hast sent"? Of course many of these
expressions were not understood by the masses, or were even misunderstood.
The words were repeated, and when necessary, especially in the
questionings of children, they had to be explained somehow, often by a
parable or story, which the mother invents at the moment, to quiet them.
All this is inevitable; it has happened everywhere, and happens still.
Whoever wishes to learn how tradition or common report treats historical
facts, should compare the Guenther or Etzel of the Nibelungen with the
Gundicarius or Attila of history, or Charles the Great crowned by the Pope
with the Charlemagne who besieged Jerusalem, or Hruodlandus with Roland,
or Arturus with Arthur. Or, to come to later days, we need only recall the
wonderful tales of the French journals during the last Franco-German War,
and we shall be astonished at the manner in which, quite unintentionally,
the people adapt all tidings to their own views. Nineteen hundred years
ago there were no newspapers. Why should it have been different then?

What the children had heard and believed, they remembered when they had
grown older, or themselves had become parents. It was convenient and
natural to tell their children again what they had heard in their own
childhood, and like a rolling stone, with each repetition the tradition
constantly took up new miraculous elements. There is scarcely a miracle in
the New Testament that did not account for itself spontaneously in this
way, and that did not in its original form reveal to us a far higher truth
than the mere miracle itself. And when the time came for a record, was it
not quite natural that everything available should be gathered together,
according to the tales told and believed from house to house, or village
to village? In this process, moreover, the appeal to a voucher, if
possible to a contemporary or eye-witness, was not at all surprising,
especially if there was a still living tradition, that this or that had
been heard from one of the apostles, and could be traced back to him from
son to father. Why should we put aside, nay, indignantly reject, this
simple, natural theory, suggested by all the circumstances, and capable of
at once removing all difficulties, in order to prefer another, which has
the advantage, it is true, of having been generally accepted for
centuries, but nevertheless was originally nothing more than a human
appeal to a superhuman attestation? It must not be forgot