The Jesus of the Evangelists: His Historical Character Vindicated; or, an Examination of the Internal Evidence for our Lord's Divine Mission, with reference to Modern Controversy. By the Rev. C. A. Row, M. A. [pp. 586-612]

~9O Low's J6SUS of 1/~c Lv~n~ekis1s. [Oc~on~~,
their imagination for an externA reaiity, and communicated
tl~eir enthusiasm to tlie rest."* Tlie resurrection, which was
il~e first of the Gospel myths, having been invented, their
imagination had full scope They began, from this time, to
imagine that they had seen iiim perform tlie wonders which
the ~Iessiah ougl~t to ii ave performed. And while some mythologists created miracles, others put parables into his month,
and oti~ers invented discourses. One devoted follower added
this trait to his character and another that, until they
im~gined that he was both divine and hmuan-a divine man.
It was further necessury, inasmuch as tlie real historical
Jesus died, that the mythologists should conceive of their
Jesus as having suffered in a manner becoming a divine man.
They did this, and they produced the portraiture of a sufferer
such as never before nor since has been conceived of. They
imparted a divine aspect to the crucified Jesus. Thus they
went on creating detached portions of a character, the full
conception of which existed nowhere. At Jast it entered the
heads of some who mistook these fictions for facts, to attempt
to weave ti~em into a whole, and four persons succeeded in
creating out of them four distinct portraits of one divine man.
For the divine and human consciousness united in the person
of Jesus, which we discover in tiie Gospels, was not a conception of the Evangelists, neither were the attributes in which
they array him. Nor did they invent t}~e miracles, parables,
and discourses which they relate. These miracles, parables,
etc., with the separate portions of Christ's character liad previously been created by the imagination of an immense number of Christ's deluded followers. Tiie religion in which he
lived, and which lie taught, was the conception of this multitude of enthusiastic men. ~Vhat the four Evangelists (lid was
to set forth out of these fictions a life of Jesus in an historical
form. We are not to charge either the niythologists or tiie
Evangelists with fraud. They supposed they were relating
facts, and that the portraiture of Jesus which they dramatized
*Mr. Row, in his statement of the mythic tl~eory, recognizes the concession as
made by its advocates, that even the immediate disciples of Jesus testified to
his supposed resurrection.