Arthur Drews

“ When the orthodox hesitate to admit the historicity of Adam, because it is too much out of harmony with modern views, they deprive themselves of the second support on which they base their belief in the historical Christ and his work of redemption. For Paul one is just as much a reality as the other. This should be enough to open the minds of our theologians to the character of this “reality” and its relation to history. ”

“ A man must be absolutely wrapped in theological prejudice not to recognise that they are wholly borrowed from the figure of the servant of God in Isaiah: his love, his righteousness, his humility, [8] his obedience, his poverty, and even his position under the law (Gal. iv, 4) , which follows at once, in the case of a Jew, from his obedience, and was for Paul the necessary condition for releasing from the law the rest of men who were subject to it (v) . This, as a matter of fact, was pointed out to the “historical” theologians by their colleague Wrede. ”

“ In reality it has proved a curse to them, and, instead of saving them, it has forced them deeper into the slavery of evil and sin. God therefore took pity on men, and sent to them Christ, his “son,” to take from them the yoke of the law. Originally a supernatural being, buried in God and co-operating in the creation of the world, Christ, at the will of his father, exchanged the glory of heaven for the poverty and straits of earth, in order to come upon the earth in the form of a slave, a man among men, for the redemption of mortals. ”

“ His Jesus Christ was merely an “imaginary being,” the mere “idea” of a God-man sacrificing himself! There is no historical personage, no real event, behind the fact of the death on the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ which is the central part of the Pauline system! Is not Christ described by Paul as a real man? “Does not,” von Soden asks, “his theory of redemption through Christ imply his full humanity? God sent his son in the form of sinful flesh on account of sin, and condemned sin in the flesh.” [6] The apostle speaks of the “blood” of Christ, by which men are justified. ”

“ The theologians really base the historicity of Jesus on his death and burial—in spite of Isaiah liii, 9, where there is question of the grave of the servant of God. In fact, they even base it on the (equally historical!) fact of the resurrection, which, according to Beth, is one of those “features” [sic] of Jesus “which presuppose his humanity” (p. 36) . What idea must theologians have of the mental level of their readers when they expect to make an impression on anyone with such quotations as these from Paul! ”

“ In fact, Paul himself, according to Weiss, was not in a position to conceive “purely a real and entire incarnation of the heavenly Christ,” and he rightly points to Phil, ii, 7, where the apostle does not say: “He became man and was a man in his whole behaviour,” but “he was made in the likeness of a man, and was found in fashion as a man”—an expression that has really a distinctly docetic colour, and suggests the Gnostic conception of the Saviour. [11] Moreover, Paul's creed portrays not only the man Jesus, but also the man Adam. ”

“ In any case our method cannot be pronounced wrong because, starting from a different assumption, we reach conclusions other than those of the theologian; nor may one charge us with “confusion” or appeal against us in the name of “sound” investigation and science when our inquiry into the New Testament documents leads us to deny the historicity of Jesus, as long as it is not proved that our assumption is absurd.
1.—The Proofs of the Historicity of Jesus in Paul. The starting-point and postulate of the Pauline doctrine of salvation is the attitude of man towards the law. ”

“ It is precisely the essential point of my theory that, in the early Christian and Pauline view, the real coming of the Messiah is preceded by his appearance in human shape. According to Isaiah, it is not due to the powerlessness of God, but to the sins of the people, that the fulfilment of the promise of a Messiah is delayed (Is. lviii; lxx, 1) . In the fifty-third chapter the prophet had spoken of the “servant of God” who takes on himself the sins of men, and thus “justifies” them. ”

“ The law was originally given to men by God for their good. It is to teach them what is sinful. It is to quicken their consciousness of evil and show them the way to become better. It should be to them, as Paul puts it, a teacher and breeder of righteousness. ”

“ We may add that at least liberal theologians are, to a great extent, convinced that the “historical” Jesus did not descend from David, and that the genealogies in the gospels, which purport to prove such descent, are later fabrications made with a view to establishing the Messianic character of the Christian saviour. Thus Paul would have departed from the truth if he had sought to represent Christ to the communities as a descendant of David! ”

“ All these ethical qualifications are, therefore, not derived from an expression of the moral character of Jesus, but originate in the apostle's own theory of redemption.” [9]
But Paul represents Christ as “of the seed of David” and born “of a woman” (Rom. i, 3) . Is not that a plain reference to an historical individual? Unfortunately, descent from David is merely one of the traditional features of the Messiah, and consequently of his human appearance; and, if the Pauline Christ was to be a man at all, from whom could he have been born if not from “a woman”? ”

“ The truth is that historical theology in Germany needs a genuine Paul as an indispensable witness to its historical Jesus, and it must, therefore, ignore the Dutch and those must-be uncritical and confused thinkers who venture to dispute the credibility of their witness. ”

“ On the other hand, the criticism of English writers (Edwin Johnson, Robertson, and Whittaker) seemed to be quite devoid of danger, as few theologians have a command of the English language. It is true that in Holland a theological school has endeavoured for thirty years to show the spuriousness of the Epistles of Paul; but why should that trouble people in Germany? Dutch is a language that one has no occasion to learn at the universities. One may, therefore, take it for granted that the works of the Dutch will not be very seriously studied in Germany. ”

“ But does that mean that it is a quotation of a saying of the historical Jesus? The prohibition to part with a wife is sound Rabbinism. In the Talmud we read: “A wife must not be dismissed except for adultery” (Gittin, 90) ; “The altar itself sheds tears over the man who sends away his wife” (Pessach, 113) ; “The man who separates from his wife is hateful to God” (Gittin, 90 b) . We even read in the prophet Malachi: “Let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. For the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away” (ii, 15) . ”

“ Weiss says that the “impartial reader” must recognise “the historical fact of the incarnation and the crucifixion” as the foundation of Paul's creed. The word “historical” is, however, an addition for which as yet no justification has been found in the text; to say nothing of the circumstance that hitherto no one, except a theologian, has regarded the incarnation of a god as an “historical fact.” ”

“ That we have here nothing more than an expressive delineation of the dying Christ and the need for him to die for men, in order to move the hearers, just as we find commonly done in a modern sermon in order to turn souls to Christ, or at the most, according to Robertson, a scenic or pictorial representation of the crucified God after the fashion of the ancient mysteries, and not an historical statement, it is surely unnecessary to prove. ”

“ Were the other members of the sect besides the apostles and the corporal brothers of Jesus forbidden to take a wife? Might not Paul just as well have wished to say that in all things he felt himself in the same position as the other members of the community, and therefore his apostolic dignity could not be contested once he had won a right to that name by his missionary work? No, says J. Weiss; the “brothers of the Lord” cannot be ordinary Christians. ”

“ I need not linger to show that the many passages which mention the death and crucifixion of Jesus do not, as Weinel affirms, prove the historicity of Christ. When von Soden emphatically calls attention to the vividness with which Paul saw the details of the life of Jesus, pointing to the first Epistle to the Corinthians (xv, 4) , in which he expressly [!] says that Jesus was buried after death (p. 32) , we must say that the procedure of our opponents becomes rather humorous. ”

“ It was not until the second century that they were known as such to everybody. And how incongruous the question is whether they have not the same right to marry as the apostles, and that Barnabas should be brought into closest intimacy with the person of Paul and represented to the Corinthians as co-ordinate with Paul! As if he had gone to Corinth with the apostle of the Gentiles!” (p. 52) .
The partisans of an historical Jesus naturally connect his “brothers” with Mark vi, 3, where James, Joses, Juda, and Simon are mentioned as sons of Mary and brothers of Jesus. ”

“ That is especially true of 1 Thessalonians iv, 15—an Epistle which is usually regarded as genuine by historical theologians: “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air ”

“ In discarding the veil of flesh and returning to his father in transfigured form, as a pure spirit and being reunited to him, he set men an example how they were to attain their true nature by the sacrifice of their carnal personality. ”

“ None but a man could, according to the general feeling of antiquity, take on himself the guilt of other men. Only as man was “the just” in Solomon's Wisdom conceived, and he calls himself “servant of God” (ii, 13) and represents God as his “father” (xvi, 18) . ”

“ On which side the truth is found cannot be determined by the starting-point of the inquiry, but only by showing which interpretation best squares with the facts and which can be most easily established. ”

“ That is, says Weinel, a figure, not a Christian name. But why should not the followers of Jesus receive a figurative name from Paul, when the “brotherhood” of the sect is only figurative, its heads are figuratively called “fathers,” and the members only figuratively their sons? In Matthew (xxviii, 10) Jesus himself calls his followers his “brothers,” and in Mark (iii, 35) he says: “Whoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother and my sister and mother.” In John (xx, 17) he so names the disciples because they have as “father” the same God as he. ”

“ At any rate, the proof that Paul owes his account of the apparition of the risen Christ to the primitive community does not help at all, as there is no more guarantee of the historical reality of the figure seen in a vision by a number than by an individual. It merely shows the failure of theologians to find any support for their belief in an historical Jesus in 1 Cor. ”

“ Historical theology professes to attach much importance to this account. It sees in it some confirmation of the theory that in the resurrection we have merely “visions” on the part of the Saviour's disciples. In fact it regards it as the earliest account of the resurrection that we have, and having great authority because, in their opinion, Paul relies directly on the testimony of the “primitive community” for the truth of his statement. ”

“ Imagine Simon, Jude, or Joseph (Joses) going out with the announcement that their brother Jesus was the longexpected Messiah, and would soon come again in the clouds of heaven! Steck also is surprised to hear of missionary journeys on the part of the brothers of the Lord, “who, as patriotic Jews, are not easy to imagine away from Palestine,” and he is reminded of Gal. ”

“ Any man who reflects impartially on this theory will find it difficult to believe that there is question here of an external historical process, an historical individual. The idea comes closest, perhaps, to that of the Gnostics, and especially close to that of the Alexandrian religious philosopher Philo, an older contemporary of Paul, and his principle of the Logos, which we afterwards find blended with the Christian belief in the gospel of John. ”

“ Here the theologians believe that they play their trump. If Jesus had had corporal brothers, he must certainly have been an historical individual, and it is untrue that Paul knew nothing of any individual human feature of Jesus. ”

“ If 1 Cor. xi, 23, etc., is not an interpolation in the text, there are no interpolations at all in the New Testament. We can understand how difficult it is for theologians to give up the passage on account of the very thin thread which unequivocally connects the teaching of Paul with the gospels, but we cannot think much of their perspicacity when they find no fault with the passage. ”

“ These two “men” complete each other, according to Paul: just as all men sinned in Adam, the first man, so they will be saved by the second man, Christ. Anyone who regards Paul as taking the man Christ to have been an historical fact must consistently also take Adam to have been an historical reality, as Dupuis rightly observed. ”

“ And as I find that others have had the same experience, it does not seem to be due to any defect on my part that the James-problem seems to me hopeless; every attempt to throw light on the obscure problem fails. [38] To base on an isolated passage such as the reference to “the brothers of the Lord” in Paul a belief in the historical character of Jesus seems to me too “simple”; I am not modest enough to do it. I can only see in the “brothers of Jesus,” as far as they are supposed to have been brothers in the flesh, and in his parents, the carpenter Joseph and Mary, mythical figures ”