Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight: The Legend Hypothesis

1

The basic proponent of the legend hypothesis is the school of “Form Criticism.” While this term technically means an analysis of documents on the basis of form, the designation is generally taken to mean the results of this particular school. Noting that various form critics have drawn various conclusions, we will stick to the mainstream results of the liberal scholars. W.D. Davies gives an analysis of form criticism’s major assumptions:

They assume that the tradition, that is, the word of and stories about Jesus which we now have in the Gospels, serves the needs and purposes of the Church. … It was the needs of the churches in worship, in catechism, in apologetic, in exhortation, and in other ways that determined what tradition was transmitted and how it was used.

… the tradition had assumed a certain “form” or “structure” before it came to be written down. And Form Criticism assumes that this “form” can be recognized. … The tradition was orally transmitted in self-contained units. … These forms had already taken shape before the material came to be written down. These stories and sayings about Jesus had been retold many times in preaching, in catechetical activity, in liturgical settings, and elsewhere. … As pebbles in a river are carried on and gradually smoothed, so that they lose their awkward corners, so the stories about and sayings of Jesus were refined as they were conveyed down the stream of tradition. [1]

R.H. Lightfoot confirms this understanding of Form Criticism:

They remind us that the early church is by no means likely to have expressed itself at once in a literary way, and they believe, first, that in the earliest years memories and traditions of the words and deeds of Jesus were only handed on from mouth to mouth, and secondly, that they were valued, not so much (as we might have expected) in and for themselves, as for their importance in solving problems connected with the life and needs of the young churches. … They believe, further, that these memories and traditions would circulate at first chiefly in two forms … Both would gradually assume a more or less fixed shape, through constant repetition in the churches; and, whatever may be true about the sayings, the stories would tend to form themselves upon the model of similar stories about teachers and leaders in the Jewish or the Hellenistic world. [2]

The legend theory is based on four main points.

The first is that the form of the narratives like that of separated, isolated accounts, unconnected in a real chronological way, like beads without the string. These beads are called “pericopae.” This forms makes the scholars very suspicious of the eyewitness qualities of the material, and looks to them like a collection of legends arbitrarily woven together.

The second point is that the early Christians were not willing to get at the real truth about Jesus, that they molded and even invented material according to their religious needs and contemporary situations.

The third point is that the early Christians were not able to recall the true events, that the story had passed down from mouth to mouth, changing with the various interpretations added to the original.

Finally, the fourth point is that Hellenistic notions of mythological character were added to a substantially Jewish message, changing their ideas of Jesus beyond recognition.

We will examine each of the four points, one at a time, to see if they are valid.

2

Martin Dibelius explains the importance of the idea of pericopae, saying that when “we trace the tradition back to its initial stage we find no descriptions of the life of Jesus, but short, separate paragraphs or pericopae. This is the fundamental hypothesis of the method of form-criticism, as a representative of which I am speaking here.” [3] Although there are some scholars that see a coherent framework in the narratives, [4] it is easy to see what the form critics mean. Take Mark as an example. So often, we see “One time, when Jesus …”, or “after this, he …” which connect the independent units.

However, the eyewitness hypothesis can explain this phenomenon just as easily as the legend theory. We will see in the next chapter that Papias confirms Mark’s authorship of his gospel, and explains that Mark received his information from Peter’s sermons, and therefore put the narratives down “not in order”, but as he was able. And furthermore, Papias assures us that Mark was careful not to omit anything or invent anything, but to record as accurately as possible. And so we see that the presence of pericopae is not conclusive in itself: it fits with eyewitness accounts as easily as with the legend hypothesis.

3

The second point is that the early Christians didn’t want to preserve the accurate truth about Jesus. The form critics start by pointing out that the early Christians had more than a “mere biographical interest” in this subject, because they were interested in applying these things to their practical lives. Then they slowly slide this concept into one that’s totally different: that they were so interested in their own lives that they didn’t care what the real facts were!

See how they shift, almost imperceptibly, from the legitimate understanding of the church’s “more than biographical” interest, to the illegitimate notion of “no biographical interest.” Vincent Taylor says:

… practical demands arising from daily life, the need to explain the new faith to themselves and to others, the necessities of defense against objections and slanders from unfriendly and hostile neighbors. These and other considerations have determined the form which the tradition now has, and the changes it has undergone, and by taking them into account it is often possible to explain why this or that element in the tradition has survived and why much we should greatly desire to know has been handed down to us. [4a]

Dibelius shifts this a little:

All these considerations confirm this judgment: the oldest traditions of Jesus came into existence because the community was in need of them – a community which had no thought of biography or of world-history but of salvation – a community which had no desire to write books but only to preserve all that was necessary for preaching. [5]

And Bultmann completes the transition in his inimitable way:

I do indeed think that we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary; and other sources about Jesus do not exist. [6] (italics mine)

This type of shift is never justified, merely asserted. How Bultmann can say that the Christian accounts show no interest in the life or personality of Jesus is hard to imagine, when we take even a cursory look at the documents themselves. Why, they are full of the life and personality of Jesus! The extent of this will be shown in the following chapter. As W.D. Davies comments, the notion that the founder of Christianity was not an interesting subject for his followers strains one’s credulity, and flies directly in the face of the facts. [7]

That the material in the gospels primarily reflected the churches’ “life-situation” is refuted by a careful examination of the gospels in light of the epistles. We know that the epistles were concerned with their contemporary problems: Gentile circumcision, speaking in tongues, particular church issues are covered in detail. Where are these problems in the gospels, if these narratives deal with the “life-situation”? Why aren’t Paul’s pronouncements, so easily transferable to Jesus, actually attributed to their Lord (to give them added authority)?

In conjunction with this, we also note two phenomena preserved in the gospels that aren’t included in epistles: the parables, calling Jesus the “Son of Man.” It is significant that these primitive elements are never used by Paul, but held as real recollections of the historical Jesus. If the life-situation of the church was the real impetus, we would see a greater similarity between the letters and the historical accounts, for they would both be dealing with the same thing. Instead, we see a true separation, explicable only as a real separation between Jesus’ words and Paul’s.

4

The third charge is that the early Christians were unable to preserver the truth. The form critics draw comparisons between the Christian accounts and the “laws” of oral tradition shown by various legends, myths, etc. Bultmann explains that form criticism has developed from “an attempt to apply to them [the gospels] the methods of form-criticism which H. Gunkel and his disciples had already applied to the Old Testament.” The technique involved is “discovering what the original units of the synoptics were, both sayings and stories, to try to establish what their historical setting was, whether they belonged to a primary or secondary tradition or whether they were the product of editorial activity.” [8] It is significant that Dibelius cites the “Apophthagmata Patrum” (whose time span from the events to their recording is at least one hundred years) as the closest parallel! [9]

First, in response, it has been noted that the Semitic character of the teachings must be taken into account. A lot has been said concerning the ability of the Semitic mind to memorize “sayings”, and the relevance to the oral propagation of the gospel. [10] In addition, the terms “receive” and “deliver” used by Paul are technical terms, with a mind to literal accuracy. [11] Even if we had an oral tradition, passed from mouth to mouth for decades, we might still be in possession of sound, accurate material.

But there is much more to go on. The dating of the documents counts decisively against the legend theory. Paul’s epistles are dated by all scholars in the fifties of the first century, and contain a full Christological picture, clearly spelling out what he means by the incarnation and the resurrection. Therefore, the early Christians belived the gospel essentials within twenty years after the events, and since it seems clear that Paul quotes hymns or poems concerning Christ, the time period must be significanly shorter than the twenty years. Adding the gospel of Mark, admitted to be from 60-70 by most scholars, we have the concrete accounts confirming the doctrine within thirty years of the events! This means that people who were twenty when Jesus was crucified were only in their fifties at the time of Mark, and only forty at the time of the epistles – hardly senile yet! Furthermore, if we consider the good evidence for the pre-seventy authorship of the other gospels and Acts, we can strengthen the case even further. But this is mostly frosting on the cake. The point is, there is simply not enough time for a decent legend to develop. Every comparison made by the form critics to the Christian accounts involves time spans of one hundred or more years, sometimes extending into centuries. There is no comparison made with a “legend” that developed full-blown within one generation of the events asserted.

A corollary to this is that eyewitnesses, both pro and con, were still alive when the materials were published. First, the apostles were the founders and working leaders of the early Christian communities; while some were martyred rather early on, the rest were still active in teaching and preserving the kerygma. There is simply no reason to believe the apostles quit, or all died, or moved away. The accounts of the apostles’ dealings in Acts, in particular the Council (with James, Peter, and other present) of Jerusalem, give us evidence that they were in control. Vincent Taylor pokes fun at the notion that the apostles were not around:

All this opens up the interetsing question as to how far the formation of the primitive tradition was influenced by “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word.”

It is on his quesiton of eyewitnesses that Form-Criticism presents a very vulnerable front. If the form-critics are right, the disciples must have been translated to heaven immediately after the Resurrection. As Bultmann sees it, the primitive community exists in vacuo, cut off from its founders by the walls of an inexplicable ignorance. [11a]

F.F. Bruce elaborates in discussing the eyewitnesses, both pro and con, alive during the writings:

We are, in fact, practically all the way through in touch with the evidence of eyewitnesses. The earlier preachers of the gospel knew the value of this first-hand testimony, and appealed to it time and again. “We are witnesses of these things”, was their constant and confident assertion. And it can have been by no means so easy as some writers seem to tink to invent words and deeds of Jesus in those early years, when so many of His disciples were about, who could remember what had and had not happened.

… And it was not only friendly eyewitnesses that the early preachers had to reckon with; there were others less well disposed who were also conversant with the main facts of the ministry and death of Jesus. The disciples could not afford to risk inaccuracies (not to speak of wilful manipulation of the facts), which would at once be exposed by those who would be only too glad to do so. On the contrary, one of the strong points in the original apostolic preaching is the confident appeal to the knowledge of the hearers; they not only said, “We are witnesses of these things”, but also, “As you yourselves also know” (Acts 2:22). Had there been any tendency to depart from the facts in any material respect, the possible presence of hostile witnesses in the audience would have served as a further corrective. [12]

5

In addition to the idea that pericopae come from an accretion of legends, the notion that the church didn’t want to preserve the truth, and the charge that the oral tradition was rather like the legends and myths of various cultures, the form critics believe that Hellenistic (Greek) ideas were added to a Jewish framework. There are three replies to this.

The first is that, if the Greeks had the idea of the “self-disclosure of the noumenon”, they didn’t claim that that revelation had actually occurred in objective, recorded history. The presence of “mythological” notions doesn’t necessarily mean that they couldn’t have occurred. [13]

In fact, if Jung’s “collective unconscious” is an actuality, we would expect such notions to precede the historical actuality! If the central point of the world was God-becoming-man, then this event would probably pop up in dreams, myths, and desires throughout all cultures, throughout the centuries. The New Testament authors don’t claim that the concepts are original, but that they are actualized in the real world. And so, to show that the concept were not original with Christianity proves absolutely nothing. A causal connection must be shown for this charge to be significant.

The second point is made by W.D. Davies. He points out that it used to be thought by scholars that the Judaism in Jesus’ day was similar to that directly after the Fall of Jerusalem (70 A.D.), but more recent studeis have shown that Jesus’ Judaism was already considerably Hellenized. In fact: (1) Israel was Hellenized as an occupied territory (333 B.C. by the Greeks and 63 B.C. by the Romans); (2) Israel became less Hellenized after 70 A.D.; (3) The Jews in Israel had many contacts with the dispersion Jews; and (4) New evidence concerning Qumran shows that certain concepts were current in Jesus’ day, previously thought to be Greek.

He states:

The upshot of all this is that the traditional division between Palestine and Hellenistic Judaism is false. There was far greater fluidity and complexity in the Palestinian Judaism of the time of Jesus than we had previously supposed. … We saw that many of the traditions found in the synoptic gospels were thought to be the products of Hellenistic Christianity and, therefore, late. But much in the synoptics which it has been customary to label Hellenistic may turn out to be Palestinian. [14]

The precise concepts that are most important for the charge of Hellenization are those of the “redeemer-savior” come to save the world, found in “gnosticism.” Bultmann relates this notion:

His person is viewed in the light of mythology when he is said to have been begotten of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin, and this becomes clearer still in Hellenistic Christian communities where he is understood to be the Son of God in a metaphysical sense, a great, preexistent heavenly being who became man for the sake of our redemption and took on himself suffering, even the suffering of the cross. It is evident that such conceptions are mythological, for they were widespread in the mythologies of Jews and Gentiles and then were transferred to the historical person of Jesus. Particularly the conception of the pre-existent Son of God who descended in human guise into the world to redeem mankind is part of the Gnostic doctrine of redemption, and nobody hesitates to call this doctrine mythological. [15]

He bases a great deal of this idea: that there existed prior to Christianity a concept of a heavenly redeemer, which was applied to Jesus. Unfortunately, what he neglects to tell us is that all of the Gnostic manuscripts that tell us about a heavenly redeemer were written after Christianity, not before! In fact, the evidence would indicate that gnosticism derived its notions of the redeemer from Christianity, and was therefore merely a Christian heresy (as was reported by the early Christian writers such as Irenaeus).

Edwin Yamauchi’s work on this subject is fascinating. He lists the major sources showing gnostic traits: [16]

Hemetica (extant 14^th c), written second centry (p 71)

Mandaic texts: fifth century (p 120)

Manichaean texts: third century (extant 400 A.D.) (p 80)

Gospel of Thomas, 140 A.D. (p 90)

Odes of Solomon, about 120-130 A.D. (p 92) (no redeemer shown)

Hymn of the Pearl, 226 A.D.+ (p 95)

Nag Hammadi, fourth century (p 101)

If we didn’t know better, we might think the form critics are trying to pull afast one. It is pointed out by Yamauchi that the legend advocates often blindly appeal to authority in this matter without examining the evidence for themselves. This takes two forms: the first is that the authority they cite usually boils down to one or two scholars [17]; the second is that there is a circular appeal between mid-east scholar sand New Testament scholars, each using the other to support their case!

It is somewhat of an ironic situation that a “circular” appeal for support with respect to pre-Crhistian Gnosticism exists in the relationship between New Testament scholars and Mandaean scholars – though no-one seems to have noticed this. We have seen that Newe Teatment scholars like Bultmann, Schmithals, Schlier, Bornkamm, Robinson, etc., have appealed to the Mandaean evidence. What is not so well known is that Mandaean scholars have in turn appealed to the studies of Bultmannian scholars for a major source of their conveiction that the Mandaean texts represent an early Gnosticism. [18]

It is clear that, until we have some real evidence to show the pre-Christian existence of the redeemer-notion, we can’t claim that this notion was stolen from gnostic sources and applied to Jesus: there simply is no evidence for this. [19]

In short, the idea that Hellenistic ideas were applied to a Jewish framework must deal with three things: (1) the presence of Hellenistic ideas in itself does not necessarily prove connection (if it were true, we would expect these ideas to be universal, veritable “shadows of things to come”). (2) The Jewish world of Jesus’ time was already Hellenized; (3) The notion of “heavenly redeemer” being prior to Christianity has virtually no evidence in its behalf.

6

R.T. France gives us insight into this problem when he spells out the method used by form critics in interpreting and judging the documents. The critics are concerned with restoring the “real human, historical Jesus” by weeding out the extraneous, supernatural items.

The chief criterion accepted by the school of Bultmann is now too well known to need much introduction. It is that which Perrin labels the “criterion of dissimilarity.” If a saying displays the thought or concerns of the primitive church, it must be presumed to owe its origin to that source, not to Jesus; if it is such that any Jew of the period could have said it, then it must be presumed to be a piece of popular teaching put into the mouth of Jesus; but if it shows neither of these characteristics, the presumption is that it is a genuine saying of Jesus. [19a]

Other modifying factors are the coherence with material already confirmed by dissimilarity, multiple attestation (the inclusion of a passage in more than one document), and linguistic considerations. But it is clear that dissimilarity is the main factor.

There are two things wrong with this approach. First, it has been shown that a really rigorous application of the rinciple would leave us with almost no “genuine” material at all. “By thus playing off one half of the criterion of dissimilariy against the other, it would be possible to exclude practically every saying of Jesus. Which ones are in fact excluded depends much more on the preference of the individual scholar than on any objective use of the criteria.” [20]

The second mistake in using this approach is that this principle is legitimate only as a means of validation, not of exclusion. That is, it is easy to see that just because Jesus agrees with his contemporaries, or his church, etc. doesn’t mean that the passage in question is not genuine. In fact this leads to the “cath 22” of the liberal theologians: If any material can be attributed to Hellenistic ideas, or contemporary Jews or the early church, it could not have originated with Jesus; therefore, Jesus could not have agreed with any of his contemporaries, or with the church he founded. The only sayings that are saved in this manner are those that are totally idiosyncratic: the very periphery of his message. This is absurd.

The form critics, in fact, have proven their own approach to be a failure. They were concerned with separating the human, historical Jesus from the supernatural accretions of legend, and found “no such animal.” This is clear from their own statements (that, for instance, it is impossible to know exactly what Jesus did or taught), and from the inconsistencies between them (if this approach was really the “assured result of modern study”, you would think they would agree on what, precisely, these results are!).

This is not surprising, when we look at the results of similar methods in the field of classical literature: subjectivistic interpretation runs rampant:

Remarkably enough, this approach (form criticism) had already been flogged to death in the history of Homeric criticism, in an attempt to “get behind” the Iliad and the Odyssey as we have them. The result was complete chaos, for, in the absence of any objective manuscript evidence to indicate where one “pre-literary” source left off and another began, the critics all differed with one another. H.J. Rose, in discussing the dreary history of the problem in his standard Handbook of Greek Literature from Homer to the Age of Lucian, writes: “The chief weapon of the separatists has always been literary criticism, and of this it is not to much to say that such niggling wrd-baiting, such microscopic hunting of minute inconsistencies and flaw in lagic, has hardly been seen, outside of the Homeric field, since Rymar and John Dennis died.” (p 42-3) [21]

C.S. Lewis presents four damaging criticisms of the form-critical method. The first is that the critics themselves do not demonstrate a sufficient familiarity with non-Biblical literature to make accurate comparisons (e.g. how many myths and legends are they really familiar with?):

… whatever these men may be as Biblical critics, I distrust them as critics. … A man who has spent his youth and manhood in the minute study of New Testament texts and of other people’s studies of them, whose literary experiences of those texts lacks any standard of comparison such as can only grow from a wide and deep and genial experience of literature in general, is, I should think, very likely to miss the obvious things about them. If he tells me that something in a Gospel is legend or romance, I want to know how many legends and romances he has read, how well his palate is trained in detecting them by the flavor; not how many years he has spent on that Gospel. [22]

The second criticism is in questioning the assumption that modern men can understand the meaning of these documents better than those contemporaneous with the writings themselves.

These men ask me to believe they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability ot read (in any sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. … The idea that any man or writer should be opaque to those who lived in the saem culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages, is in my opinion preposterous. There is an a priori improbability in it which almost no argument and no evidence could counterbalance. [23]

Thirdly, knowing the results of hypothetical reconstructions created about his own work, and the work of his friends, he questions their validity in understanding the why’s and wherefore’s of the documents: “The assured results of modern scholarship”, as to the way in which an old book was written, are “assured, we may conclude, only because the men who knew the facts are dead and can’t blow the gaff.” [24]

Lewis’ fourth and final point brings us to the crux of the whole matter: the form critics pre-judge the issue on the basis of philosophical presuppositions. They don’t believe that miracles can occur, and therefore they must fish around for alternative explanations of these events. But clearly, in doing this, they are not acting as historians, or even theologians, but as philosophers; and, in general, they are thus acting as laymen, not experts. [25] Let’s examine this more carefully.

7

Bultmann gives us his basic framework, by which he judges the validity of the New Testament documents:

The whole conception of the world I which is presupposed in the preaching of Jesus as in the New Testament generally is mythological; i.e., the conception of the world as being structured in three stories, heaven, earth, and hell; the conception of the intervention of supernatural powers in the course of events; and the conception of miracles, especially the conception of the intervention of supernatural powers in the inner life of the soul, the conception that men can be tempted and corrupted by the devil and possessed by evil spirits. This conception of the world we call mythological because it is different from the conception of the world which has been formed and developed by science since its inception in ancient Greece and which has been accepted by all modern men. In this modern conception of the world the cause-and-effect nexus is fundamental. Although modern physical theories take account of chance in the chain of caues and effect in subatomic phenomena, our daily living purposes and actions are not affected. In any case, modern science does not believe that the course of nature can be interrupted or, so to speak, perforated, by supernatural powers. [26]

The importance of this view is not to be overlooked; Bultmann explains further that he must interpret the text in light of this presupposition. In fact, no matter what the evidence asserts, and no matter who strong it is, Bultmann is already committed to a materialistic, “modern” world-view:

Reflection on hermeneutics makes it clear that interpretation, that is, exegesis, is always based on principles and conceptions which guide exegesis as presuppositions, although interpreters are often not aware of this fact. … Every interpreter is inescapably dependent on conceptions which he has inherited from a tradition, consciously or unconsciously, and every tradition is dependent on some philosophy or other. … It follows, then, that historical and exegetical study should not be practiced without reflection and without giving an account of the conceptions which guide the exegesis. In other words, the question of the “right” philosophy arise. [27]

In this matter, Bultmann has surely taken hold of the “wong” philosophy. In speaking previously, in the sections concerning assumptions and canons of investigation, we were careful to point out the fallacy of assuming matters of fact, as opposed to presuppositions of method. When we simply pre-judge the issue by assuming what we are trying to determine, then this is clearly circular reasoning, or “beggin the question.” It is true that exegesis means presuppositions, but this is a far cry from imposing one’s subjective viewpoint upon the facts; as Vincent Taylor points out, “It goes without saying that in any recreation of the past much has to be supplied by the imagination; but there is all the difference in the world between idle fancy and the historical imagination controlled by facts which ave been patiently investiaged.” [28]

The form critics, in the final analysis, drop all pretension to factual, empirical investigation. They deny the evidence in front of them by virtue of their philosophies. Their presuppositions dictate their findings; their findings, then, can only be as storng as their assumptions. And as philosophers, they do not rigorously show their assumptions to be correct ones; they never demonstrate the impossibility of miracles. They merely insinuate their way around this difficult subject. If the reader wishes to review the arguments for the possibility, and need for, miracles, let him/her turn back to chapter four of this paper, bearing in mind the importance of the issue for the Legend Hypothesis.

8

Let us summarize the arguments presented by the Form Critics, and objections to them.

Pericopae

The critics say the form of the narratives in the gospels is such that the original units are isolated, artificially strung together. Therefore, they are oral units of legndary material. But we’ve pointed out Papias’ explanation of this phenomenon, which fits very nicely with the eyewitness character of the documents (namely, that Mark recorded Peter’s sermons, “not in order”).

Want To

The critics say that the early Christians were not concerned to preserve the truth about Jesus. They do this by a tricky term-changing from “they cared about more than a mere biography”, to “they have no biographical interest.” The evidence, i.e. the entire New Testament, points consistently in the opposite direction: that it was written precisely to preserve the truth about Jesus.

Able To

The critics say that the early Christians were not able to preserve the truth about Jesus. But we’ve seen that this is not so. Paul’s epistles were written within 20-30 years of the crucifixion; Mark 30-40 years. This is hardly enough time for an oral legend to develop. Furthermore, the apostles were alive and functioning at the time of this material; therefore, it doesn’t come from “mouth to mouth”, but from the apostles to the churches.

Hellenistic Accretions

The critics say that Greek elements were added to a basically Jewish framework. But we’ve seen that the mere presence of Greek ideas prior to Christianity in a theoretical form doesn’t necessarily mean that they were the cause of the Christian historical claims. Secondly, W.D. Davies tells us that the Jews were already Hellenized. Thirdly, the pivotal claim of pre-Christian Gnosticism falls short when we realize that all the texts appealed to are later, not earlier, than Christianity.

These four aguments are the major “empirical” elements in the form critic’s case. Why is there not better evidence? That is because his case is not evidential at all. It is presuppositional. His “catch 22” interpretation of the material limits his findings to his assumptions (it certainly is hard to learn anything new this way!). He has failed to produce the human, historical Jesus promised to us, and instead has contradictory views of the real nature of his subject. His subjectivistic interpretations have been tried and found wanting in classical literature, and can lead only to chaos. Finally, he bases his assumptions (which determine his findings in the “empirical realm”) entirely on a philosophy that denies miracles.

In short, the form critic doesn’t squarely face the facts. He uses circular reasoning to come up with a conclusion that was presupposed at the outset. He may be a professional theologian, but he is an amateur philosopher. Before we turn to the positive evidence for they eyewitness character of the New Testament, A.H.N. Green-Armytage has a pertinent comment to sum up this section (paragraph breaks are mine, for readability):

There is a world – I do not say a world in which all scholars live but one at any rate into which all of them sometimes stray, and which some of them seem permanently to inhabit – which is not the world in which I live. In my world, if the Times and the Telegraph both tell one story in somewhat different terms, nobody concludes that one of them must have copied the other, nor that the variatoins in the story have some esoteric significance. But in that world of which I am speaking this would be taken for granted. There, no story is ever derived from facts but always from somebody else’s version of the same story. …

In my world, almost every book, except some of those produced by Government departments, is written by one author. In that world almost every almost every book is produced by a committee, and some of them by a whole series of committees. In my world, if I read that Mr. Churchill, in 1935, said that Europe was heading for a disastrous war, I applaud his foresight. In that world no prophecy, however vaguely worded, is every made except after the event. In my world, we say “The first world-war took place in 1914-1918.” In that world they say, “The world-war narratives took shapein the third decade of the twentieth century.”

In my world men and women live for a considerable time – seventy, eight, even a hundred years – and they are equipped with a thing called memory. In that world (it would appear) they come into being, write a book, and forthwith perish, all in a flash, and it is noted of them with astonishment that they “preserve traces of primitive tradition” about things which happened well within their own adult lifetime., [29]