and fraud did the Gospels gain the spirit and power of their sublime and beneficent teachings? These, and a multitude of like questions, are not debated by Strauss. Doubtless he expected his readers would be able to answer them all by the help of his theory, and consistently with it. Now if these unanswered questions were less in number or in pregnancy, this might be. But being such as they are, and all unsolved, they greatly embarrass his theory, and when fairly estimated, as we believe, they confound his theory. We refer to such questions now, only to acquaint our readers that Strauss has most imperfectly presented his own theory. Like the tower of Babel, it is left insecure and undefended at its ambitious foundation, and unfinished at the top, while the interstices between its stones gape for lack of mortar. The opening paragraph of the work before us seems artfully to insinuate the whole perversity of its fundamental assumption as if it were an admitted and a necessary principle. Strauss says, that in case any religion resting on written records continues and extends through progressive mental cultivation, discrepancies will sooner or later arise between those records and more advanced ideas. First the external form, the expressions and delineations, are discovered to be inappropriate, then by degrees the fundamental conceptions are found untrue. He adds, that so long as it is possible to keep a show of concord by interpretation, it will be attempted, but by and bye the incongruity will admit of no reconciliation. Now this is simply begging the whole question which Christianity puts at issue. The author begins with the monstrous assumption of the identity in truth and in destiny between all religions which depend on documents, -he confounds all truth and falsehood, and advances a principle which would make every historical page perfectly worthless and blank as time advances. There is involved, likewise, in this assumption the fundamental idea of the work with its theory, drawn from the Hegelian philosophy, namely, that the Deity can make no extraordinary communication to his children. Pursuing what we must pronounce the deceptive and insinuating course for which he thus prepares the way, he proceeds in his Introduction to refer to the interpretation of sacred legends among the Greeks, and then, as if only by 1846.] Views of Preceding Critics. 319 a slight transition from one thing to another very like it, he adverts to the allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament by Philo, and of the New Testament by Origen. In making his way to the development of the mythical theory, he passes through the naturalistic and rationalistic schools of criticism which have prevailed in Germany. These unite in a common endeavor to rid the New Testament of the miraculous, by showing how, more or less consistently with the integrity of Jesus and of the writers of the New Testament, certain merely natural events or deeds have been invested in the narration, or appeared in their actual occurrence, with the hue of the supernatural. This class of German critics, represented by Paulus of Heidelberg, admitted an historical fact, where Strauss, as we shall see, admits only an idea, as the basis of what has been misrepresented, or misunderstood, or transfigured, so as to appear miraculous. Strauss might honestly and with reason wish to introduce a reform into the puerilities and levities of German criticism in the hands of the rationalists and naturalists. Criticism had certainly reached a limit in one direction, when explanations of which the following are specimens were offered to meet the apparently literal significations of the sacred narratives. The scene of the Saviour's temptation, which appears so real and solemn as presenting the deep conflicts of his soul preliminary to his mission, and as repeated to his followers to prepare them for their trial, was explained by supposing that an artful Pharisee went to Jesus in his retirement to see if he might not be drawn into the interest of the priesthood, and that when this devil was foiled, some angels, namely, a passing caravan, supplied Jesus with provisions. Paulus accounted for the knowledge which Jesus seems to have had of the course of life of the woman of Samaria, by suggesting that as he sat on the well a passer-by warned him to beware of the woman, then approaching from the city, as a person of bad character, who was on the look-out for a sixth husband. Heumann accounted for the agony of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane by ascribing it to a severe "cold," which he had taken "in the clayey ground" around the brook Cedron. Surrounded by those who thus treated the Scriptures, Strauss certainly had strong inducements to devise at least a more rational, to say nothing of a more reverential way of interpreting them. He set himself to the work, and the mythical theory is to him the result. He claims that this theory is faithful to history and to philosophy. He adverts to its rise in recent times, to its application at first to portions of the Old Testament, while it was thought improper to apply it generally to the ancient Scriptures, or to apply it all to the New, and he undertakes to show that those critics who have applied the theory have not well understood it, but have confounded myths with legends and allegories. Strauss advances to his task by next attempting to show the possibility of the existence of myths in the New Testament in consistency with the external evidences of the authenticity and genuineness of the Gospels, and in consistency too with their internal character. As respects the external evidences as excluding the mythical theory he says, that the believing Christian can suppose his religion free from myths, only when he closes his eyes to the fact that his religion is subject to the same influences which have introduced myths into all other religions. Strauss, too, endeavors so to define the date and circumstances and authorship and historical characteristics of our Gospels, as to give time and opportunity for the incorporation of myths into them. Here we believe that he is not candid in presenting the real state of the evidence which we have for the Gospels. Yet all that he affirms on this point, it will be seen, is vitally essential to sustain his theory. He must secure time enough to allow the honest origin, the wide circulation and the general reception of myths relating to Jesus, before the composition of the Gospels. This is an enterprise in which he has signally failed. The evidence for the authenticity of the Gospels, as presented for instance, by Mr. Norton, is utterly inconsistent either with the honest or the dishonest origin of these myths. We should add, however, that Strauss does not enter upon this preliminary point at any length. He glides over it most hastily and superficially. One of the many unanswered questions which his theory involves might be pressed hard upon him at this very point. The Gospels may be traced to a period so early as to preclude his theory. In an even more hasty and superficial manner does Strauss treat upon "the possibility of Myths in the New 1846.] Myths in the New Testament. 321 Testament considered on internal grounds" ($14). Very much more of reason and argument than he advances would be needed to show, that it is consistent with the character of the Christian religion that myths should be found in it, and that the general construction of the Gospel narratives authorises us to treat them as myths. We believe that all experience will prove that religions call in the aid of invented wonders just in proportion as they lack solemn truths and practical counsels. Christianity, differing at all points from other religions, could then have afforded to have differed from them all in dispensing with myths. Here again our author should have laid out his strength to meet either the a priori objections of the case, or at least the strong prejudices of Christian readers. He does indeed offer some pleading upon this point, which we will endeavor fairly to present. He says, that if he succeeds by his critical examination in showing the actual existence of myths in the New Testament, "a preliminary demonstration of their possibility becomes superfluous."-(vol. i. p. 66). He allows the difference between the Hebrew and Christian religions and the mythical religions of antiquity on the score of moral purity, holiness and elevation of conception, but adds, that, "though every story relating to God which is immoral is necessarily fictitious, even the most moral is not necessarily true."—(vol. i. p. 66). Again, the Bible is not wholly free from the extravagant love of the marvellous, which is the character of the heathen mythology. The apparent reality of Bible subjects compared with those of Pagan religions would only prove, "that the biblical history might be true sooner than the heathen mythology, but is not necessarily so."-(vol. i. p. 68). As to all the other distinctions which may be raised between the Bible and Pagan religions, Strauss concludes that they are identified in an unscientific and unphilosophical representation of God as working in a particular way, in a part, not in the whole, and as interrupting the endless chain of cause and effect, which we know to be unbroken. "The result then," he says, "however surprising, of a general examination of the biblical history is, that the Hebrew and Christian religions, like all others, have their mythi.”—(vol i. p. 74). This result is most unfairly attained, for no argument whatever is offered on the positive side, and the objections adduced are not met, while other objections are wholly suppressed. We cannot but regard the whole section as evasive and unsatisfactory. Strauss seems to have forgotten that the writers of the New Testament were not aiming to rival Hesiod and Homer in writing a poem, but were employing their pens, and offering their lives in testimony to what they had both seen and heard. We repeat, that the pregnant question, how far it is consistent with the actual character of the Christian religion and of the Gospel narratives that they should embrace myths, is most unsatisfactorily met; and, considering what a theory Strauss has to maintain and the importance of its preliminary authentication, we must add that he evades the troublesome question. Our readers may now be inquiring what is the precise meaning which Strauss attaches to a myth. It is only at this stage that he himself strictly defines it. "We distinguish by the name evangelical mythus a narrative relating directly or indirectly to Jesus, which may be considered not as the expression of a fact, but as the product of an idea of his earliest followers: such a narrative being mythical in proportion as it exhibits this character. The mythus in this sense of the term meets us, in the Gospel as elsewhere, sometimes in its pure form, constituting the substance of the narrative, and sometimes as an accidental adjunct to the actual history.". (vol. i. p. 85). - He adds, that the pure mythus in the Gospel is composed of two ingredients mingled in varying proportions, the one source being the Messianic ideas and expectations existing in the Jewish mind in various forms before Jesus, and independently of him, the other source being the "particular impression left by his personal character, actions and fate, and which served to modify the Messianic idea in the minds of his people." The account of the transfiguration of Jesus, for instance, comes mainly from the former source, being borrowed from the scene of Moses on the mount, the only amplification from the latter source being, that those who are said to have appeared to Jesus spoke of his decease. On the other hand, the narrative of the rending of the veil of the temple seems to have originated in the hostile position in which Jesus and his church stood to the temple worship. Here, however, we have an element of the historical, though vague, and this brings us, says Strauss, to the historical mythus. |