of Fact schools, but there is an essential dif- ference between the two cases, a differ- ence which casts us with respect to the evangelic tradi- tion into grave doubt. This difference is due to the unfortunate fact that the evangelists themselves be- lieved in Jesus and loved Him. " In our case," there- fore, we are told,^ " we have not merely pupils trans- mitting the teaching of their master, but a believing community speaking of one they honor as the exalted Lord. Even the oldest Gospel is written from the standpoint of faith; already for Mark Jesus is not only the Messiah of the Jewish people, but the miracu- lous eternal Son of God whose glory shone in the world. "^ " And it has been rightly emphasized that in this regard our three first Gospels are distinguished from the fourth only in degree. Must there not, then, have taken place here a complete repainting from the standpoint of faith? For there is a certain propriety in saying that faith is the enemy of history. Where we believe and honor, we no longer see objectively." Accordingly we are told that the deepest longing of men's hearts to-day is to rediscover the real Jesus.
^ By Bousset, Was ivissen ijuir 'von Jesus? 1904, pp. 54 seq.
^ Cf. p. 57 : " For the belief of the community, which is shared already by the oldest evangelist, Jesus is the miraculous Son of God, on whom men believe, whom men put wholly by God's side." And cf. Wrede, Das Messiasgeheimnis in den E-vangelien, 1901, passim.
The Synoptic Jesus Primitive 159
" There is a great desire to know Him at first hand," it is said,' " not merely through the loving vision of His earliest inteipreters, but as He looked and spoke and worked and thought." Which is as much as to say that the vision the evangelists give us of Jesus is not conformable to the reality, but has been distorted by their love. If we wish the bald truth about Him and His claims we must go behind them.
This point of view, it will be observed, is definite enough. The evangelists are not to be trusted in the Primary report they give of the teaching of Canon of Jesus about Himself. But embarrassing Criticism questions remain. Above all, these em- barrassing questions: Why should we not trust the evangelists' report of Jesus' teaching as to His own nature? And, distrusting them, how are we to get be- hind their report? That the evangelists believed in Jesus and loved Him does not seem in itself an abso»- lutely compelling reason why we should distrust their report of His teaching concerning His own nature. Suppose we assume for the moment that Jesus did assert for Himself superhuman dignity. How does it throw doubt upon that fact that those who report it to us were led — possibly by overwhelming evidence of its truth — to believe that in so asserting He spoke truly? Are we to lay it down as the primary canon of criticism that no sympathetic report of a master's teaching is trustworthy; that only inimical reporters are credible reporters ?
Absurd as It seems, this is the actual canon of critical reconstruction upon which our would-be guides, In re-
"^ Jesus the Prophet, by Charles S. MacFarland, Ph.D., 1905 ; intro- duction by Prof. Frank K. Sanders.
i6o The Designations of Our Lord
covering from the obscuring hands of the evangelists the real Jesus, would have us proceed. It has found somewhat notorious enunciation in Professor Schmie- del's article " Gospels " in the Encyclopedia Biblica.^ But it is so far from being peculiar to Professor Schmie- del that it is the common foundation stone upon which the whole school of criticism with which we are now concerned builds its attempt to penetrate behind the evangelical narratives and to recover from these an earlier and therefore presumably truer picture of Jesus and His claims.^ Under its guidance we are set to searching diligently through the evangelical narratives (as if for hid treasures) for sentences or fragments of sentences in the reported words of Jesus, which appear, or may be made to appear, out of harmony with the high claims He is consentiently and constantly reported by all the evangelists to have made for Him- self: and on these few broken passages, torn from their
* P. 1872: "When a profane historian finds before him a historical document which testifies to the worship of a hero unknown to other sources, he attaches first and foremost importance to those features which cannot be deduced merely from the fact of this worship, and he does so on the simple and sufficient ground that they would not be found in this source unless the author had met with them as the fixed data of tradition. The same fundamental principle may safely be ap- plied in the case of the Gospels, for they also are all of them written by worshipers of Jesus."