As others saw Him/afterwords
AFTERWORDS
TO A SECOND EDITION
It was my object in the preceding pages to present a picture of Jesus "as others saw him" at Jerusalem, so as to explain the chief historic problem of his career, namely, why, having entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday amid the acclamations of the populace of Jerusalem, he was executed by the Romans five days later amid their execrations. In his utterances at Jerusalem, Jesus by no means presents that mild and persuasive figure which we associate with his name from the presentations in the Gospels of his relations to his immediate disciples. On the contrary, during Holy Week he successively alienated every section of the Jewish nation. On Monday he attacked the power of the priests, on Tuesday that of the Pharisees, while on Wednesday he set the common people against him by refusing to countenance their hopes of freedom from the Romans by acquiescing in the payment of tribute to them.
The preceding pages, therefore, may be regarded as a sort of Apologia of the Jewish people for their so-called "rejection" of Jesus. As a matter of fact, he mainly expressed movements which were already in existence among the Jewish people, as I have also endeavored to show in my description of him, and was chiefly opposed in principle to the sacerdotal party, who therefore, as a natural consequence, brought about his death after a hurried and, from a Jewish standpoint, illegal trial. By displaying the essential Jewishness of most of Jesus' doctrines I was hoping to attract the interest of Jews themselves towards the most influential figure that has appeared among them. Owing to the legends and metaphysical conceptions that have gathered round him, and the crimes that have been committed in his name, many Jews even to this day refuse to consider Jesus as a member of their race.
Another object I had in view in presenting a somewhat different aspect of Jesus' life was to introduce the general reader to the many remarkable additions to our knowledge of his times, and even of his own sayings, which have accumulated during the past few years. The study of the Talmud has contributed much new light, and has given local color to the scenes in which Jesus moved, while a more careful investigation of the Apocryphal Gospels and the Early Church Fathers has resulted in unearthing a number of traditions and traditional sayings of Jesus which in the judgment of competent theologians have nearly as much probability as those contained in the Gospels. These extra-canonical sayings of Jesus have been collected together by Dr. Alfred Resch, under the title of Agrapha, as the fourth part of the fifth volume of Gebhardt and Harnack's "Texte und Untersuchungen" (Leipsic, 1889). I have endeavored to include the most memorable of these in the two sermons in chapters iii. and vii. Resch divides his materials into Logia and Apocrypha, but there seems to me very little difference in the amount of evidence, in favor of the distinction, and I have used both indiscriminately. In the notes, however, which are now added, I give the number of Resch's Logia, adding a capital A. for the Apocrypha.
A word more as to the sources. I have adopted the ordinary view of the three visits of Jesus to Jerusalem during his ministry. This is of course based upon statements in the Johannine Gospel which most of the newer theologians regard as entirely apocryphal. I do not think it at all improbable that though the majority of the speeches placed in Jesus' mouth by the fourth evangelist are obviously concocted ad hoc, the writer may still have had access to some additional traditions which formed the excuse for his writing and the pegs on which to present his views, indeed in the same way as I myself have attempted to do in the present work.