Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Jesus Christ -- Historicity
We need not here take into consideration how many of Jesus' expressions
may have been imported into the Gospels from the Mystery drama, with
whose existence we must nevertheless reckon, and from which phrases
may have been changed into sayings of the "historical" Jesus. Such
obscure and high-flown passages as, e.g., Matt. x. 32 sq.; xi. 15-30,
xxvi. 64, and xxviii. 18, give one the impression of coming from the
mouth of God's representative on the stage; and this probability is
further increased when we meet quite similar expressions, such as of
the "light burden" and the "easy yoke," in the Mysteries of Mithras or
of Isis. [469] Bousset admits that all the individual words which have
been handed down to us as expressions of Jesus are "mediated by the
tradition of a community, and have passed through many hands." [470]
They are, as Strauss has observed, like pebbles which the waves of
tradition have rolled and polished, setting them down here and there
and uniting them to this and that mass. "We are," Steck remarks,
"absolutely certain of no single word of the Gospels--that it was
spoken by Jesus just in this way and in no other." [471] "It would
be very difficult," thinks Vollers, "to refer even one expression,
one parable, one act of this ideal man to Jesus of Nazareth with
historical certainty, let us say with the same certainty with which we
attribute the Epistle to the Galatians to the Apostle Paul, or explain
the Johannine Logos as the product of Greek philosophy." [472] Even one
of the leaders of Protestant orthodoxy, Professor Kähler, of Halle,
admitted, as was stated in the "Kirchliche Monatsblatt für Rheinland
und Westfalen," in a theological conference held in Dortmund, that
we possess "no single authentic word" of Jesus. Any attempt, such as
Chamberlain has made, to gather from the tradition a certain nucleus
of "words of Jesus," is consequently mistaken; and if nothing is to
be a criterion but one's personal feelings, it would be better to
confess at once that here there can be no talk of any kind of decision.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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