culture, and by Roman conquest; by the vainly attempted amalgamation of Jewish and heathen
thought, by the exposed impotence of natural civilization, philosophy, art, and political power, by
the decay of the old religions, by the universal distraction and hopeless misery of the age, and by
the yearnings of all earnest and noble souls for the religion of salvation.
"In the fulness of the time," when the fairest flowers of science and art had withered, and
the world was on the verge of despair, the Virgin’s Son was born to heal the infirmities of mankind.
Christ entered a dying world as the author of a new and imperishable life.CHAPTER II.
JESUS CHRIST.
§ 14. Sources and Literature.
A. Sources.
Christ himself wrote nothing, but furnished endless material for books and songs of gratitude and
praise. The living Church of the redeemed is his book. He founded a religion of the living spirit,
not of a written code, like the Mosaic law. ( His letter to King Abgarus of Edessa, in Euseb.,
Hist. Eccl., I. 13, is a worthless fabrication.) Yet his words and deeds are recorded by as honest
and reliable witnesses as ever put pen to paper.
I. Authentic Christian Sources.
(1) The four Canonical Gospels. Whatever their origin and date, they exhibit essentially the same
divine-human life and character of Christ, which stands out in sharp contrast with the fictitious
Christ of the Apocryphal Gospels, and cannot possibly have been invented, least of all by
illiterate Galileans. They would never have thought of writing books without the inspiration of
their Master.
(2) The Acts of Luke, the Apostolic Epistles, and the Apocalypse of John. They presuppose,
independently of the written Gospels, the main facts of the gospel-history, especially the
crucifixion and the resurrection, and abound in allusions to these facts. Four of the Pauline
Epistles (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians) are admitted as genuine by the most extreme
of liberal critics (Baur and the Tübingen School), and from them alone a great part of the life
of Christ might be reconstructed. (See the admissions of Keim, Gesch. Jesu v. Naz., I. 35 sqq.)
II. Apocryphal Gospels:
The Apocryphal Gospels are very numerous (about 50), some of them only known by name, others
in fragments, and date from the second and later centuries. They are partly heretical (Gnostic
and Ebionite) perversions or mutilations of the real history, partly innocent compositions of
fancy, or religious novels intended to link together the disconnected periods of Christ’s
biography, to satisfy the curiosity concerning his relations, his childhood, his last days, and to
promote the glorification of the Virgin Mary. They may be divided into four classes: (1) Heretical
Gospels (as the Evangelium Cerinthi, Ev. Marcionis, Ev. Judae Ischariotae, Ev. secundum
Hebraeos, etc.); (2) Gospels of Joseph and Mary, and the birth of Christ (Protevangelium
Jacobi, Evang. Pseudo-Mathaei sive liber de Ortu Beatae Mariae et Infantia Salvatoris, Evang.
de Nativitate Mariae, Historia Josephi Fabri lignarii, etc.); (3) Gospels of the childhood of
Jesus from the flight to Egypt till his eighth or twelfth year (Evang. Thomae, of Gnostic origin,
Evang. Infantiae Arabicum, etc.); (4) Gospels of the passion and the mysterious triduum inA.D. 1-100.