1. The Gospels prima facie wear the aspect of books aiming at giving a true if not a full account of the life, and more especially of the public career, of Jesus Christ, the Author of the Christian faith. For Christians, writings having such an aim must possess unique interest. There is nothing an earnest believer in Christ more desires to know than the actual truth about Him: what He said, did, and experienced. How far do the books, the study of which is to engage our attention, satisfy this desire? To what extent are they historically reliable ?
2. The question has been recently propounded and discussed:
1 Die Lehre $esu, Erster Theil, pp. 191-3. On the question whether the third evangelist used canonical Matthew, vide the Abhandlung of Edward Simons, Bonn, 1880.
What interest did the apostolic age take in the evangelic history? and the conclusion arrived at that the earthly life of Jesus inter- ested it very little.1 Now, there can be no doubt that, comparing that age with the present time, the statement is true. We live in an age when the historical spirit is in the ascendant, creating an insati- able desire to know the origins of every movement which has affected, to any extent, the fortunes of humanity. Moreover, Christianity has undergone an evolution resulting in types of this religion which are, on various grounds, unsatisfactory to many thoughtful persons. Hence has arisen a powerful reaction of which the watchword is— “ Back to Christ,” and to which additional intensity has been given by the conviction that modern types of Christianity, whether eccle- siastical, philosophical, or pietistic, all more or less foster, if they do not avow, indifference to the historic foundations of the faith. We have thus a religious as well as a scientific reason for our desire to know the actual Jesus of history. Im the primitive era, faith was free to follow its native tendency to be content with its immediate object, the Risen Lord, and to rely on the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit as the source of all knowledge necessary for a godly life. This indifference might conceivably pass into hostility. Faith might busy itself in transforming unwelcome facts so as *> make the his- tory serve its purpose. For the historic interest and the religious are not identical. Science wants to know the actual facts; religion wants facts to be such as will serve its ends. It sometimes idealises, transforms, even invents history to accomplish this object. We are not entitled to assume, a priori, that apostolic Christianity entirely escaped this temptation. The suggestion that the faith of the primi- tive Church took hold of the story of Jesus and so transfigured it that the true image of Him is no longer recoverable, however scepti- cal, is not without plausibility. The more moderate statement that the apostolic Church, while knowing and accepting many facts about Jesus, was not interested in them as facts, but only as aids to faith, has a greater show of reason. It might well be that the teaching of Jesus was regarded not so much as a necessary source of the know- ledge of truth, but rather as a confirmation of knowledge already possessed, and that the acts and experiences of Jesus were viewed chiefly in the light of verifications of His claim to be the Messiah. It does not greatly matter to us what the source of interest in the evangelic facts was so long as they are facts; if the primitive Church in its traditions concerning Jesus was simply utilising and
1 Vide Von Soden’s essay in the Theologische Abhandlungen, Cari von Weis- sdcker Gewidmet, 1892.