esant. Scott Series, pp. 11-14, ed. 1873). These are but a few of the
contradictions in the Gospels, which compel us to reject them as
historical narratives.

(3) _The fact that the story of the hero, the doctrines, the miracles,
were current long before the supposed dates of the Gospels_, etc. There
are two mythical theories as to the growth of the story of Jesus, which
demand our attention; the first, that of which Strauss is the best known
exponent, which acknowledges the historical existence of Jesus, but
regards him as the figure round which has grown a mythus, moulded by the
Messianic expectations of the Jews: the second, which is indifferent to
his historical existence, and regards him as a new hero of the ancient
sun-worship, the successor of Mithra, Krishna, Osiris, Bacchus, etc. To
this school, it matters not whether there was a Jesus of Nazareth or
not, just as it matters not whether a Krishna or an Osiris had an
historical existence or not; it is _Christ_, the Sun-god, not _Jesus_,
the Jewish peasant, whom they find worshipped in Christendom, and who
is, therefore, the object of their interest.

According to the first theory, whatever was expected of the Messiah has
been attributed to Jesus. "When not merely the particular nature and
manner of an occurrence is critically suspicious, its external
circumstances represented as miraculous and the like; but where likewise
the essential substance and groundwork is either inconceivable in
itself, or is in striking harmony with some Messianic idea of the Jews
of that age, then not the particular alleged course and mode of the
transaction only, but the entire occurrence must be regarded as
unhistorical" (Strauss' "Life of Jesus," vol. i., p. 94). The mythic
theory accepts an historical groundwork for many of the stories about
Jesus, but it does not seek to explain the miraculous by attenuating it
into the natural--as by explaining the story of the transfiguration to
have been developed from the fact of Jesus meeting secretly two men, and
from the brilliancy of the sunlight dazzling the eyes of the
disciples--but it attributes the incredible portions of the history to
the Messianic theories current among the Jews. The Messiah would do this
and that; Jesus was the Messiah; therefore, Jesus did this and
that--such, argue the supporters of the mythical theory, was the method
in which the mythus was developed. The theory finds some support in the
peculiar attitude of Jus