THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
nature and their relation to one another and to doctrinal development in the Church or its equivalent, is indispensable to every serious-minded modern student of the subject. The har- 12. Results monistic method, satisfying to an age of Source which made the equal value and error- Analysis, lessness of all Biblical writings its point of departure, confronted a relatively simple task. Whatever each evangelist said must be added to, or dove-tailed into, the report of every other. Discrepancies could be ignored or explained away. Variant forms could be attached one after the other, as subsequent similar occurrences or repetitions. To-day the comparative method is displacing the harmonistic. The more vital the subject, the less can the truth-loving and reverent mind be satisfied to exempt it from the most searching analysis possible under the methods of documentary and historical research. The results concern not mere individual anecdotes or sayings, but the traditional story of Jesus as a whole. As already seen, the beginnings of the Christian religion do not deal so much with the career of the carpenter of Nazareth, as with the glorified Lord, whom Paul identified with the redeeming Spirit of God (II Cor. iii. 17), in whom he even sees that semi-personal wisdom which the " wisdom " writers had presented as the agency of God in creation (I Cor. viii. 6; cf. Prov. viii. 22 sqq.; Wisdom of Sol. vii. 21-30). It is this Hellenistic incarnation doctrine which became " Christianity." And yet '• Christianity " was saved from absorption in eclectic Gnosticism only by virtue of the persistence of the career and teaching of the historic Jesus, the contribution of the Syrian type of Gospel tradition, whose respective elements " Petrine " and " Matthean " fall now to be analyzed.
It is true that Paul was dependent on Peter; but it is at least equally true that Peter, or more exactly those secondary sources which represent the Petrine tradition, show to an enormous extent the influence of Paul. Only the ultimate substratum of narrative in the Greek Gospels can claim to represent the Aramaic story of the Galilean fisherman. The one source which in its original Aramaic form was comparatively unaffected by Pauline soteriology was the Matthean collection of the " Sayings," which survives only in fragments from a Greek version utilized by Luke in connection with an otherwise unknown narrative source, and by Matthew to complete his manual of " commandments." Even the Logia must have started with the presupposition of Jesus' superhuman authority, and, at least in the Greek form, applied to him the apocalyptic title " Son of Man " from Dan. vii. 13.
III. Critical Outline of the Story of Jesus: The task here is to draw from these materials a consistent outline of Jesus' historical career and teaching, determining from these the character of the man, and the nature of the movement which he set on foot " first in Galilee and afterward in Jerusalem."
The story of Jesus began " after the baptism which John preached." (On the infancy chapters of Matthew and Luke see above, I., § 10). The further
back the sources are traced the more apparent is if that the movement which Jesus inaugurated w* a continuation of that of John, from ti^ns "with Which the Church subsequently bo* John the rowed lts rlte of initiation. Great Baptist, stress is laid in the earliest source (Q) on the distinction between John's a» cetic life, emphasizing his stern warnings of judgment and wrath to come, and that of Jesus, who came into the populous haunts of men with hit winning proclamation of forgiveness. The latest source (John) is deeply concerned to show how void of all significance was the whole Johannine movement, except as premonitory of the Gospel. And yet the true relation is evident in the reverential regard of Jesus for John, in whose movement he saw no less a matter than the great repentance to be effected according to Scripture " before the great and terrible Day of Yahweh " (Q, Matt. xi. 2-19, xii. 41, xxi. 32; Luke vii. 18-28, 31-35, xi. 32, xvi. 14-16). Equally apparent is it in the fundamental note of Petrine story, which begins with Jesus' coming into Galilee after John's arrest, with an invitation to the fishermen to join him in gathering men, rescuing the strayed sheep of the flock of Israel. There is all the less reason to doubt the statement that Jesus had been himself baptized by John, inasmuch as later evangelists experience great difficulty in adjusting this fact to their doctrine of Messiah's sinlessness (Matt. iii. 13-15; Gospel of Hebrews, fragment 3).* But the so-called Prologue of Mark (i. 1-13), wherein this scene is depicted on the basis of the Jewish legend of the anointing of Messiah by Elias, with employment of the voice from heaven of the transfiguration apocalypse (see below II. 7) does not belong to the basic Petrine tradition, which begins at verse 14 (cf. Acts x. 37).
The real impulse under which Jesus took up the standard of the martyred prophet and carried it away from the wilderness into the centers of halfheathen Galilee, is clearly apparent from his invitation to the fishermen (with Mark i. 17 cf. Jer. xvi. 16, and Matt. xiii. 47), and kindred utterances from Q (Matt. ix. 35-38, x. 6, xviii. 12- 14; Luke x. 2, xv. 3-7). It is made even more unmistakable in the special source of Luke, in which the humanitarian and sociological aspect of Jesus work is strikingly emphasized. Synagogue religion under the domination of the scribes had in fact made it almost impossible for the " people of the land " to expect any " share in the world to come.' The spiritual inheritance of Israel as a whole had been monopolized by the scribes and their devout followers the Pharisees. The ideal since even the times before the monarchy (Ex. iv. 22; Hos. xi. 1) had been that Israel was to be a people of God s " sons." Now none were allowed to be so reckoned who did not " do the will," as revealed in the sacred law and interpreted by the scribes. The Johannine movement as interpreted by Jesus (Q, Matt. xxi. 32 = Luke vii. 29) was a protest against this
* In John i. 32-34 the baptism and voice of adoption become a mere manifestation to John and Israel. The Logos is of course already conscious of his nature and mission.
2. The
Motive
for Jesus'
Ministry.