The Truth about Jesus : Is He a Myth? by Mangasarian, M. M. (Mangasar Mugurditch), 1859-1943

But _who_ guarantees Paul?

Aside from the fact that the Jesus of Paul is essentially a different Jesus from the gospel Jesus there still remains the question, Who is Paul? Let us see how much the church scholars themselves know about Paul:

"The place and manner and occasion of his death are not _less uncertain_ than the facts of his later life...The chronology of the rest of his life is as uncertain...We have no means of knowing when he was born, or how long he lived, or at what dates the several events of his life took place."

Referring to the epistles of Paul, the same authority says: "The chief of these preliminary questions is the genuineness of the epistles bearing Paul's name, which _if they be his_"--yes, IF--

The Christian scholar whose article on Paul is printed in the _Britannica_, and from which we are now quoting, gives further expression to this uncertainty by adding that certain of Paul's epistles "have given rise to disputes which cannot easily be settled in the absence of collateral evidence...The pastoral epistles...have given rise to still graver questions, and are probably even _less_ defensible."

Let the reader remember that the above is not from a rationalist, but from the Rev. Edwin Hatch, D. D., Vice-Principal, St. Mary Hall, Oxford, England.

Were we disposed to quote rationalist authorities, the argument against Paul would be far more decisive. But we are satisfied to rest the case on orthodox admissions alone.

The strongest argument then of clergymen who have attempted an answer to our position is something like this:

Jesus is historical because a man by the name of Paul says so, though we do not know much about Paul.

It is just such evidence as the above that led Prof. Goldwin Smith to exclaim: "Jesus has flown. I believe the legend of Jesus was made by many minds working under a great religious impulse--one man adding a parable, another an exhortation, another a miracle story;"--and George Eliot to write: "The materials for a real life of Christ do not exist."

In the effort to untie the Jesus-knot by Paul, the church has increased the number of knots to two. In other words, the church has proceeded on the theory that two uncertainties make a certainty.

We promised to square also with the facts of history our statement that the chief concern of the church, Jewish, Christian, or Mohammedan, is not righteousness, but orthodoxy.

IX

Speaking in this city, Rev. W. H. Wray Boyle of Lake Forest, declared that unbelief was responsible for the worst crimes in history. He mentioned the placing.

--"of a nude woman on a pedestal in the city of Paris.

--"the assassination of William McKinley.

--"The same unbelief sent a murderer down the isle of a church in Denver to pluck the symbol of the sacrament from the hands of a priest and slay him at the altar."

The story of a "nude woman," etc., is pure fiction, and that the two murders were caused by unbelief is mere assumption. To help his creed, the preacher resorts to fable. We shall prove our position by quoting _facts_: