Von Soden's analysis is no less confident. The three outstanding miracles, the stilling of the storm, the casting out of the legion of devils, the overcoming of death (Mark iv. 35-v. 43), the [pg 305] romantically told story of the death of the Baptist (Mark vi. 17-29), the story of the feeding of the multitudes in the desert, of Jesus' walking on the water, and of the transfiguration upon an high mountain, and the healing of the lunatic boy—all these are dashed in with a broad brush, and offer many analogies to Old Testament stories, and some suggestions of Pauline conceptions, and reflections of experiences of individual believers and of the Christian community. “All these passages were, doubtless, first written down by the compiler of our Gospel.”
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?
The real difficulty consists in the fact that all the passages which von Soden ascribes to the redactor stand, in spite of their mythical colouring, in a closely-knit historical connexion; in fact, the historical connexion is nowhere so close. How can any one cut out the feeding of the multitudes and the transfiguration as narratives of secondary origin without destroying the whole of the historical fabric of the Gospel of Mark? Or was it the redactor who created the plan of the Gospel of Mark, as von Soden seems to imply?[234]
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 realises that to a certain extent. According to him Mark is a writer “who embodied the materials which he received from the tradition more faithfully than discriminatingly.” “That which was related as a symbol of inner events, he takes as history—in the case, for example, of the temptation, the walking on the sea, the transfiguration of Jesus.” “Again in other cases he has made a remarkable occurrence into a supernatural miracle, [pg 307] as in the case of the feeding of the multitude, where Jesus' courageous love and ready organising skill overcame a momentary difficulty, whereas the Evangelist represents it as an amazing miracle of Divine omnipotence.”
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.
Frenssen betrays the secret of his teachers when in Hilligenlei he confidently superscribes the narrative drawn from the “latest critical investigations” with the title “The Life of the Saviour portrayed according to German research as the basis for a spiritual re-birth of the German nation.”[235]
As a matter of fact the Life of Jesus of the “Manuscript”[236] is unsatisfactory both scientifically and artistically, just because it aims at being at once scientific and artistic. If only Frenssen, with his strongly life-accepting instinct, which gives to his thinking, at least in his earliest writings where he reveals himself without artificiality, such a wonderful simplicity and force, had dared to read his Jesus boldly from the original records, without following modern historical theology in all its meanderings! He would have been able to force his way through the underwood well enough if only he had been content to break the branches that got in his way, instead of always waiting until some one went in front to disentwine them for him. The dependence to which he surrenders himself is really distressing. In reading almost every paragraph one can tell whether Kai Jans was looking, as he wrote it, into Oskar Holtzmann or P. W. Schmidt or von Soden. Frenssen resigns the dramatic scene of the healing of the blind man at Jericho. Why? Because at this point he was listening to Holtzmann, who proposes to regard the healing of the blind man as only a symbolical representation of the “conversion of Zacchaeus.” Frenssen's masters have robbed him of all creative spontaneity. He does not permit himself to discover motifs for himself, but confines himself to working over and treating in cruder colours those which he finds in his teachers.