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02 - Jesus of History by Terrot R. Glover · Jesus of History

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Speaker 1: Chapter one of The Jesus of History. This is a
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Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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Speaker 1: The Jesus of History by T. R. Glover, Chapter one,
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Speaker 1: the Study of the Gospels. If one thing more than
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Speaker 1: another marks modern thought, it is a new insistence on fact.
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Speaker 1: In every sphere of study, there is a growing emphasis
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Speaker 1: on verification. Where a generation ago a case seemed to
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Speaker 1: be closed, today, in the light of new facts, it
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Speaker 1: is reopened. Matters that to our grandfathers were trivialities to
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Speaker 1: be summarily dismissed are seriously studied. Again and again. We
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Speaker 1: find the most fruitful avenues opened to us by questions
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Speaker 1: that another age might have laughed out of a hearing.
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Speaker 1: Today they suggest investigation of facts insufficiently known and of
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Speaker 1: the difficult connections between them. In psychology and in medicine,
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Speaker 1: the results of this new tendency are evident in all
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Speaker 1: sorts of ways. New methods in the treatment of the sick.
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Speaker 1: New inquiries as to the origin of diseases and the
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Speaker 1: possibilities of their prevention, attempt to get at the relations
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Speaker 1: between the soul and the body, and a very new
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Speaker 1: open mindedness as to the spiritual nature and its working
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Speaker 1: and experiences in other fields of learning. It is the
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Speaker 1: same to the modern student of man and his history.
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Speaker 1: The old easy way of excluding religion as an absurdity,
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Speaker 1: the like prediction of its speedy or at least its
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Speaker 1: eventual disappearance from the field of human life, and other
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Speaker 1: dogmatisms of the like kind are almost unintelligible. We realize
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Speaker 1: that religion in some form is a natural working of
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Speaker 1: the human spirit, and whatever place we give to religion
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Speaker 1: in the conduct of our own lives as students of history,
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Speaker 1: we reckon with the religious instinct as a factor of
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Speaker 1: the highest import and we give to religious systems and organizations,
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Speaker 1: above all to religious teachers and leaders a more sympathetic
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Speaker 1: and a profounder study. Carlyle's lecture on Mohammed in his
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Speaker 1: course on Heroes and hero Worship may be taken as
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Speaker 1: a landmark for English people in this new treatment history.
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Speaker 1: The Christian Church, whether we like it or not, has
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Speaker 1: been a force of unparalleled power in human affairs, and
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Speaker 1: prophesies that it will no longer be so, and allegations
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Speaker 1: that by now it has ceased to be so are
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Speaker 1: not much made by cautious thinkers. There is evidence that
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Speaker 1: the influence of the Christian Church so far from ebbing
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Speaker 1: is rising. Evidence more obvious when we reflect that the
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Speaker 1: influence of such a movement is not to be quickly
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Speaker 1: guessed from the number of its actual adherance. A century
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Speaker 1: and a quarter of Christian missions in India have resulted
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Speaker 1: in so many converts. A million and a quarter is
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Speaker 1: no slight outcome, but that is a small part of
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Speaker 1: the story. All over India, the old religious systems are
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Speaker 1: being subjected to a new study by their own adherance.
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Speaker 1: Their weak points are being felt. There are reform movements,
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Speaker 1: new apologetics, compromises, defenses, all sorts of indications of ferment
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Speaker 1: and transition. There can be little question that while many
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Speaker 1: things go to the making of an age, the prime
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Speaker 1: impulse to all this intellectual, religious and moral uphea evil
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Speaker 1: was the faith of Christian missionaries that Jesus Christ would
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Speaker 1: bring about what we actually see. They believed, and they
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Speaker 1: were laughed at for their belief that Jesus Christ was
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Speaker 1: still a real power, permanent, and destined to hold a
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Speaker 1: larger place in the affairs of men, and we see
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Speaker 1: that they were right. Jesus remains the very heart and
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Speaker 1: soul of the Christian movement, still controlling men, still capturing
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Speaker 1: men against their wills, very often changing men's lives, and
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Speaker 1: using them for ends they never dreamt of. So much
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Speaker 1: is plain to the candid observer, whatever the explanation. We
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Speaker 1: find further another fact of even more significance to the
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Speaker 1: historian who will treat human experience with seriousness and sympathy.
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Speaker 1: The cynical view that delusion and error in a real
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Speaker 1: world have peculiar power in human affairs may be dismissed.
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Speaker 1: No serious student of history could hold it for those
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Speaker 1: who believe, as we all do at heart, that the
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Speaker 1: world is rational, that real effects follow real causes, and
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Speaker 1: conversely that behind great movements like great forces. The fact
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Speaker 1: must weigh enormously that wherever the Christian Church, or a
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Speaker 1: section of it, or a single Christian has put upon
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Speaker 1: Jesus Christ a higher emphasis above all, where everything has
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Speaker 1: been centered in Jesus Christ, there has been an increase
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Speaker 1: of power for the church, or community or man. Where
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Speaker 1: new value has been found in Jesus Christ, the church
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Speaker 1: has risen in power, in energy, in appeal in victory,
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Speaker 1: Paul of Tartars progressively found more in Christ, expected more
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Speaker 1: of him, trusted him more, and his faith was justified.
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Speaker 1: If Paul was wrong, how did he capture the Christian
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Speaker 1: Church for his ideas? If he was wrong? How is
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Speaker 1: it that when Luther called his meaning, reinterpreted him and
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Speaker 1: laid the same emphasis on Jesus Christ with his nose
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Speaker 1: niosumus christus solus estomnia, once more the hearts of men
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Speaker 1: were won by the higher doctrine of Christ's person and power,
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Speaker 1: and a new era followed the new emphasis. How is
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Speaker 1: it that when John Wesley made the same discovery and
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Speaker 1: once more staked all on faith in Christ again, the
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Speaker 1: church felt the pulse of new life. On the other hand,
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Speaker 1: where through a nebulous philosophy men have minimized Jesus, or
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Speaker 1: where through some weakness of the human mind they have
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Speaker 1: sought the aid of others and relegated Jesus Christ to
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Speaker 1: a more distant, even if a higher sphere, Where in short,
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Speaker 1: Christ is not the living center of everything. The value
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Speaker 1: of the Church, which has declined its life, has waned.
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Speaker 1: That to my own mind is the most striking and
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Speaker 1: outstanding fact in history, there must be a real explanation
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Speaker 1: of a thing so signal in a rational universe. The
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Speaker 1: explanation in most human affairs comes after the recognition of
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Speaker 1: the fact. There our great fact stands of the significance
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Speaker 1: of Jesus Christ, a more wonderful thing as we study
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Speaker 1: it more. We may fail to explain it, but we
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Speaker 1: must recognize it. One of the weaknesses of the Church
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Speaker 1: today is put bluntly that Christians are not making enough
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Speaker 1: of Jesus Christ. We find again that where Jesus Christ
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Speaker 1: is most real and means most there we are apt
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Speaker 1: to see the human mind reach a fuller freedom and
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Speaker 1: achieve more. There is a higher civilization, a greater emphasis
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Speaker 1: on the value of human life and character, and a strong,
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Speaker 1: longer endeavor for the utmost development of all human material,
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Speaker 1: if we may so call the souls and faculties of men.
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Speaker 1: Why should there be this correspondence between Jesus of Nazareth
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Speaker 1: and human life. It is best brought out when we
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Speaker 1: realize what he has made of Christian society and contrast
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Speaker 1: it with what the various religions have left or produced
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Speaker 1: in other regions. The atrophy of human nature. In fine
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Speaker 1: there is no figure in human history that signifies more.
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Speaker 1: Men may love him or hate him, but they do
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Speaker 1: it intensely. If he was only what some say he
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Speaker 1: ought to be, a mere figure of antiquity by now,
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Speaker 1: but he is more than that. Jesus is not a
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Speaker 1: dead issue. He has to be reckoned with still, and
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Speaker 1: men who are to treat mankind seriously must make the
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Speaker 1: intellectual effort to understand the man on whom has been
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Speaker 1: centered more of the interest and the passion of the
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Speaker 1: most serious and the best of mankind than on any other.
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Speaker 1: The real secret is that human nature is deeply and
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Speaker 1: intensely spiritual, and that Jesus satisfies it at its most
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Speaker 1: spiritual point. The object before us of these pages is
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Speaker 1: the attempt to know Jesus, if we can, in a
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Speaker 1: more intimate and intelligent way than we have done, at
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Speaker 1: least to put before our minds the great problem, who
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Speaker 1: is this Jesus Christ, and to try to answer it.
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Speaker 1: One answer to this question is that Jesus was nothing,
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Speaker 1: never was anything but a myth developed for religious purposes,
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Speaker 1: that he never lived at all. This view reappears from
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Speaker 1: time to time, but so far it has not appealed
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Speaker 1: to any who take a serious interest in history. No
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Speaker 1: historian of the least repute has committed himself to the theory.
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Speaker 1: Desperate to attempts have been made to discredit the Christian
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Speaker 1: writers of the first two centuries. It has been emphasized
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Speaker 1: that Jesus is not mentioned in secular writers of the period,
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Speaker 1: and the passage in Tacitus has been explained away as
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Speaker 1: a Christian interpolation, or, more gaily, by reviving the wild
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Speaker 1: notion that Poggio Bracciolini forged the whole of the Annals.
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Speaker 1: But such trifling with history in literature does not serve.
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Speaker 1: No scholar accepts the theory about Poggio. And yet if
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Speaker 1: the passage about christ is to be got rid of,
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Speaker 1: this is the better way of the two, for there
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Speaker 1: is nothing to countenance the view that the chapter is interpolated,
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Speaker 1: or to explain when or by whom it was done.
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Speaker 1: The wish is father to the thought. Christians are twice
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Speaker 1: mentioned by Smeetonius in dealing with the emperors of the
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Speaker 1: first century, though in one passage, the reading Christus for
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Speaker 1: Christus has suggested to some scholars that are no other
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Speaker 1: man is meant. The confusion was a natural one and
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Speaker 1: is instanced elsewhere, But we need not press the matter.
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Speaker 1: The argument from silence is generally recognized as an uncertain one.
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Speaker 1: Sir James Melville, living at the court of Mary, Queen
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Speaker 1: of Scots, does not I learn mention John Knox, whom
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Speaker 1: he could not have failed to mention if Knox had
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Speaker 1: really existed and played the part asside to him by
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Speaker 1: his partisans, and so forth, it might be as possible
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Speaker 1: and as reasonable to prove that the Bramo Samage never
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Speaker 1: existed by demonstrating four hundred years hence or two thousand,
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Speaker 1: that it is not mentioned in the in Memoriam, nor
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Speaker 1: in The Ring and the Book, nor in George Murredith's novels,
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Speaker 1: nor more strangely, in any of mister Kipling's surviving works,
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Speaker 1: which definitely deal with India. None of these writers, it
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Speaker 1: may be replied, had any concern to mention the Bramo Samaj.
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Speaker 1: And when one surveys the Greek and Roman writers of
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Speaker 1: the first century a d which of them had any
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Speaker 1: concern to refer to Jesus and his disciples. Beyond the
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Speaker 1: historians who do, indeed, the difficulties to understand why some
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Speaker 1: of these men should have written at all. Hard still
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Speaker 1: why others should have wanted to read their poems and
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Speaker 1: orations and commonplace books. One argument advanced in India a
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Speaker 1: few years ago against the historical value of the Gospels
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Speaker 1: may be revived by way of illustration. Would not Virgil
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Speaker 1: and Horace, it was asked, have taken any notice of
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Speaker 1: the massacre at Bethlehem if it was historical? Would they not?
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Speaker 1: It was replied when they both had died years before
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Speaker 1: its traditional date. But the distinction between Christian and secular
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Speaker 1: writers is not one that will weigh much with a
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Speaker 1: serious historian. Until we have reason to distinguish between book
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Speaker 1: and book, the evidence must be treated on exactly the
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Speaker 1: same principles. To say abruptly that because as Luke was
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Speaker 1: a Christian and Suetonius a Pagan, Luke is not worthy
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Speaker 1: of the credence given to Suetonius is a line of
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Speaker 1: approach that will most commend itself to those who have
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Speaker 1: read neither author. To gain a real knowledge of historical truth,
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Speaker 1: the historian's methods must be slower and more cautious. He
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Speaker 1: must know his author intimately, his habits of mind, his
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Speaker 1: turns of style, his preferences, his gifts for seeing the
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Speaker 1: real issue, and always the background and the ways of
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Speaker 1: thinking that prevail in the background. An ancient writer is
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Speaker 1: not necessarily negligible because he records and perhaps believes miracles
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Speaker 1: or marvels or omens which a modern would never notice.
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Speaker 1: It is bad criticism that has made a popular legend
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Speaker 1: of the unreliable character of Herodotus. As our knowledge of
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Speaker 1: antiquity grows and we become able to correct our early impressions,
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Speaker 1: the credit of Herodotus rises steadily, and to those who
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Speaker 1: study him most closely have the highest opinion of him.
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Speaker 1: We may, then, without prejudice, take the evidence of Paul
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Speaker 1: of Tarsus on the historicity of Jesus and examine it.
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Speaker 1: If we are challenged as to the genuineness of Paul's epistles,
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Speaker 1: let us tell our questioner to read them. Novels have
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Speaker 1: been written in the form of correspondence, but Paul's letters
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Speaker 1: do not tell us all that a novelist or forger would.
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Speaker 1: There are endless gaps, needless references to unknown persons, needless
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Speaker 1: to us or to anybody apart from the people themselves,
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Speaker 1: constant occupation with questions which we can only dimly discover
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Speaker 1: from Paul's answers. The letters are genuine letters written for
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Speaker 1: the occasion to particular people, and not meant for us.
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Speaker 1: The stamp of genuineness is on them, of life, real life.
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Speaker 1: The German scholar Norden, in his kunzed Prosa says that
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Speaker 1: there is much in Paul that he does not understand,
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Speaker 1: but he catches in him again after three hundred year
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Speaker 1: that note of life that marks the great literature of
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Speaker 1: Greece that is not easily forged. Luther and Erasmus were
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Speaker 1: right when they said each of them has said it. However,
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Speaker 1: it happened that Paul spoke pure flame. The letters and
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Speaker 1: the theology and its influence established at once Paul's claim
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Speaker 1: to be a historical character. We may then ask how
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Speaker 1: a man of his ability failed to observe that a
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Speaker 1: non historical Jesus, a pure figment, was being palmed off
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Speaker 1: on him on a contemporary It should be marked and
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Speaker 1: by a combination of Jesus's own disciples with earlier friends
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Speaker 1: of Paul who were trying to exterminate them poor new
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Speaker 1: priests and pharisees. He knew James and John and Peter,
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Speaker 1: and he never detected that they were in collusion, yes,
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Speaker 1: and to the point of martyring Stephen to impose on
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Speaker 1: him and on the world a non historical Jesus. To
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Speaker 1: such straits are we brought. If Jesus never existed, history
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Speaker 1: becomes pure nonsense and knowledge of historical fact impossible. And
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Speaker 1: it may be noted all knowledge is abolished if history
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Speaker 1: is beyond reach. But we are not dependent on books
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Speaker 1: for our evidence of the historicity of Jesus. The whole
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Speaker 1: story of the Church implies him. He is inwrought in
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Speaker 1: every feature of its being. Every great religious movement of
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Speaker 1: which we know has depended on a personal impulse, and
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Speaker 1: has behind it some real, living and inspiring personality. It
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Speaker 1: is true that at a comparatively late stage of Hinduism
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Speaker 1: a personal devotion to Shri Krishna grew up, just as
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Speaker 1: in the hour of decline of the Old Mediterranean Paganism
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Speaker 1: we find Julian the Apostate, using a devotional language to
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Speaker 1: Athena at Athens that would have astonished the contemporaries of Pericles.
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Speaker 1: But Jesus, Buddha, and Mahamed stand on a very different
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Speaker 1: footing from Krishna and Athena. Even if we conceivee the
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Speaker 1: view of some scholars that Christian was once a man,
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Speaker 1: and the contention of Euhemerus, a pre Christian Greek, that
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Speaker 1: all the God had once been human. If we posit
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Speaker 1: that Jesus did not exist, we shall be involved with
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Speaker 1: other difficulties, as did the story of the Church. Mister F. C. Connybeer,
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Speaker 1: an Oxford scholar avowedly not in allegiance to the Christian Church,
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Speaker 1: has characterized some of the reconstructions made by contemporary anti
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Speaker 1: Christian writers as more miraculous than the history they are
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Speaker 1: trying to correct. We come now to the Gospels, and
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Speaker 1: in what follows and throughout the book, we shall confine
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Speaker 1: ourselves to the first three Gospels. Great as has been
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Speaker 1: and must be, the influence of the Fourth Gospel. In
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Speaker 1: the present stage of historical criticism, it will serve our
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Speaker 1: purpose best to postpone the use of a source which
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Speaker 1: we do not fully understand. The exact relations of history
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Speaker 1: and interpretation in the Fourth Gospel, the methods and historical
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Speaker 1: outlook of the writer cannot yet be said to be determined.
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Speaker 1: Only those who who have merely trifled with the problems
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Speaker 1: it suggests, are likely to speak dogmatically upon the subject.
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Speaker 1: This is not to abandon the Fourth Gospel, for it
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Speaker 1: is a document which we could not do without in
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Speaker 1: the early Church history, and which has vindicated its place
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Speaker 1: in the devotional life in every Christian generation. But for
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Speaker 1: the present the first three Gospels will be our chief sources.
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Speaker 1: The Gospels have, of course been attacked again and again.
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Speaker 1: Sober criticism has raised the question as to whether here
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Speaker 1: and there traces may be found of the touch of
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Speaker 1: a later hand. For example, were there two asses or
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Speaker 1: one when Jesus rode into Jerusalem? Has the baptismal formula
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Speaker 1: at the end of Matthew been adjusted to the creed
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Speaker 1: of Nicia? In the following pages, the attempt will be
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Speaker 1: made to base what is said not on isolated texts,
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Speaker 1: which may and of course may not, have been touched,
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Speaker 1: but on the general tenor of the books. A single
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Speaker 1: episode or phrase may suffer change from a copyist's hand,
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Speaker 1: from inadvertence, or from theological predilection. The character of the
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Speaker 1: personality set forth in the Gospels is less susceptible of alteration.
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Speaker 1: This point is at once of importance, for the suggestion
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Speaker 1: has been made that we cannot be sure of any
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Speaker 1: particular statement, episode, incident, or saying in the Gospels taken
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Speaker 1: by itself. Let us, for the moment imagine a more
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Speaker 1: sweeping theory still, that no single episode, incident, or saying
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Speaker 1: of Jesus in the Gospels is authentic at all. What follows.
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Speaker 1: The great historian E. A. Freeman of Oxford once said
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Speaker 1: that a false anecdote may be good history. It may
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Speaker 1: be sound evidence for character. For to obtain currency, a
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Speaker 1: false anecdote has also to be true. It must be,
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Speaker 1: in our proverbial phrase, if not true, well invented, even
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Speaker 1: if it exaggeration and humor contribute to give it a twist.
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Speaker 1: The essence of parody is that it parodies. It must
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Speaker 1: conform to the original, even where it leaves it. Good
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Speaker 1: storyteller will hardly tell the same story of mister Roosevelt
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Speaker 1: and the Archbishop of Canterbury unless it happens to be true,
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Speaker 1: and then he will be cautious. Truth, to quote another proverb,
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Speaker 1: is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to go warily
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Speaker 1: to be probable, and must be more or less conventional.
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Speaker 1: The story of man invents about another has to be
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Speaker 1: true in some recognizable way to character, as a little
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Speaker 1: experiment in this direction will show the inventor of a
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Speaker 1: story must have the gift of the characaturist and the
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Speaker 1: bestower of nicknames. He must have a shrewd eye for
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Speaker 1: the real features of his victim. Jesus, then, was a
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Speaker 1: historical person, and about him. We have a mass of
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Speaker 1: stories in the Gospels, which our theory for the moment
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Speaker 1: asks us to say are all false. But they have
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Speaker 1: a certain unity of tone, and they agree in pointing
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Speaker 1: to a character of a certain type, and the general
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Speaker 1: aspects and broad outlines of that character they make abundantly clear.
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Speaker 1: Even on such a hypothesis, we can know something of
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Speaker 1: the caacter of Jesus. But the hypothesis is gratuitous and absurd.
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Speaker 1: As the paragraphs that follow may help to show, the
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Speaker 1: Gospels are essentially true and reliable records of a historical person.
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Speaker 1: A survey of some of the outstanding features of the
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Speaker 1: Gospels should do something to assure their reader of their
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Speaker 1: historical value. But there is necessary caution to be given
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Speaker 1: at this moment. When Aristotle discusses happiness, he adds a
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Speaker 1: curious limitation, as the man of sense would define, he
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Speaker 1: postulates a certain intelligence of the matter in hand. Similarly,
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Speaker 1: longiness the greatest of ancient critics says that in literature,
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Speaker 1: sure judgment is the outcome of long experience. In matters
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Speaker 1: of historical and literary criticism, a certain instinct is needed,
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Speaker 1: conscious or unconscious, perhaps more often the latter, which without
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Speaker 1: a serious interest and long experience, no man is likely
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Speaker 1: to have. The Gospels are not properly biograpes. They consist
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Speaker 1: of collections of reminiscences, memories, and fragments that have survived
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Speaker 1: for years, and sometimes the fragment is little more than
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Speaker 1: a phrase, such and such were the circumstances, and Jesus
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Speaker 1: spoke a story that may occupy four or five verses
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Speaker 1: or less. Something happened. Jesus did something or said something
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Speaker 1: that impressed his friends, and they could never forget it.
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Speaker 1: The story, as such impressions do, keeps its sharp edges.
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Speaker 1: Date and perhaps even place may be forgotten, but the
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Speaker 1: look and the tone of the speaker are indelible memories.
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Speaker 1: In the experience of every man. There are such moments,
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Speaker 1: and the reminiscences can be trusted. The Gospels are almost
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Speaker 1: avowedly not first hand. Peter is said to be behind Mark, Mark,
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Speaker 1: and at least one other are behind Matthew and Luke.
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Speaker 1: Luke in his preface, explains his methods. They are collectors
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Speaker 1: and t admitters, and the indications are that they did
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Speaker 1: their work very faithfully. There is a simplicity and a
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Speaker 1: plainness about the stories in the Gospels, which further guarantees them.
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Speaker 1: It is remarkable how little of the adjective. There is
23:14
Speaker 1: no compliment, no eulogy, no heroic touches, no sympathetic turn
23:19
Speaker 1: of phrase, no great passages of enconium or commendation. It
23:25
Speaker 1: is often said about the Greek historian Thucydities that among
23:28
Speaker 1: his many intellectual judgments, he never offers a criticism of
23:33
Speaker 1: any act that implies moral approbation or disapprobation. That he
23:37
Speaker 1: says nothing to show that he had feelings or that
23:40
Speaker 1: he cared about questions of right or wrong. Page after
23:45
Speaker 1: page of Fusidities will make the reader tingle with pity
23:48
Speaker 1: or indignation. There is hardly in literature so tragic a
23:52
Speaker 1: story as the Syracusian Expedition, and the writer did not
23:55
Speaker 1: feel is it not the sternest and deepest feeling? After all,
24:00
Speaker 1: a man will not unpack his heart with words. Something
24:04
Speaker 1: of this kind we find in the Gospels. There is
24:07
Speaker 1: not a word of condemnation for Herod or Pilot, for
24:11
Speaker 1: priest or Pharisee, not a touch of sympathy as the
24:15
Speaker 1: nails are driven through those hands, a blunt phrase about
24:19
Speaker 1: the soldiers, and sitting down they watched him. There, that
24:23
Speaker 1: is all from a literary point of view, What a
24:26
Speaker 1: triumph of awful quiet objectivity, And they had no such aim.
24:31
Speaker 1: Luke indeed has once slight touch that might be called irony,
24:34
Speaker 1: and he released unto them that for sedition and murder,
24:37
Speaker 1: was cast into prison whom they had desired. But he
24:40
Speaker 1: delivered Jesus to their will. And yet the irony is
24:44
Speaker 1: in the story itself. Why callest thou me good? So
24:48
Speaker 1: it is recorded that Jesus once answered a compliment, and
24:51
Speaker 1: it looks as if the mood had passed over to
24:53
Speaker 1: his intimates, and from them to their friends who wrote
24:56
Speaker 1: the gospels. He meant too much for them to seek
25:00
Speaker 1: the facile relief of praise. The words of praise die away, yes,
25:05
Speaker 1: and the words of affection too, And their silence and
25:08
Speaker 1: self restraint are in themselves evident of their truth and
25:12
Speaker 1: more winning than words could have been. Here and there
25:17
Speaker 1: the Gospels keep a phrase actually used by Jesus and
25:21
Speaker 1: in his native Aramaic speech. The Greek was not apt
25:24
Speaker 1: to use or quote foreign phrases, unlike the Englishman who
25:28
Speaker 1: has been at a great feast of languages and stolen
25:31
Speaker 1: the scraps. Why then, do the evangelists writing for Greek
25:35
Speaker 1: readers keep the Aramaic sentences? It looks like a human
25:39
Speaker 1: instinct that made Peter if, as we are told, he
25:43
Speaker 1: had some part of the origination of Mark's Gospel, and
25:45
Speaker 1: the rest wish to keep the very words and tones
25:48
Speaker 1: of their master, as most of us would wish to
25:51
Speaker 1: keep the accents and phrases of those we love. Was
25:55
Speaker 1: there no satisfaction to the people who had lived with
25:57
Speaker 1: Jesus when they read and mark the very syllables they
26:00
Speaker 1: had heard him news and called his great accents? Again?
26:05
Speaker 1: Is there not for Christians in every age a joy
26:08
Speaker 1: and an inspiration in knowing the very sounds his lips
26:12
Speaker 1: framed The first word that his mother taught him survives
26:16
Speaker 1: in abba Father something of his own speech to let
26:20
Speaker 1: us begin at the beginning, something again that takes us
26:22
Speaker 1: to the very heart of him at the end. In
26:25
Speaker 1: his cry ELOI eloi l'aba Sabahthani. Is it not true
26:30
Speaker 1: that we come nearer to him in that cry in
26:32
Speaker 1: the language strange to us but his own? Would not
26:36
Speaker 1: the story again be poorer without the little tender phrase
26:40
Speaker 1: that he used to the daughter of Chyrus. From time
26:44
Speaker 1: to time we find in the Gospels matters for which
26:47
Speaker 1: the writers and those behind them have felt that some
26:49
Speaker 1: apology or at least some explanation was needed. His friendship
26:54
Speaker 1: for sinners was are taunt against him in his lifetime.
26:57
Speaker 1: So was his attention to the Sabbath and the detail
27:00
Speaker 1: of ceremonial washing. The faithful record of those is a
27:04
Speaker 1: sound indication both of the date and of the truth
27:07
Speaker 1: of the Gospels. But these were not all Celsus. In
27:12
Speaker 1: one seven eight a d in his true word, mocked
27:16
Speaker 1: at Jesus because of the cry upon the cross. He
27:19
Speaker 1: reminded Christians that many and many a worthless knave had
27:23
Speaker 1: endured in brave silence, and their great man cried out.
27:27
Speaker 1: It was from the Gospels that his knowledge came. Even
27:30
Speaker 1: during his lifetime. The Gospels reveal much about Jesus that
27:35
Speaker 1: in contemporary opinion would degrade him. Sighs and tears and fatigue,
27:42
Speaker 1: liability to emotion and pain, friendship with women. With these
27:46
Speaker 1: revelations of character, we may group passages where the Gospels
27:50
Speaker 1: tell of Jesus surprising or shocking his disciples, startling them
27:55
Speaker 1: by some act or some opinion for which they were
27:57
Speaker 1: not prepared or which was contrary to common belief or practice.
28:02
Speaker 1: Passages too, where he blames or criticizes them for conventionality
28:06
Speaker 1: or unintelligence. It has been remarked that the frequency and
28:11
Speaker 1: fidelity of Jesus's own allusions to country life, his illustrations
28:15
Speaker 1: from bird and beast and flower, and the work of
28:18
Speaker 1: the farm, are evidence for the genuineness of the tradition.
28:22
Speaker 1: Early Christianity, as we see already in the Acts of
28:25
Speaker 1: the Apostles, was prevailing the urban Paul aimed at the
28:29
Speaker 1: great centers of population, where men gathered, from which ideas
28:33
Speaker 1: spread the language of Paul in his epistles. The sermons
28:38
Speaker 1: inserted by Luke in the Acts writings that survive of
28:41
Speaker 1: early Christians are all in marked contrast to the speech
28:45
Speaker 1: of Jesus in this matter of country life. When we
28:49
Speaker 1: recall the practice of ancient historians of composing speeches for
28:53
Speaker 1: insertion into their narratives, and weigh the suggestion that the
28:56
Speaker 1: sermons in the Acts may conceivably owe much the free
28:59
Speaker 1: reads handling of Luke, or may even be his own compositions.
29:03
Speaker 1: There is a fresh significance in his marked abstention from
29:06
Speaker 1: any such treatment of the words of Jesus. It means
29:10
Speaker 1: that we may be secure in using them as genuine
29:13
Speaker 1: and untouched reproductions of what he said and thought. This
29:18
Speaker 1: leads us to another point. The central figure of the
29:21
Speaker 1: Gospels must impress every attentive reader as at least a
29:24
Speaker 1: man of marked personality. He has his own attitude to life,
29:29
Speaker 1: his own views of God and Man and all else,
29:31
Speaker 1: and his own language, as we shall see in the
29:34
Speaker 1: pages that follow. So much his own are all these
29:37
Speaker 1: things that it is hard to imagine the possibility of
29:40
Speaker 1: his being a mere literary creation, even if we could
29:43
Speaker 1: concede a joint literary creation by several authors writing independent works. Indeed,
29:50
Speaker 1: when we reflect on the character of the Gospels, their
29:53
Speaker 1: origin and composition, and then consider the sharp, strong outlined
29:58
Speaker 1: of the personality depicted, shall feel apt to feel his
30:01
Speaker 1: claim to hystericity to be stronger than we supposed. Finally,
30:06
Speaker 1: two points may be mentioned. The church from the very
30:10
Speaker 1: start accepted the Gospels. Two of them were written by
30:14
Speaker 1: men in Paul's own personal circle. All found early acceptance
30:18
Speaker 1: in wide use, and after a century we find Errhineus
30:22
Speaker 1: maintaining that four gospels are necessary and are necessarily all.
30:26
Speaker 1: There are four points of the compass, seasons, and so forth.
30:30
Speaker 1: Therefore it is appropriate that there are four gospels. The
30:34
Speaker 1: argument is not very convincing, but that such an argument
30:37
Speaker 1: was possible is evidence to the position of the Gospels
30:39
Speaker 1: as we have them. We must remember the solidarity of
30:43
Speaker 1: that early church. The constituency for which the Gospels were
30:47
Speaker 1: written was steeped in the tradition of jesus life, and
30:50
Speaker 1: the Christians accepted the Gospels as embodying what they knew,
30:54
Speaker 1: and there were still survivors from the first days of
30:56
Speaker 1: the Gospel. When Boswell's Life of Johnson was published, the
31:00
Speaker 1: great painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, a lifelong friend of Johnson,
31:04
Speaker 1: said it might be depended upon as if delivered upon oath. Burke,
31:08
Speaker 1: too had a high opinion of the book. In the
31:10
Speaker 1: same way, the Gospels come recommended to us by those
31:14
Speaker 1: who knew Jesus, though it is true. We do not
31:17
Speaker 1: know their names. The gospels do not tell us all
31:21
Speaker 1: that Christians thought about Jesus, but they imply more than
31:24
Speaker 1: they say. The writers limited themselves. That Luke, for years
31:29
Speaker 1: a friend of Paul's, so generally kept his great friends
31:32
Speaker 1: theology above all, his Christology out of his Gospel is significant.
31:37
Speaker 1: It does not mean divergence of view. More reasonably, we
31:40
Speaker 1: may conclude something else. He held to his literary and
31:44
Speaker 1: other authorities, and he was content, for he knew to
31:47
Speaker 1: what the historical Jesus brings men to new life and
31:51
Speaker 1: larger views, to a series of new estimates of Jesus himself.
31:55
Speaker 1: He left it there. In what follows. We must not
31:58
Speaker 1: forget in our study that behind the Gospels, simple and
32:02
Speaker 1: objective as they are, is the larger experience of the
32:05
Speaker 1: ever work in Christ. There are three canons which may
32:09
Speaker 1: be laid down for the study of any human character,
32:12
Speaker 1: whether of the past or of today. They are so
32:15
Speaker 1: simple that it may hardly seem worthwhile to have stated them,
32:19
Speaker 1: Yet they are not always very easy to apply. Without them,
32:23
Speaker 1: the acutest critic will fail to give any sound account
32:26
Speaker 1: of a human character. First of all, give the man's
32:31
Speaker 1: words his own meaning. Make sure that every term he
32:34
Speaker 1: uses has the full value he intends it to convey,
32:38
Speaker 1: connotes all he wishes it to cover, and has the
32:41
Speaker 1: full emotional power and suggestion that it has for himself.
32:45
Speaker 1: Two quite simple illustrations may serve The English born clergyman
32:49
Speaker 1: in Canada who spoke of the meeting of his congregation
32:52
Speaker 1: as a homely gathering did not produce quite the effect
32:55
Speaker 1: he intended. Home like is one thing in Canada. Homely
32:59
Speaker 1: quite And the people laughed at the slip. They knew
33:03
Speaker 1: what he did not, that homely meant hard featured and ugly.
33:08
Speaker 1: My other illustration will take us towards the second canon.
33:12
Speaker 1: I remember years ago, a working man of my own
33:14
Speaker 1: city taking a swift, impulsive socialism to me. He was
33:18
Speaker 1: young and something of a poet. He got in return
33:22
Speaker 1: the obvious common sense that would be expected of a
33:24
Speaker 1: mid Victorian, middle aged, and middle class. And then he
33:28
Speaker 1: began to talk of hunger, the hunger that haunted whole
33:31
Speaker 1: streets in our city, where they had indeed something to
33:34
Speaker 1: eat every day, but never quite enough, and the children
33:38
Speaker 1: grew up so the hunger that he had experienced himself.
33:41
Speaker 1: For I knew his story with his eyes fixed on me.
33:45
Speaker 1: He brought home to me by the quiet intensity of
33:48
Speaker 1: his speech, whether he knew what he affected or not,
33:51
Speaker 1: that he and I gave hunger different senses. He gave
33:54
Speaker 1: the word for me a new meaning with the glimpse
33:58
Speaker 1: he gave me of his experience. Since then I have
34:02
Speaker 1: always felt when men fling theories out like his schemes,
34:06
Speaker 1: to like his wild and impracticable Ah. Yes, what is
34:10
Speaker 1: at the heart of it all? What but this awful
34:13
Speaker 1: experience which they have known? And you have not the
34:17
Speaker 1: sight of your own folk, hungering life and faculty wasted
34:21
Speaker 1: for want of mere food, and children growing up atrophied
34:24
Speaker 1: from the cradle. It is not easy to dissociate the
34:27
Speaker 1: language and the terms of others from the meaning one
34:30
Speaker 1: gives to them oneself. It means intellectual effort and intellectual discipline,
34:35
Speaker 1: a training of a strenuous kind in sympathy and tenderness.
34:39
Speaker 1: But if we are to be fair, it must be done.
34:42
Speaker 1: And the rule applies to Jesus also. Have we given
34:45
Speaker 1: his meaning to his term force, value, emotion, and suggestion.
34:51
Speaker 1: In a later chapter, we shall have to concentrate on one
34:53
Speaker 1: term of his God and try to discover what he
34:57
Speaker 1: intends for that term to convey. The second canon is
35:01
Speaker 1: make sure of the experience behind the thought. How does
35:05
Speaker 1: a man come to think and feel as he does?
35:08
Speaker 1: That is the question antecedent to any real criticism. What
35:12
Speaker 1: is it that has led him to such a view.
35:15
Speaker 1: It is more important for us to determine that than
35:19
Speaker 1: to decide at once whether we think him right or wrong.
35:23
Speaker 1: Again and again. The quiet and sympathetic study of what
35:26
Speaker 1: a man has been through will modify our judgment upon
35:30
Speaker 1: his conclusions. It will often change our own conclusions, or
35:34
Speaker 1: even our way of thinking. We have then to ask ourselves,
35:38
Speaker 1: what is the experience that leads Jesus to speak as
35:41
Speaker 1: he does, to think as he does? In his case,
35:45
Speaker 1: as in every other, the central and crucial question is
35:49
Speaker 1: what is his experience of God? In other words, what
35:53
Speaker 1: is he found in God? What relations has he with God?
35:57
Speaker 1: What does he expect of God? What is God too him?
36:01
Speaker 1: Such questions, if we are candid and not too quick
36:04
Speaker 1: in answering, will take us a long way. It was
36:07
Speaker 1: once said of a man busy with some labor problem,
36:11
Speaker 1: that he was working it out in theory, unclouded by
36:13
Speaker 1: a single fact, is it not fair to say that
36:17
Speaker 1: many of our current judgments upon Jesus Christ are no
36:20
Speaker 1: better founded? Can we say that we have any real,
36:24
Speaker 1: sure and intimate knowledge of his experience of God? The
36:28
Speaker 1: old commentator Bengal wrote at the beginning of his book
36:32
Speaker 1: that a man who is setting out to interpret scripture
36:35
Speaker 1: has to ask by what right he does it? What
36:38
Speaker 1: is our right to an opinion on Jesus Christ? The
36:43
Speaker 1: third canon will be ask what type and of what
36:46
Speaker 1: dimensions the nature must be that is capable of that
36:49
Speaker 1: experience and of that language. One of the commonest sources
36:54
Speaker 1: of bad criticism is the emphasis on weak points. The
36:58
Speaker 1: really important thing in criticism is to understand the triumphs
37:02
Speaker 1: of the poet or painter. Let us say, whom we
37:04
Speaker 1: are studying, how came he to achieve poem or picture
37:09
Speaker 1: so profound and so true? In What does he differ
37:12
Speaker 1: from other men that he should do work so fundamental
37:15
Speaker 1: and so eternal. Lamb's punning jest at Wordsworth that Wordsworth
37:20
Speaker 1: was saying he could have written a Hamlet if he
37:23
Speaker 1: had had the mind puts the matter directly. What is
37:26
Speaker 1: the mind that can do such things? The historian will
37:30
Speaker 1: have to ask himself a similar question about Jesus. Here
37:35
Speaker 1: we reach a point where caution is necessary. Will the
37:38
Speaker 1: Jesus we draw be in antiquaries? Jesus an archaic figure,
37:42
Speaker 1: simple and lovable, perhaps, but quaint and old worlds in
37:47
Speaker 1: blunt language, outgrown, a Galileean peasant dressed in the garb
37:52
Speaker 1: of his day in place, his mind fitted out with
37:55
Speaker 1: the current ideas of his contemporaries. Elevated, it may be,
37:59
Speaker 1: but not a es centrally changed, a dreamer with the
38:03
Speaker 1: clouds of the visionaries and apocalyptists over his head. When
38:07
Speaker 1: we look at the ancient world, the great men are
38:10
Speaker 1: not archaic figures. Matthew Arnold found in Homer something of
38:14
Speaker 1: the clearness and shrewdness of Voltaire. There is nothing archaic
38:18
Speaker 1: about Plato, or Virgil or Paul. To keep abreast of
38:22
Speaker 1: their thinking is no easy task for the strongest of
38:25
Speaker 1: our brains. So modern, eternal, and original are they. They
38:29
Speaker 1: have shaped the thinking of the world, and are still
38:31
Speaker 1: shaping it. How much more Jesus of Nazareth, when we
38:36
Speaker 1: make our picture of him, does it suggest the man
38:39
Speaker 1: who has stirred mankind to its depths set the world
38:42
Speaker 1: on fire, and played an infinitely larger part in all
38:46
Speaker 1: the affairs of men than any other man we know
38:48
Speaker 1: of in history? Is it a great figure? Does our
38:52
Speaker 1: emphasis fall in the great features of that nature? Are
38:55
Speaker 1: they within our vision and in our drawing? Does our
38:58
Speaker 1: explanation of him explain him? Or leave him more a riddle?
39:03
Speaker 1: What do we make of his originality? Is it in
39:06
Speaker 1: our picture? What was it in him that changed Peter
39:09
Speaker 1: and James and John and the rest from companions into worshipers?
39:14
Speaker 1: That in every age has captured and controlled the best,
39:18
Speaker 1: the deepest, and the tenderest of men. Are we afraid
39:22
Speaker 1: that our picture will be too modern, too little Jewish?
39:26
Speaker 1: These are not the real dangers. Again and again, our
39:30
Speaker 1: danger is that we underestimate the great men of our race,
39:34
Speaker 1: and we always lose by so doing. That we should
39:37
Speaker 1: overestimate Jesus as not a real risk. The story of
39:40
Speaker 1: the Church shows that the danger has always been the
39:43
Speaker 1: other way. But not to underestimate such a figure as heart,
39:47
Speaker 1: to see him as he is. Cause, for all we
39:50
Speaker 1: have of intellect, of tenderness, of love, and of greatness,
39:55
Speaker 1: it is worth while to try to understand him. Even
39:58
Speaker 1: if we fail. God said Saint Bernard is never sought
40:02
Speaker 1: in vain, even when we do not find him. Jesus
40:06
Speaker 1: Christ transcends our categories and classification. We never exhaust him,
40:12
Speaker 1: and one element of Christian happiness is that there is
40:15
Speaker 1: always more in Him than we supposed. End of Chapter
40:20
Speaker 1: one