And so we find M. Loisy, with all his scholarly painstaking and his laudable measure of candour, presenting us finally with an uncritical result. His historical Jesus will not cohere. It is a blend of early Judaic eschatology with later ethical common sense, early Judaic humanity and particularism with later Gentile universalism; even as the Gospels are a mosaic of a dozen other diverging and conflicting tendencies, early and late. "One can explain to oneself Jesus," exclaims M. Loisy; "one cannot explain to oneself those who invented him." [196] Let the reader judge for himself whether M. Loisy has given us any explanation; and whether, after our survey, there is any scientific difficulty in the conception of an imaginary personage produced, like an ideal photograph resulting from a whole series of superimposed portraits, by the continued travail of generations of men variously bent on picturing a Messiah for their hopes, a God for their salvation, and a Teacher for their lives. CHAPTER XVIII THE PAULINE PROBLEM How much M. Loisy is swayed by prepossession may be further gathered from his argumentation over the "testimony of Paul" in connection with his criticism of the myth theory. Professor Drews, he remarks, does not follow those who contest the authenticity of the Epistles, "though the interest of his thesis imperiously demands it"; and again: "Paul is a dangerous witness for the mythic hypothesis." [197] It may be worth while for me here to note that a study of the Pauline epistles, on the view that "the four" were probably genuine in the main, was a determining factor in my own resort to the mythical hypothesis. The critical situation created by realizing that Paul practically knew nothing of the Gospel narratives save the detachable item of the resurrection was for me almost exactly analogous to that created by realizing that the Israel of the Book of Judges knew nothing of the Pentateuchal life in the wilderness. So far from being a witness against the myth theory, the Pauline literature was one of the first clear grounds for that theory. The school of Van Manen can realize, what M. Loisy cannot, that the spuriousness of the whole Pauline literature, so far from being "imperiously required" by the myth theory, sets up for that a certain complication. [198] As a matter of fact, Van Manen took exactly the converse view to that of M. Loisy:-- He was at bottom a man of conservative character, and it was only with great reluctance that he found himself compelled to abandon the Paul consecrated by tradition. But when, as a man of science, he had once made this sacrifice to his convictions, his belief in an historical Jesus received a fresh accession of strength; now at length the existence of Jesus had become probable. If the letters were written a century later than the time when Jesus lived, then his deification in the Pauline letters ceases to be so astonishing. [199]