But how this anecdote can be numbered among mythi is found by some altogether inconceivable. It bears, thinks Heydenreich, [477] a thoroughly historical character (this is the very point to be proved), and the stamp of the highest simplicity (like every popular legend in its original form); it contains no tincture of the miraculous, wherein the primary characteristic of a mythus (but not of every mythus) is held to consist; it is so remote from all embellishment that there is not the slightest detail of the conversation of Jesus with the doctors (the legend was satisfied with the dramatic trait, sitting in the midst of the doctors: as a dictum, v. 49 was alone important, and towards this the narrator hastens without delay); nay, even the conversation between Jesus and his mother is only given in a fragmentary aphoristic manner (there is no trace of an omission); finally, the inventor of a legend would have made Jesus speak differently to his mother, instead of putting into his mouth words which might be construed into irreverence and indifference. In this last observation Heydenreich agrees with Schleiermacher, who finds in the behaviour of Jesus to his mother, liable as it is to be misinterpreted, a sure guarantee that the whole history was not invented to supply something remarkable concerning Jesus, in connexion with the period at which the holy things of the temple and the law were first opened to him. [478] In combating the assertion, that an inventor would scarcely have attributed to Jesus so much apparent harshness towards his mother, we need not appeal to the apocryphal Evangelium Thomæ, which makes the boy Jesus say to his foster-father Joseph: insipientissime fecisti; [479] for even in the legend or history of the canonical gospels corresponding traits are to be found. In the narrative of the wedding at Cana, we find this rough address to his mother: τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοὶ γύναι (John ii. 4); and in the account of the visit paid to Jesus by his mother and brethren, the striking circumstance that he apparently wishes to take no notice of his relatives (Matt. xii. 46). If these are real incidents, then the legend had an historical precedent to warrant the introduction of a similar feature, even into the early youth of Jesus; if, on the other hand, they are only legends, they are the most vivid proofs that an inducement as not wanting for the invention of such features. Where this inducement lay, it is easy to see. The figure of Jesus would stand in the higher relief from the obscure background of his contracted family relations, if it were often seen that his parents were unable to comprehend his elevated mind, and if even he himself sometimes made them feel his superiority—so far as this could happen without detriment to his filial obedience, which, it should be observed, our narrative expressly preserves. § 42. ON THE EXTERNAL LIFE OF JESUS UP TO THE TIME OF HIS PUBLIC APPEARANCE.