The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-16


Apocalypse. John was the most enthusiastic |
Of millenarians and the most narrow and |
rigid of Judaizers. In his antagonism to the |
Pauline innovations he went further than |
Peter himself. Intense hatred of Paul and |
bis followers appears in several passages
Of the Apocalypse, where they are stig-
matized as ''Nicolaitans," "deceivers of the
people, ''those who say they are apostles and
are not, "eaters of meat offered to idols,
'fornicators," pretended jews" Glars
synagogue of Satan," etc. (Chapsii.) On
the other hand, the fourth Gospel contains
nothing millenarian or Judaical; it carries
Pauline universalism to far greater extent
than Paul himself ventured to carry it, even
the Jews as children of dark
ness, and by implication contrasting them
with the Gentiles; and it con-
tains theory of the nature of Jesus which
the Ebionitish Christians, to whom John be-
longed, rejected to the last. In his present
edition Renan admits the insuperable force
of these objections, and abandons his theory
of the apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel.
And as this has necessitated the omission or
alteration of all such passages as rested upon
the authority of that Gospel, the book is to
considerable extentrewritten, and the changes
are such as greatly to increase its value as
history of Jesus. Nevertheless, the
author has so long been in the habit of
shaping his conceptions of the career of
Jesus by the aid of the fourth gospel, that it
has become very difficult for him to pass
freely to another point of view. He still
clings to the hypothesis that there is an ele-
ment of historic tradition contained in the
book, drawn from memorial writings which
had perhaps been handed down from John,
snd which we're inaccessible to the synoptists.
In very interesting appendix he collects
the evidence in favor of this hypothesis,
which, indeed, is not without plausibility,
since there is every reason for supposing that
the gospel was written at Ephesus, which
century before had been Johns place of resi-
dence. But even granting most of Remains
assumptions, it must still follow that the
authority of this gospel is far inferior to that
Of the synoptics, and can in no case be very
confidently appealed to. The question is one
of the first Importance to the historian of
early Christianity. In inquiring into the life
of Jesus, the first thing to do is to establish
firmly in the mind the true relations of the
fourth gospel to the first three. Until this
has been done no one is competent to write
on the ubiect; and it is because he has done
this so imperfectly that Remains work is,
from critical point of view, so imperfec.ly
successful.
The anonymous work entitled "The Jesus
of History" which we have placed at the
head of this article, is in every respect note
worthy as the first systematic attempt made
in England to follow in the footsteps of Ger
man criticism in writing life of Jesus. We
know of no good reason why the book should
be published anonymously, for as historical
essay it possesses extraordinary merit, and
does great credit not only to it's author, but
to English scholarship and acumen. 1t is
not, indeed, book calculated to captivate
the Imagination of the reading public.
Though written in q clear, forcible, and
often elegant style, it possesses no such won-
derful rhetorical charm as the work Of Ronan;
and it will probably never find half f-a-dozen
readers where the ''Vie de Jesus" has
found hundred. But the success
of a book of this sort is not to be
measured by its rhetorical excellence,
or by it's adaptation to the literary tastes of
an uncritical and uninstructed public, but
rather by the amount of critical sagacity which
it brings to bear upon the elucidation of the
many difficult and disputed points in the
subject of which it treats. Measured by this
standard, the "Jesus of History" must rank
very high indeed. To say that it throws
more light upon the career of Jesus than any
work which has ever before been written in
English would be very inadequate praise,
since the English language has been singu-
larly deficient in this branch of historical
literature. We shall convey more Just idea
of its merits if we say that it will bear COM
parison with anything which even Germany
has produced, save only the works of Strauss,
Baur, and Zeller.
The fitness of our author for the task
which he has undertaken is shown at the out
set by his choice of materials. In basing his
conclusions almost exclusively upon the state
ments contained in the first Gospel he is up
held by every sound principle of criticism.
The times and places at which our three
synoptic Gospels were written have been,
through the labors of the Tubingen critics,
determined almost to certainty. OF the
three ''NIark" is unquestionably the latest;
with the exception of about twenty verses it
is entirely made up from Matthew" and
''Luke," the diverse Petrine and Pauline ten
denotes of which it strives to neutralize in
conformity to the conciliatory disposition of
the Church at Rome, at the epoch at which
this Gospel was written, about A. ID. 130.
The third Gospel was also written at Rome
some fifteen years earlier. In the preface its
author describes it as a compilation from pre-
viously existing written materials. Among
these materials was certainly the first Gospel,
several passages of which are adopted word
for word by the author of Luke" Yet the
narrative varies materially from that of the
first gospel in many essential points. The
arrangement of events is less natural, aud,
as in the "Acts of the Apostles" by the same
| author, there is apparent throughout the de-
sign of suppressing the old discord between
Paul and the Judaizing disciples, and of re-
presenting Christianity as essentially Pauline
| from the outset How far Paul was correct
in his Interpretation of the teachings of
Jesus, it is difficult to decide. 1t is no doubt,
possible that the first gospel may have lent to
the words of Jesus an Ebionite coloring in
some instances, and that now and then the
third gospel may present us with truer ac-
count. To this supremely important point
we shall by and by return For the present