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The Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of Modern Criticism
The Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of Modern Criticism Author:John Tulloch Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. Having explained the critical groundwork of the "Vie de Jesus," we now propose to examine this groundwork more carefully. We have remarked how personal, a... more »rbitrary, and unscientific it is, while making unusual scientific pretensions. The author does not rest his critical conclusions on full inquiry, and minute induction and argument. He is sentimental rather than judicial; highly authoritative, but the authority implying in the main little more than his own ipse dixit. The simple-minded reader—anxious to know the truth, and conscious of his ignorance of the Talmud,of Philo, and it may be even of Josephus —not to speak of the Zendevesta and the Boundehesch—is apt at first to be overwhelmed by the extraordinary confidence of the author; but the more carefully he reads, the less impression does this tone make upon him. And when he finds the same confidence and rashness of assertion carried into subjects of which he really knows something—for M. Renan loves to indulge his generalizing faculty and tendency to dogmatism on all subjects—he is able to estimate the book more according to its just proportions and value. There are three points in M. Renan's critical account of the Gospels deserving attention. I. His view of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark. II. His estimate of the Fourth Gospel, and the supposed contradictions which it presents tothat of Matthew. And, III. His general view of the Gospels as legendary biographies. "VVe shall consider these several points in succession. I. He proposes mainly to base his conclusions as to the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark on an expression of Papias in a passage preserved by Eusebius. This passage implies, according to him, that the original Gospel of St. Matthew contained only the Logia, or discourses, which still form ...« less