The Historical Jesus: A Survey of Positions

by J. M. Robertson

Chapter IV

THE METHOD OF BLUSTER

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 doctrines, many voices, many schools? Even if it were possible to piece together from it a coherent body of either ethical or religious thought, and jettison the rest, is there any reason to believe that the selected matter belongs to the Gospel Teacher with the Twelve Disciples, crucified on the morning after the Passover under Pontius Pilate? When the crowning doctrine of sacrament and sacrifice is seen to be but the consummation of a religious lore beginning in prehistoric and systematic human sacrifice, and traceable in a score of ancient cults, is it possible to claim that the palpably dramatic record of Last Supper, Agony, Betrayal, Trial, and Crucifixion is a historic record of a strange coincidence between cult practice and biography? And if that goes, what is left? If, says Loisy, the condemnation of Jesus as pretended Messiah by Pilate “could be put in doubt, one would have no motive for affirming the existence of Christ.”[1] And it can!

Some, assuming to settle the problem by rhetoric, in effect stand for a “personality” without any pretence of establishing what the “personality” taught. And this inexpensive device will doubtless long continue to be practised by the large class who insist upon solving all such problems by instinct. An example of that procedure is afforded by an article headed “A Barren Controversy,” by the Rev. Frederick Sinclair, in a magazine entitled Fellowship, the organ of the Free Religious Fellowship, Melbourne, issue of March, 1915. The controversy is certainly barren enough as Mr. Sinclair conducts it. His religious temper is of a familiar type. “It is a hard task to prove the obvious,” he begins; “and no obligation is laid on us to examine and refute the evidences alleged in support of this or that cock-and-bull theory.” We can imagine how the reverend critic would have shone in the sixteenth or the seventeenth century, disposing of the Copernican theory, which so presumptuously assailed “the obvious.” True to his principles, he does not hamper himself by meeting arguments or evidence. “Mythical theories about Christ have about as much scientific value and importance as the theories of the Baconians about Shakespeare. They ... are products ... of that perverted credulity which will swallow anything, so long as it is not orthodox; and they are best met by the method of satire adopted by Whately in his ‘Historic Doubts’ on Napoleon.” And yet our expert renounces that admirable instrument in favour of the simpler procedure vulgarly known as “bluff.” He is in reality a good example of the psychosis of the very Baconism which he contemns, and which he would probably be quite unable to confute. An æsthetic impression of “reality” derived from a hypnotized perusal of Mark, and a feeling that only one man could deliver such oracles, are the beginning and end of his dialectic and scholarly stock-in-trade; even as a consciousness that Bacon must be the author of the Plays, and that the actor Shakespeare could not have written them, is the beginning and end of the ignorant polemic of the Baconists.

To do him justice, it should be noted that Mr. Sinclair warns his readers both before and after his case that his handling of the theme and their preparation for estimating it leave a great deal to be desired by those who care to see applied “the method of careful criticism.” Still, he is satisfied that it is “adequate to the particular question we have been considering.” And this is how Mr. Sinclair has considered:—

Anyone who will pay this controversy the compliment of a few hours’ consideration is advised to bring his own judgment to bear on it in the following way: Let him begin by taking a copy of St. Mark’s Gospel, which is the earliest of the four, in either of the English versions, and read it through, pencil in hand, striking out all the miraculous or quasi-miraculous stories. Then, gathering up what remains, let him read it, first as a whole, then singly, episode by episode, always keeping the eye of the imagination open, dismissing as far as possible any prepossessions, and letting the author make his own impression, without the interfering offices of critic or commentator. Having done this, let the reader ask of himself of each story: Is this a story which seems to belong to actual life, to be told of a real human being, with distinct individuality, or is it rather a literary invention, designed to add something to a conventional figure? Does the narrative move with the freedom and variety of life, or does it fit into a conventional, symmetrical design? Does the writer’s style and method arouse the suspicion of literary artifice? Must one say of this or that story that its reality is the reality of life, or of an art which cunningly counterfeits life?

The open-minded reader, I trust, will hardly need to be told that what is here done is to set a false problem and ignore the real issue. Mr. Sinclair either cannot understand that issue or elects to evade it. Probably the former is the explanation. No critic of the Gospels, so far as I remember, ever suggested that any of them “cunningly counterfeits life”; and certainly no one ever pretended that Mark[2] exhibits a “conventional, symmetrical design,” though Wilke argued that it “freely moulded the traditional historical material in pursuance of literary aims,” and B. Weiss praises its literary colouring. It is a heap of unreal incident, fortuitously collocated,[3] and showing nothing approaching to symmetrical design. “Conventional” raises another question; in this as in all the Gospels there is plenty of convention.

Let us but follow for a little the simple method of selection prescribed by Mr. Sinclair, and see what we get. What we are to make of [Mark i, 1–9], is far from clear. It sets forth the advent of John as the fulfilment of a prophecy—i.e., a miracle; and it describes his mission in the baldest conceivable summary, save for the sentence: “And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leathern girdle about his loins, and did eat locusts and wild honey.” Is this “convention” or “reality”? I am not inclined to call it “literary artifice,” unless we are to apply that description to the beginning of the average nursery tale, as perhaps we should. What must strike the inquiring reader is that if we were to have a touch of “reality” about the Baptist we should be told something about his inner history, his antecedents, and what he preached. What we are told is that “he preached, saying, There cometh after me he that is mightier than I.... I baptized you with water; but he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

If this part of the narrative has not been “struck out” by Mr. Sinclair’s neophytes as plainly belonging to the miraculous, the next five verses presumably must be. The non-miraculous narrative begins at v. 14:—