[15] This is the one of the two stories preferred by the “liberal” school, who dismiss the story of the two asses as a verbal hallucination rather than recognize a zodiacal myth. It makes no final difference. The “ass the foal of an ass,” in their exegesis, still means an unbroken colt, an impossible steed for a procession. [↑]
[16] See Pagan Christs, 2nd ed., and Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed., per index. [↑]
[17] Les évangiles, ii, 643. [↑]
[18] Nicholson, The Gospel According to the Hebrews, 1879, pp. 141–42. [↑]
Chapter XVII
THE JESUS-FIGURE OF M. LOISY
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 other. Having fallen back on the thesis, so popularized by Renan, that faith in the necessary resurrection of the Messiah created the legend of the empty tomb and the divine apparitions, he proceeds to formulate the Teaching which had created the faith. The historic creed of Christianity is thus figured as a pyramid poised on the apex of a hallucination; but we are assured that the hallucination resulted from the greatness of the Personality of the slain Teacher.
Taking no note of any other conception of a possible origination of the cult, M. Loisy pronounces that to explain it we must hold that the “group of adherents” had before the crucifixion evolved a “religious life” sufficiently deep to sustain the feeling that the death of the Master was an accident, “grave no doubt [!] and perturbing, but reparable”;[1] and to explain this religious life he goes back to the Master’s doctrine. And the moment he begins his exposition he vacillates anew over the old dilemma:—
Jesus pursued a work, not the propagation of a belief; he did not explain theoretically the Kingdom of Heaven, he prepared its coming by exhorting men to repent. Nevertheless even the work of Jesus attaches itself to the idea of the celestial kingdom; it defines itself in that idea, which presupposes, implies, or involves with it other ideas. It is this combination of ideas familiar to Christ that we must reconstruct with the help of the Gospels.... The idea of the kingdom of God is, in a sense, all the Gospel; but it is also all Judaism....[2]