IV. "It is true that there were literary fictions in the age following the apostles." This admission is in answer to the charge that even in the first centuries the Christians were compelled to resort to forgery to prove the historicity of Jesus. The doctor admits the charge, except that he calls it by another name. The difference between fiction and forgery is this: the former is, what it claims to be; the latter is a lie parading as a truth. Fiction is honest because it does not try to deceive. Forgery is dishonest because its object is to deceive. If the Gospel was a novel, no one would object to its mythology, but pretending to be historical, it must square its claims with the facts, or be branded as a forgery.
V. "We may not have the precise words Jesus uttered; the portrait may be colored;….tradition may have had its influence; but Jesus was real." A most remarkable admission from a clerical! It concedes all that higher criticism contends for. We are not sure either of Jesus' words or of his character, intimates the Reverend preacher. Precisely.
In commenting on our remark that in the eighth century "Pope Hadrian called upon the Christian world to think of Jesus as a man," Dr. Barton replies with considerable temper: "To date people's right to think of Jesus as a man from that decree is not to be characterized by any polite term." Our neighbor, in the first place, misquotes us in his haste. We never presumed to deny anyone the right to think of Jesus what he pleased, before or after the eighth century. (The Debate, p. 28.) We were calling attention to Pope Hadrian's order to replace the lamb on the cross by the figure of a man. But by what polite language is the conduct of the Christian church—which to this day prints in its bibles "Translated from the Original Greek," when no original manuscripts are in existence—to be characterized?
Dr. Barton's efforts to save his creed remind us of the Japanese proverb: "It is no use mending the lid, if the pot be broken."
VII
The most remarkable clerical effort thus far, which The Mangasarian- Crapsey Debate has called forth, is that of the Rev. E. V. Shayler, rector of Grace Episcopal Church of Oak Park.
"In answer to your query, which I received, I beg to give the following statement. Facts, not theories. The date of your own letter 1908 tells what? 1908 years after what? The looking forward of the world to Him."
Rev. Shayler has an original way of proving the historicity of Jesus. Every time we date our letters, suggests the clergyman, we prove that Jesus lived. The ancient Greeks reckoned time by the Olympiads, which fact, according to this interesting clergyman, ought to prove that the Olympic games were instituted by the God Heracles or Hercules, son of Zeus; the Roman Chronology began with the building of Rome by Romulus, which by the same reasoning would prove that Romulus and Remus, born of Mars, and nursed by a she-wolf, are historical.
Rev. Shayler has forgotten that the Christian era was not introduced into Europe until the sixth century, and Dionysius, the monkish author of the era, did not compute time from the birth of Jesus, but from the day on which the Virgin Mary met an angel from heaven. This date prevailed in many countries until 1745. Would the date on a letter prove that an angel appeared to Mary and hailed her as the future Mother of God? According to this clergyman, scientists, instead of studying the crust of the earth and making geological investigations to ascertain the probable age of the earth, ought to look at the date in the margin of the bible which tells exactly the world's age.
Rev. Shayler continues: "The places where he was born, labored and died are still extant, and have no value apart from such testimony."