The Historical Jesus: A Survey of PositionsRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
The Historical Jesus: A Survey of Positions
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Jesus Christ -- Historicity; Jesus Christ -- Rationalistic interpretations
Before such problems, the method of "liberal" accommodation here as
always breaks down. To the eye of the evolutionist there is no great
mystery. The avowal that the Founder either could not or did not
work wonders at Nazareth might serve any one of several conceivable
purposes. It might meet the cavils of those who in a later day found
and said that nothing was known at Nazareth of a wonder-working Jesus
who had dwelt there; even as the often-repeated story of the command
to healed persons to keep silence could avail to turn the attacks of
investigating doubters in regard to the miraculous cures. Or it might
serve either to impugn the pretensions of those who at one stage of the
movement called themselves "Nazarenes" in the sense of followers of the
man of Nazareth, or to include the birthplace with the family and the
disciples in that disparagement of the Jewish surroundings which would
arise step for step with the spread of the Gentile movement. Any of
these explanations is reasonable beside the thesis that a man gifted
with marvellous healing powers, suddenly developed without any previous
sign of them, could either find no one in his own village to let him
try them, or to recognize them even when applied there, while the
country round about, ex hypothesi, was ringing with his fame. And
the criticism which puts us off with such solutions is really not
well entitled to impute "superficiality" to those who reject it.
The whole "carpenter" story, in which M. Loisy sees no difficulty, is
one of the weakest of the Gospel attempts at circumstantiality. A trade
or calling for the Messiah, as a true Jew, was perhaps as requisite
in the eyes of some Jews as either a Davidic descent or an argument
to prove that Davidic descent was for the Messiah unnecessary--both of
which requirements the Gospels meet. Every good Jew, we are told, was
required to have a handicraft or profession. A "Ben-Joseph," again,
was called-for to meet the requirement, common among the Samaritans
but not confined to them, of a Messiah so named. [146] But how came
it that "the carpenter" of Mark is only "the carpenter's son" in
Matthew? We can conceive the Gentilizing Luke putting both statements
aside as ill-suited to his purpose, his Jesus being a God competing
with Gentile Gods; but if there really was an early knowledge that
Jesus was a carpenter, why should Matthew minimize it? And how came
it that Origen [147] knew of no Gospel "current in the churches"
in which Jesus was described as a carpenter?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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