Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ

JESUS, A NEW BIOGRAPHY--Shirley Jackson Case--University of Chicago Press ($3).--

The Story, even before it became gospel truth, had been told many times and in many ways. Its outlines, the framework that is a matter of fact, not opinion, belief or hypothesis, remains comparatively fixed. It begins on a morning in Bethlehem, Palestine, when a woman called Mary gave birth to a small child whose father was either, according to the faith or cynicism of the reader, her husband or the Almighty God.

There is a long gap in the story after this. Then there is a picture, as brief and bright as something dreamed, of a slender, excited boy standing in the centre of a circle of old men. The gloom and whisper of a temple surrounds them, the rustle of wings is in the shadows above them. Then there is a picture of the boy, his face calm and thoughtful now, walking in the weary pageant of a slow, travel-stained procession along a road through the country. Roughly 18 years later the story goes on again. This time it is a humble, yet triumphant continuity of miracles and splendid words; the pictures are those of a group of men talking in the dusk by the shore of a sea or walking together toward a city. At the centre of these pictures is the boy who stood in the temple; the face that was filled that day with exaltation has now become more sorrowful, more wise. For three years, through sandy eastern countries, he moves in a golden path of quiet and beautiful happenings. The people who live in small villages have heard about a man who is the son of God; lepers, in fields and ditches, stare at ragged hands that have been made smooth. There are three more scenes at the end of the three years; one in a great crowded room, one in a garden in which the flowers are drawing together, one on a hill outside a town. After that there are legends.

The Significance. The life of Jesus Christ is read most often in the biographies that four men wrote after his death.* Three of these--the "gospels" of Matthew, Mark, and Luke--obviously derive in part from the same sources, in part from each other. The history written by John is a different story, leaving out much fact that is in the others, adding much theology that they lack. There are other recountals of the life of God's son; they have, all taken together, enough contradictions to make their corroborations doubtful. The purpose of the biographies of Christ that have been written in modern times are varied, but most are preoccupied with presenting a point of view, a belief, a doctrine. Author Case has a different motive; his aim is merely to disentangle the truth from the myth, to discover and state what is fact and what has been added to fact to make it more appealing or more exciting.

To do this he analyzes the ancient biographies of Jesus Christ; discusses the conditions of his environment; recounts the probabilities of his birth, youth, career, and death; discusses the religion which he lived, the religion which he taught. Fairness, simplicity, precision, scholarship, mark his candid chapters. Without casting doubt on a doctrine, he assigns purposes and reasons for its existence: "How tenaciously they [gentile Christians] held to belief in the dogma known as the 'Virgin Birth,' though it might more properly be termed 'Supernatural Generation !'" Author Case fairly considers what is said to have happened and compares it to what probably happened; the result is a volume which irritates no one by unbased assertions, which informs those who wish their religious tenets to be not entirely at variance with known facts.

The Author is a clear thinking Baptist professor, 55 years old. He studied at Acadia, Yale, the University of Marburg; he taught at small Bates College, in Maine, and is now chairman of the Department of Church History at the University of Chicago.

*There are innumerable biographies of Jesus Christ; this one, published in the autumn of 1927, has already stoutly stood the tests of criticism and controversy. Its fame increases.

*In the second century, A.D., the four most popular records of the life of Jesus Christ began to take complete precedence in Christian gatherings. These four--ascribed to four writers of whom little is known--were finally incorporated into the new religion as canonized gospels. Mark was principally concerned with the deeds, as then disseminated, of Christ's life. Luke and Matthew, deviating little from his account of these facts, laid more emphasis on his teachings. John had presumably gathered his material from different traditions. Of the apocryphal gospels, surviving now only in fragments, the most noteworthy is entitled "According to the Hebrews"; others are the gospels of the Ebionites, Egyptians, Peter, Thomas, and Bartholomew.