rid of its rationalistic bias. This bias leads it to project back into history what belongs to our own time, the eager struggle of the modern religious spirit with the Spirit of Jesus, and seek in history justification and authority for its beginning. The consequence is that it creates the historical Jesus in its own image, so that it is not the modern spirit influenced by the Spirit of Jesus, but the Jesus of Nazareth constructed by modern historical theology, that is set to work upon our race.

Therefore both the theology and its picture of Jesus are poor and weak. Its Jesus, because He has been measured by the petty standard of the modern man, at variance with himself, not to say of the modern candidate in theology who has made shipwreck; the theologians themselves, because instead of seeking, for themselves and others, how they may best bring the Spirit of Jesus in living power into our world, they keep continually forging new portraits of the historical Jesus, and think they have accomplished something great when they have drawn an Oh! of astonishment from the multitude, such as the crowds of a great city emit on catching sight of a new advertisement in coloured lights.

Anyone who, admiring the force and authority of genuine rationalism, has got rid of the naïve self-satisfaction of modern theology, which is in essence only the degenerate offspring of rationalism with a tincture of history, rejoices in the feebleness and smallness of its professedly historical Jesus, rejoices in all those who are beginning to doubt the truth of this portrait, rejoices in the over-severity with which it is attacked, rejoices to take a share in its destruction.

On the other hand, he takes it for granted that Jesus did not prophesy His death, on the ground that the arrest, trial, and betrayal must have lain outside all possibility of calculation even for Him. All these, he thinks, came upon Jesus quite unexpectedly. The only thing that He might have apprehended was “an attack by hired assassins,” and it is to this that He refers in the saying about the two swords in Luke xxii. 36 and 38, seeing that two swords would have sufficed as a protection against such an attack as that, though hardly for anything further. When, however, he remarks in this connexion that “this has been constantly overlooked” in the romances dealing with the Life of Jesus, he does injustice to Bahrdt and Venturini, since according to them the chief concern of the secret society in the later period of the life of Jesus was to protect Jesus from the assassination with which He was menaced, and to secure His formal arrest and trial by the Sanhedrin. Their view of the historical situation is therefore identical with Pfleiderer's, viz. that assassination was possible, but that administrative action was unexpected and is inexplicable.

But how is this Jesus to be connected with primitive Christianity? How did the primitive Church's belief in the Messiahship of Jesus arise? To that question Pfleiderer can give no other answer than that of Volkmar and Brandt, that is to say, none. He laboriously brings together wood, straw, and stubble, but where he gets the fire from to kindle the whole into the ardent faith of primitive Christianity he is unable to make clear.