The Jesus Problem: A Restatement of the Myth TheoryRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
The Jesus Problem: A Restatement of the Myth Theory
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Jesus Christ
[The following is a revised translation of the Didachê tôn dôdeka
apostolôn, discovered by Philotheos Bryennios, Metropolitan of
Nicomedia (then of Serres), in 1873, in the library attached to the
Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre, in the Phanar, or Greek quarter,
of Constantinople. It was part of a manuscript containing several
ancient documents, including two Epistles of Clement of Rome, which
Bryennios published in 1875. Not till 1883 did he publish the Didachê.
Of the genuineness of the MS. there can be no reasonable doubt. That
there was current in the early Church a "Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles" appears from Eusebius (H. E. iii, 25) and Athanasius (Festal
Epistle 39, C.E. 367). There were very good reasons why the Church,
as time went on, should desire to drop the Teaching from her current
literature. It is obviously in origin a purely Jewish document,
and the first six chapters show no trace of Jesuism. We have already
stated the reasons for concluding that the primary "Teaching" was the
official doctrine of the twelve Jewish apostles of the High Priest to
the Jews dispersed through the Roman Empire; that the Gospels borrowed
from it, and not the converse; that Judaic Jesuists adopted it, and
gradually interpolated it; and that it is the real foundation of the
legend of the twelve Jesuist apostles. The sub-title: "Teaching of
[the] Lord through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations" may have been
the original. "Lord" here has the force of "God."
On a first study, we found reasons [471] for deciding that the Epistle
of Barnabas, which in part closely coincides with the "Teaching,"
borrows from it, and not the converse. That view, though naturally
opposed by many orthodox scholars, who want to date the Teaching as
late as possible, was from the first, we find, put by Farrar and
by Zahn, and is convincingly maintained by the American editors,
though of course they take the conventional view that the document
is of Christian origin. Yet its Græco-Jewish origin, we feel certain,
will be plain to every open-minded reader at the first perusal. That
view was maintained by the Rev. Dr. C. Taylor, of St. John's College,
Cambridge, in two lectures given at the Royal Institution in 1886;
and it has been accepted by Dr. Salmon in his Introduction to the
Study of the New Testament. It was admitted to be probable by the
Rev. A. Gordon, in the Modern Review, July, 1884, but rejected by
the American editors (1885).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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