The Jesus of History | Page 6

historical criticism it will serve our purpose best to postpone
the use of a source which we do not fully understand. The exact
relations of history and interpretation in the Fourth Gospel--the
methods and historical outlook of the writer--cannot yet be said to be
determined. "Only those who have merely trifled with the problems it

suggests are likely to speak dogmatically upon the subject."[3] This is
not to abandon the Fourth Gospel; for it is a document which we could
not do without in early Church History, and which has vindicated its
place in the devotional life in every Christian generation. But, for the
present, the first Three Gospels will be our chief sources.
The Gospels have, of course, been attacked again and again. Sober
criticism has raised the question as to whether here and there traces
may be found of the touch of a later hand--for example, were there two
asses or one, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem? has the baptismal
formula at the end of Matthew been adjusted to the creed of Nicaea? In
the following pages the attempt will be made to base what is said not
on isolated texts, which may--and of course may not--have been
touched, but on the general tenor of the books. A single episode or
phrase may suffer change from a copyist's hand, from inadvertence or
from theological predilection. The character of the Personality set forth
in the Gospels is less susceptible of alteration.
This point is at once of importance, for the suggestion has been made
that we cannot be sure of any particular statement, episode, incident or
saying in the Gospels--taken by itself. Let us for the moment imagine a
more sweeping theory still--that no single episode incident or saying of
Jesus in the Gospels is authentic at all. What follows? The great
historian, E. A. Freeman of Oxford, once said that a false anecdote may
be good history; it may be sound evidence for character, for, to obtain
currency, a false anecdote has also to true; it must be, in our proverbial
phrase, "if not true, well invented." Even if exaggeration and humour
contribute to give it a twist, the essence of parody is that it parodies--it
must conform to the original even where it leaves it. A good story-teller
will hardly tell the same story of Mr. Roosevelt and the Archbishop of
Canterbury--unless it happens to be true, and then he will be cautious.
"Truth," to quote another proverb, "is stranger than fiction"; because
fiction has to go warily to be probable, and must be, more or less,
conventional. The story a man invents about another has to be true in
some recognizable way to character--as a little experiment in this
direction will show. The inventor of a story must have the gift of the
caricaturist and of the bestower of nicknames; he must have a shrewd

eye for the real features of his victim. Jesus, then, was a historical
person; and about him we have a mass of stories in the Gospels, which
our theory for the moment asks us to say are all false; but they have a
certain unity of tone, and they agree in pointing to a character of a
certain type, and the general aspects and broad outlines of that
character they make abundantly clear. Even on such a hypothesis we
can know something of the character of Jesus. But the hypothesis is
gratuitous, and absurd, as the paragraphs that follow may help to show.
The Gospels are essentially true and reliable records of a historical
person.
A survey of some of the outstanding features of the Gospels should do
something to assure their reader of their historical value. But there is a
necessary caution to be given at this moment. When Aristotle discusses
happiness, he adds a curious limitation--"as the man of sense would
define." He postulates a certain intelligence of the matter in hand.
Similarly Longinus, the greatest of ancient critics, says that in literature
sure judgement is the outcome of long experience. In matters of
historical and literary criticism, a certain instinct is needed, conscious
or unconscious, perhaps more often the latter, which without a serious
interest and a long experience no man is likely to have.
The Gospels are not properly biographies; they consist of collections of
reminiscences--memories and fragments that have survived for years,
and sometimes the fragment is little more than a phrase. Such and such
were the circumstances, and Jesus spoke--a story that may occupy four
or five verses, or less. Something happened, Jesus said or did
something that impressed his friends, and they could never forget it.
The story, as such impressions do, keeps its sharp edges. Date and
perhaps even place may be forgotten, but the look and the tone of the
speaker are indelible memories.