The Historical Jesus: A Survey of Positions

The issue as between Schweitzer and Wrede comes to this. Wrede sees that the Messiahship is a creation following upon the belief in the resurrection, and only uncritically deduc...

Turning away, so to speak, to the Gentiles, we concentrate our case in countering that of the "emancipated" defenders of the historicity of the Founder, as put by M. Loisy, the...

For anyone who will soberly and faithfully face the facts there must sooner or later arise the problem, Is there any unifying personality behind this medley of many sets of doct...

Strictly speaking, the whole problem of the moral value and the historical effects of Christianity lies outside the present issue; but we are forced to face it when the question...

The issue as between Schweitzer and Wrede. Each destroys one half of the "liberal" case for historicity. Schweitzer confutes Wrede, and then puts a still more untenable view. Hi...

It is the same, finally, with the story of the original evangel as with the story of the tragedy; M. Loisy fails to come within sight of historicity in the one case as in the ot...

Such is the historical impasse at which open-minded students find themselves when they would finally frame a reasoned conception of the origin of the Christian religion. The doc...

To all such reminders the present-day expert will reply, belike, that he does not need them. He, profiting by the past, can commit no such errors. And yet, however right the pre...

The diverging schools of documentary "construction" being thus alike unable to yield a coherent notion either of the process of Gospel-making or of the beginnings of the cultus,...

Thus lax in his treatment of the subsidiary historical problems, M. Loisy is of necessity accommodating when he faces those which he recognizes to be central. Over the story of...

All this applies, of course, to the "Primitive Gospel" held to underlie all of the synoptics, Mark included--a datum which reduces to comparative unimportance the question of pr...

Our business, of course, is not to expose the prophetic miscarriages of Savonarola, but simply to make clear what manner of thing his prophesying was. [64] It was an instance of...

A very interesting attempt to bring the synoptic problem to a new critical test has latterly been made by Dr. Flinders Petrie in his work, The Growth of the Gospels as shown by...

To the open-minded reader it must be already plain that, unless we are to be led into mere chaos, there must at once be added to the statistical test either the proviso that giv...

So much for the "especially remarkable" fact that churches were desecrated in the sack of Rome in 1527, and that Savonarola should in 1496 have predicted such things for his own...

In all things, finally, one must be prepared for a boundless operation of the spirit of controversy, which is as it were the atmosphere of intellectual progress, and, like the p...

It is only just to confess that the conservatives are already learning to employ some prudential expedients. Met by the challenge to their own nakedly untenable positions, and o...

How much M. Loisy is swayed by prepossession may be further gathered from his argumentation over the "testimony of Paul" in connection with his criticism of the myth theory. Pro...

From this point onwards, every step in the investigation will be found to convict the Unitarian thesis of absolute nullity. It is indeed, on the face of it, an ignorant pronounc...

When the "selection" theory is applied to the logia actually recovered at Oxyrhynchus it conspicuously fails to square these with the traditionalist assumption. On Dr. Petrie's...

He who would approach with an alert mind such a question as that of the historic actuality of the Gospel Jesus would do well to weigh a preliminary warning. Though after four hu...

Lax treatment of the main problems by M. Loisy. Acceptance of the non-historical as historical. The Purification of the Temple. The Agony. Approximation to the true solution. Th...

Collapse of the thesis of "human characteristics." The myth and the historicity of Herakles. The more considerate thesis of Schmiedel: argument from "derogatory" episodes. Kalth...

B. Weiss's "Primitive Gospel." Its characteristics common to Mark. The enigma of the evangel of the Twelve. That problem never rightly realized by the exegetes. The allegorical...

M. Loisy and the "liberal" school. His attitude to the myth-theory. His certitudes. Disclaims biography, and produces one. His treatment of the legend. The problem of the multit...

The scientific inference. Omission and invention of logia necessarily to be inferred as well as selection. Implicit abandonment of certain prophecies, and resulting incoherence...

The dilemma of the Evangel of the Twelve. M. Loisy on the Teaching of Jesus as preparative for the cult. Destructive effect of his admissions as to the teaching of Paul. His att...

Prospects of controversy. Slow advance of the "liberal" view. Identity of the final positions of Strauss and Loisy. Tentative beginnings of the myth-theory. Effects of persecuti...

The "oral" hypothesis of the Rev. A. Wright. His approximations to the "liberal" chronology as against the Blass school. His candour. Hypothesis of fifty-two Lessons. Another "s...

M. Loisy on the testimony of Paul. His misconception as to its bearings on the myth-theory. Van Manen helped by his own thesis to accept the historicity of Jesus. The myth-theor...

Resort to the myth-theory forced by the data. Unitarian attitude to that. Appeal for acceptance of the "consensus of scholars." No such consensus ever attained. Dalman on his fe...

The attempt to find an "impersonal" test of the documentary basis. Dr. Flinders Petrie on The Growth of the Gospels. Theory of selection and compilation from logia. Acceptance o...

Persistence of the theological temper. Each abandoned position first defended with the same fierceness. Saner forms of conservatism. Persistence in presupposition. Canon Inge on...

Mill's method and mind non-historical. "The historic sense." Dr. J. E. Carpenter's. The concept of "sublimity." God portraiture. Its limitations. The Gospel ethic. Significance...

Modifications of conservative attitude. Lack of good faith or of comprehension. Samples of misrepresentation. The Unitarian attitude. Treatment of myth-solutions: the Myth of th...

Blass on the gospel prophecy: analysis of the texts. Their arbitrary handling by Blass. The "Nucleus" theory of Dr. Petrie. Its arbitrary implications. Impersonal method of sele...

The actually recovered logia of Oxyrhynchus. Their incompatibility with Dr. Petrie's assumption of historic genuineness for all. The real process of composition in Luke's gospel...

The historic problem. Its treatment by a Unitarian cleric. The method of bluster. The real and the pretended character of the Gospel according to Mark. Wellhausen's estimate. Ac...

Presupposition in science. The Copernican theory. The reception of Galileo, Harvey, and Darwin. Blinding effects of scholarship. The theological record. Mutations of Christian o...

Comparison between Savonarola's prediction of the Sack of Rome and the gospel prophecy of the Fall of Jerusalem. Normality of Savonarola's vaticinations. Historical blunder of t...