We are critically forced, then, to the conclusion that for a century after the alleged death of the Founder the Jesuist movement had either no literature whatever save one of primarily Jewish documents such as the Didachê or problematic short Pauline epistles which have either disappeared or been absorbed in much longer documents of later date, which in turn still tell of no Jesuine Sacred Books. All alike exclude the conception of a historical Jesus of remarkable personality. In the doctrinal quarrels which have already driven deep furrows in the faith, the personality of Jesus counts for nothing. In that connection no one cites any teaching of the Master. He is simply an abstract sacrifice; and even in that aspect he is not clearly present in the Jewish-Christian Didachê. Of his earthly parentage, domicile, or career, there is not a word. Everything goes to confirm our hypothesis that the cult is of ancient origin, rooted in a sacrament which evolved out of a rite of human sacrifice and connected with non-Jewish as well as Jewish myths which from the first tended to the deification of the Slain One.
It remains, then, to consider the gospels anew as compilations made in the second century of (1) previously current Jewish lore, written and unwritten; (2) doctrinal elements indicated by the sectarian disputes already active; (3) pseudo-historic elements justifying Messianic doctrine and practice; and (4) the Mystery-Drama, now developed under Gentile hands. Upon all this followed (5) the new theology and new pseudo-biography of the fourth gospel, which was but another stage in the general process of myth-making.
[1] “The Broken” is used as a noun: bread is only understood. Evidently the breaking was vitally symbolic, as is explained in the context. Cp. [Luke xxiv, 30], [35]. [↑]
[2] Irenæus, Against Heresies, v, 3. [↑]
[3] See Introd. to Messrs. Hitchcock and Brown’s (American) ed., 1885, p. lxxviii. [↑]
[6] Bousset in Encyc. Bib. i, 209, following Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos. [↑]
[7] Cp. R. Brown, Jr., Primitive Constellations, 1899, i, 64–65, 104, 119, etc.; G. Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the O. T., 1905, p. 72; Hon. Emmeline M. Plunket, Ancient Calendars and Constellations, 1903, 117–123, and maps; and Hippolytus, Ref. of all Heresies, v, 47–49. [↑]