Rise of Christianity

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The truth is that not only must the Gospel stories of miracles be regarded as the outcome of legend-making or symbolical poetry, but the rest of their contents, unassailable in itself, must be granted to be intimately bound up with that element, and must not be considered as authentic history. Any man who has made some study of the question. And closely examined the contents of these remarkable writings - who has, in other words, clearly recognised subjective influence in the different stamp set on the words of Jesus by the several Evangelists - must long ago have awakened from the dream that we have here a sufficiently solid ground for the construction of a biography. The parables and the Sermon on the Mount, like the other sayings of Jesus, are found to be permeated with elements that can only have originated in the Christology of the community, not in the self-consciousness of Jesus. For instance, the well-known saying, which might be taken as a genuine utterance of Christ as far as its general contents go, Whoever will come after me must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me (matt. Xvi. 24; Mark viii. 34; Luke ix. Cannot possibly have been spoken in this form before the crucifixion of Jesus. Thus there is a good deal in the Gospels that plainly bears the stamp of the consciousness Of the community and.