or the creation, the origination by personification, the mythological derivation of the Gospel portraiture of an incarnate suffering and rising Saviour God.

The latter alternative-the "radical" view-has the merit of being logically consistent though at the expense of being historically absurd. The New Testament representation of Jesus is held to be entirely mythical. No such person ever existed upon earth; for the person there described is distinctly a divine person and like other representations of divine persons participating in human affairs it too owes its origin to a mythological motive. In the background lies a solar or a vegetation myth historically mediated in a pre-Christian Jesus cult.

This view has been modified by combination with the other type of the naturalistic interpretation of the origin of Christianity, the "liberal" view, and thus creates an intermediate view, well represented by Maurenbrecher.1 Admitting the existence of Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth, and the generally trustworthy character of the account of His life and teaching in the Synoptic Gospels within the limits of a purely human experience and critically freed from the influences of the later faith, it offers a mythological instead of a personal explanation of His apotheosis in the primitive Christian community.

This is related to the resurrection and to that union of the resurrection and death of Jesus in the experience of a single person and in the faith of the primitive Christian community concerning that person and the function of which he was believed to be possessed. The two generic views of the origin and character of Christianity, the supernaturalistic and the naturalistic, alike offer an explanation of the origin of the belief in the resurrection of Jesus as embodying an idea which does or which does not truly represent reality. The two genetic theories differ in regard to validity. But the issue is broader and deeper than the single element in

'Von Nazareth nach Golgatha, 1909 and Von Jerusalem nach Rom, 1910.

this belief-the resurrection-since this cannot be isolated from the person of whom it is predicated. In a word, the issue concerns the truth of primitive Christian Christology and thus the truth also of Christianity as a religion of redemption.

It is generally agreed that the primitive Christian community believed in the resurrection of Jesus, or rather, in Jesus who was crucified, who rose from the dead and was exalted to the place of supreme power in the Messianic Kingdom. There is general agreement also that the belief in the resurrection and, of course, in the precedent death of Jesus -was the characteristic and determinative element in this faith. It is admitted that this faith implicates, a Messianic background of prophecy or promise and a Messianic future of expectation and hope. The Jesus of whom the resurrection was believed was believed to be the Messiah. But here also the genetic problem presses and different views give different answers. Did Jesus Himself share and inspire this belief? And whether He did or not, what is the source of the Christian conception of the Messiah? Does this have its origin in the ideas of the Old Testament, or have contributions been made to it from other sources? In particular whence came the transcendent element in the Christian conception and the equally distinctive note of suffering and the triumphant issue in the resurrection? How early did this idea in its essential features form part of the Christian faith?

These are some of the questions that are raised by an historical investigation into the origin of the early Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus. They would not be difficult to answer if the testimony of the New Testament were accepted; but there are many objections urged against this, especially its supernatural standpoint and Christian character. It is necessary therefore to examine the evidence and test its validity.

PAUL'S FAITH

An important consideration in determining the value of the historical evidence is the element of time. The Gospels as documents are later than the earlier Epistles of Paul, though the tradition which they embody is earlier than their literary composition. The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians will furnish a starting point as its date may be fixed with reasonable certainty. It was written during Paul's stay in Ephesus about the year 55. From its statements it appears that the resurrection had formed part of Paul's original proclamation of the Gospel in Corinth. This was not later than the end of the year 51 or the beginning of the year 52. From Corinth Paul had written to the Church of the Thessalonians recalling "how ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus. who delivereth us from the wrath to come"." In agreement with Paul's statement concerning his Gospel, Luke records in Acts that the resurrection formed an element in Paul's message to the Athenians.3 It has been maintained by Norden that this address shows the influence of a type of religious discourse which was in use in Christian circles before the resurrection of Jesus had attained the significance it has in the First Epistle to the Corinthians. But this is not affirmed of Paul; and it is extremely doubtful whether the abrupt termination of the speech warrants this conclusion.

There is no letter of Paul's which records or specifically alludes to the character of his Gospel on or at the time of his first missionary journey unless it be the Epistle to the Galatians and on Lake's hypothesis-the short recension of the Epistle to the Romans. If the South Galatian destination and a date as early as the Thessalonian Epistles or ear

The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, 1911, pp. 362 ff.

lier be adopted, the Epistle to the Galatians would confirm the reference to the resurrection in Luke's account of Paul's speech at Pisidian Antioch.5" Even apart however from this theory of the destination and early date of the Epistle, the address and the autobiographical introduction make it impossible to suppose that this element was ever wanting in Paul's Gospel. It may therefore be traced with certainty at least to the time of Paul's activity in Antioch in the forties. Did it originate there or is it still earlier?

Pfleiderer suggests pagan influence both in the practice of the Antiochan Church, and, by conformation, also upon Paul; but he can scarcely mean origination. He says:6

In as much as religious practices are never made of nothing, we may well suppose that the Gentile Christians of Antioch still retained the old practices with which they had formerly celebrated the death and resurrection of their Lord Adonis and now transferred them to the new Lord Christ. Thus it happened naturally that Christ seemed the Lord who by His death and resurrection wrought the salvation of His own and became the Redeemer of the world. And now the Apostle Paul came to this new community whither he had been brought from his native city Tarsus by Barnabas. Soon he was at home there and labored with good success, so that the community rapidly increased. Thus it was certainly only natural that Paul also on his part adopted the practices and the conceptions which he found existing in the Gentile Christian community of Antioch. Otherwise, how could he have worked in it effectively? And it was the more natural since all that he found there fitted admirably with the way in which he himself had come to his faith in Christ. From a fanatical persecutor of the community of the Messiah he had been converted to an Apostle of Christ by a vision in which he had seen the heavenly Christ and Son of God, whose death therefore was not that of an offender but a sacrifice to which God had given His Son for our sins that He might redeem us from this present evil world. Of the earthly life of the prophet Jesus, Paul knew very little-as little as the Antiochan Gentile Christians. It was the more natural therefore that he should agree with them in the conviction that it was just the death and resurrection of the Son of God, even Christ, that constituted the redemptive fact and the content of the new redemptive faith.

ba Acts xiii. 30.

Religion und Religionen, 1906, p. 223; quoted by Clemen, Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neun Testaments, 1909, p. 152, n. 3; Primitive Christianity and its non-Jewish Sources, 1912, p. 196, n. 3.

Concerning the agreement of Paul and the Antiochan Church in regard to the redemptive significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus, or in a faith which included the resurrection with the death of Jesus, there need be no doubt. But of the influence of the cult of Adonis upon the practice of the Church and of Paul there is no evidence. Certain similarities are made the basis of a causal inference in support of which no proof is adduced. Certain very significant differences are neglected. We know little of the practices and convictions of the Antiochan Church at this early time save what may reasonably be inferred from its origin and

'J. Weiss says (Jesus von Nazareth, Mythus oder Geschichte? 1910, pp. 32 f): “The earliest time gives no evidence of the mood peculiar to the Adonis and Attis cults. Where is the passionate weeping for the dead, especially of the women; where the sudden change of mood into wild orgy, which are the characteristic features of those ancient nature cults? . . . Finally have the myths of Adonis and Attis influenced in a single particular the so-called Christ myth? The death of Adonis by a boar, the mutilation of Attis,-where are the parallels? . . . In all these cults and myths the hero is the lover of a goddessTammuz-Ishtar, Adonis-Aphrodite, Attis-Cybele, Osiris-Isis-and the pathos of the death, the bitter loss suffered by the beloved her sorrow, her seeking of the body-is the essential content of the drama in the experience of which the faithful share. Of this there is nothing in the Jesus-myth. Or is there? I know not whether any one has set the figure of Mary Magdalene, seeking the body of Jesus, on this religiohistorical background; but it will probably be done. He who does such things may do so; but he should not expect to be taken seriously.”

It is not even certain, according to Baudissin, whether the cult of Adonis at Antioch included the resurrection idea. This was not part of the Tammuz cult with which the Adonis cult of Antioch was probably connected. The mention of the resurrection idea by Origen and Jerome has reference most probably to the cult at Byblos where the presence of the idea is witnessed to by Lucian. The idea was present in the Osiris and Attis cults, in the Babylonian conception of Marduk and in the Phoenician conception of the gods Melkart and Esmun. Ammianus Marcellinus is silent about it in his reference to the cult of Adonis in Antioch at the time of the Emperor Julian's visit, and there is no trace of it in the reference to the cult in Athens in 415 B. C. A yearly resurrection seems however to be implied in the yearly death; but it does not appear that this idea formed part of the cult at Antioch. Cf. Baudissin's article "Tammuz" in Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, Herzog-Hauck, xix, and his Adonis und Esmun, 1911.