Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§4.2 The Flight from Dogma
Christian apologetic had depended for centuries, they actually prove nothing,
since the report of a miracle requires as much investigation as that which the miracle
is supposed to prove. 24 In contrast, so far as Reimarus was concerned, Christianity's
origin and spread could be explained historically on purely natural
grounds, as the apostles sought by fraudulent means to revive and maintain their
former success prior to Jesus' death. 25
Here was scientific criticism being used as a scalpel to cut away the accretions
of faith, falsifications which went back to Jesus' first disciples. And the
challenge was posed systematically for the first, but by no means the last time:
what was Jesus' aim as distinct from that of subsequent Christian claims regarding
Jesus? was Jesus of Nazareth a wholly different figure from the one portrayed
in the Gospels? Where claims to revelation could thus be bracketed out,
on reasonable grounds, was not a Christology 'from below' bound to be very different
in character from a Christology 'from above'? 26 And not least, what is the
present-day reader to make of the contradictions and inconsistencies between the
different Gospel accounts of Jesus? After Reimarus any straightforward harmonization
of the Gospels was rendered simply incredible.
Between Reimarus and Strauss the miracles of Jesus became the focus of
interest, and there were various attempts on rationalist premises to save the historicity
of the Gospel accounts. Contradictions could be explained, by postulating,
for example, that there were three different healings of blind men at Jericho. 27
The grosser elements of the supernatural could be stripped away, by arguing, for
example, that the healing of lepers or blind happened over time rather than instantaneously.
Alternatively the entire event could be given a natural explanation:
the storm on the sea of Galilee was stilled because the boat rounded a headland; 28
Jesus appeared to be walking on the water but was actually on the shore (the boat
was closer to shore than the account records), or was balancing on a raft; the
feeding of the 5000 was possible because the young lad of John 6.9 shamed the
rest into sharing their picnic boxes (a still popular rationalisation), or (my personal
favourite) Jesus stood in front of a cave where other members of the Essene
order had previously stored loaves and simply doled them out. 29 Most of these, it
24. Talbert, Reimarus 230, here anticipated particularly by the Deist Thomas Woolston
(Baird, History 45-49).
25. Talbert, Reimarus 240-69.
26. By 'Christology from below' is usually meant the attempt to assess the significance
of Jesus from the data of the Gospels historically evaluated rather than from the creedal assumption
that Jesus was God become man.
27. See Strauss's merciless analysis of the solutions then being canvassed (Life 441-44).
28. Never mind that the sea of Galilee has no headlands to speak of!
29. The examples are drawn principally from Schweitzer, Quest" 41, 52 = Quest 1 40, 50-
51; see further Brown, Jesus 163-72.
31