scant, but they are not biographical. They
are apologetic, propagandist, interested in everything except those
problems which a biographer must raise. The last few years have even
conjured up the question whether Jesus ever lived. One may say with all
simplicity, that the question has, of course, as much rightfulness as
has any other question any man could raise. The somewhat extended
discussion has, however, done nothing to make evident how it could
arise, save in minds unfamiliar with the materials and unskilled in
historical research. The conditions which beset us when we ask for a
biography of Jesus that shall answer scientific requirement are not
essentially different from those which meet us in the case of any other
personage equally remote in point of time, and equally woven about--if
any such have been--by the love and devotion of men. Bousset's little
book, _Was Wissen wir von Jesus?_ 1904, convinces a quiet mind that we
know a good deal. Qualities in the personality of Jesus obviously worked
in transcendent measure to call out devotion. No understanding of
history is adequate which has no place for the unfathomed in
personality. Exactly because we ourselves share this devotion, we could
earnestly wish that the situation as to the biography of Jesus were
other than it is.

THE OLD TESTAMENT

We have spoken thus far as if the whole biblical-critical problem had
been that of the New Testament. In reality the same impulses which had
opened up that question to the minds of men had set them working upon
the problem of the Old Testament as well. We have seen how the
Christians made for themselves a canon of the New Testament. By the
force of that conception of the canon, and through the belief that,
almost in a literal sense, God was the author of the whole book, the
obvious differences among the writings had been obscured. Men forgot the
evolution through which the writings had passed. The same thing had
happened for the Old Testament in the Jewish synagogues and for the
rabbis before the Christian movement. When the Christians took over the
Old Testament they took it over in this sense. It was a closed book
wherein all appreciation of the long road which the religion of Israel
had traversed in its evolution had been lost. The relation of the old
covenant to the new was obscured. The Old Testament became a Christian
book. Not merely were the Christian facts prophesied in the Old
Testament, but its doctrines al