The Christ Myth. Drews Arthur

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СКАЧАТЬ of historical theology as “a continual experimentation according to settled hypotheses in which the leading thought rests in the last resort upon an intuition” (“Von Reimarus bis Wrede,” 1906). Indeed, Weinel himself, who cannot hold up against the author with sufficient scorn his lack of method and his dilettantism has to confess that the same blemishes which in his opinion characterise dilettantism are to be found even in the most prominent representatives of historical theology, in a Wrede or a Wellhausen. He reproaches both of these with the fact that in their researches “serious faults of a general nature and in method” are present (21). He advises the greatest prudence in respect to Wellhausen’s Gospel Commentaries “on account of their serious general blemishes” (26). He objects to Wrede that to be consistent he must himself go over to radical dilettantism (22). He charges Schweitzer actually with dilettantism and blind bias which cause every literary consideration to be lacking (25 sq.). Indeed, he finds himself, in face of the “dilettante endeavours” to deny the historical Jesus, compelled even to admit that liberal theology for the future “must learn to express itself with more caution and to exhibit more surely the method of religious historical comparison” (14). He blames Gunkel for imprudence in declaring Christianity to be a syncretic religion, and demands that the historical works of liberal theology “should be clearer in their results and more convincing in their methods” (16). He says that the method which they employ is at present not sure and clear enough since “it has been spoken of generally in very loose if not misleading terms,” and he confesses: “We have apparently not made the measure, according to which we decide upon what is authentic and what not so in the tradition, so plain that it can always be recognised with security” (29). Now, if matters are in such a position, we non-theologians need not take too tragically the reproach of dilettantism and lack of scientific method, since it appears very much as though historical theology, with the exception at most of Herr Weinel, has no sure method.

11

Cf. W. v. Schnehen, “Der moderne Jesuskultus,” 2nd ed., 1907, p. 41, a work with which even a Pfleiderer has agreed in the main points; also the same author’s “Fr. Naumann vor dem Bankrott des Christentums,” 1907.

12

The excursus on “The Legend of Peter” which was contained in the first edition of this work, and there appears to have been rather misunderstood, has recently (1910) appeared more closely worked out and reasoned in an independent form in the Neuer Frankfurter Verlag under the title “Die Petrus Legende. Ein Beitrag zur Mythologie des Christentums.”

13

Op cit., 82.

14

Ep. ad Luc. 41.

15

E. v. Mommsen and Wilamowitz in the Transactions of the German Archæological Institute, xxiii. Part iii.; “Christl. Welt,” 1899, No. 57. Compare as a specially characteristic expression of that period’s longing for redemption the famous Fourth Eclogue of Virgil. Also Jeremias, “Babylonisches im Neuen Testament,” 1905, pp. 57 sqq. Lietzmann, “Der Weltheiland,” 1909.

16

It is certain that the old Israelite Jahwe only attained that spiritualised character for which he is nowadays extolled under the influence of the Persians’ imageless worship of God. All efforts to construct, in spite of this admission, a “qualitative” difference between Jahwe and Ahuramazda, as, for example, Stave does in his work (“Der Einfluss des Parsismus auf das Judentum,” 1898, 122 sq.) are unavailing. According to Stave, the conception of good and evil is not grasped in Mazdeism in all its purity and truth, but “has been confused with the natural.” But is that distinction “grasped in all its purity” in Judaism with its ritualistic legality? Indeed, has it come to a really pure realisation even in Christianity, in which piety and attachment to the Church so often pass as identical ideas? Let us give to each religion its due, and cease to be subtle in drawing such artificial distinctions in favour of our own – distinctions which fall into nothingness before every unprejudiced consideration.

17

Exod. iv. 22; Deut. xxxii. 6; Hosea xi. 1.

18

Isa. xlix. 6, 8.

19

Id. li. 16.

20

Isa. xliv. 28, xlv. 1 sq.

21

Cumont, “Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra,” 1899, vol. i. 188.

22

Isa. xi. 65, 17 sqq.

23

Isa. ix. 6; Micah v. 1.

24

Psa. xlvii. 6, 9, lvii. 12.

25

Ch. xlv.–li.

26

Ch. vi. 1 sqq.

27

Cf. Gunkel, “Zum religionsgesch. Verständnis des Neuen Testaments,” 1903, p. 23, note 4.

28

Revelation xxii.; cf. Pfleiderer, “Das Urchristentum. Seine Schriften und seine Lehren,” 2nd edit., 1902, vol. ii. 54 sqq.

29

Dan. xii. 3.

30

The assertion advanced by Grätz and Lucius that the work mentioned is a forgery of a fourth-century Christian foisted upon Philo with the object of recommending the Christian “Ascesis,” and that a sect of Therapeutes never existed, can now be considered disposed of, since its refutation by Massebiau and Conybeare. Cf. Pfleiderer, “Urchristentum,” ii. 5 sq.

31

Cf. as regards the Essenes, Schürer, “Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi,” 1898, II. 573–584.

32

Regarding the connection between the Essenes and the Apocalypse, cf. Hilgenfeld, “Die jüdische Apokalyptik,” 1857, p. 253 sqq.

33

On this point, cf. Brandt, “Die mandäische Religion,” 1899; “Realenzyklop, f.d. protest. Theologie u. Kirche,” xii. 160 sqq.; Gunkel, op. cit., 18 sqq.

34

Cf. Hilgenfeld, “Ketzergeschichte des Urchristentums,” 1884.

35

Gunkel, op. cit., 29.

36

Gen. xxxii. 24.

37

Numb. xx. 16; Exod. xiii. 21.

38

Exod. xxxiii. 14; 2 Sam. v. 23.

39

1 Kings i. 3; Ezek. xliii. 5.

40

Isa. lxiii. 9 sqq.

41

Psa. ii.

42

Cf. Ghillany, “Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebräer,” 1842, 326–334; Eisenmenger, “Entdecktes Judentum,” 1711, i. 311, 395 sqq. Also Movers, “Die Phönizier,” 1841; i. 398 sq.

43

Exod. xxiii. 20 sqq.

44

Jos. xxiv. 11.

45

Jos. v. 2–10. The unhistorical nature of Joshua is admitted also by Stade. Stade counts him an Ephraimitic myth, recalling to mind in so doing that the Samaritans possessed an apocryphal book of the same name in place of our Book of Joshua (“Gesch. d. Volkes Israel,” 1887, i. 64 sqq., 135). The Samaritan Book of Joshua (Chronicum Samaritanum, published 1848) was written in Arabic during the thirteenth century in Egypt, and is based upon an old work composed in the third century B.C. containing stories which in part do not appear in our Book of Joshua.

46

That the hypothesis of Smith here mentioned is quite admissible from the linguistic point of view has lately been maintained by Schmiedel in opposition to Weinel (Protestantenbl., 1910, No. 17, 438).

47

Epiph., “Hæresiol.” xxix.

48

Smith, СКАЧАТЬ