did Paul know of Jesus of Nazareth? it would not be difficult to reduce these assertions to their true proportions. Paul did not live in a vacuum; he lived in the primitive Christian society in which all that was known of Jesus was current, and he could not, by the most determined and obstinate effort, have been as ignorant of Jesus as he is sometimes represented to be. Among his most intimate friends and fellow-workers, at different periods of his life, were Mark and Luke, the authors of our second and third gospels. There is much to be said for the idea of Mr. Wright,[1] that they worked as catechists in the Pauline Churches. Is it conceivable that the apostle did not know what they taught, and did not care? If this reasoning seems too à priori, or too much based on mere probabilities, to carry conviction, it only needs such a searching examination of the apostle's writings as Feine's Jesus Christus und Paulus to raise it beyond doubt. Paul was in no sense ignorant of Jesus. If our synoptic gospels are not works of imagination, but a genuine deposit of tradition — and this is the only view which is represented by serious scholars — then the substance of them must have been as familiar to Paul as it is to us.
In view, however, of the question which we are discussing, Paul's knowledge of Jesus is beside the mark. Whether he knew Jesus or not, whether his influence on Christianity has been pernicious or not, he is the most important figure in Christian history. He did more than any of the apostles to win for the Christian religion its place in the life of the world, and he has done more than any of them in always winning that place again when it seemed in danger of being lost. Evangelical revival, in personalities so powerful as Luther, Wesley, and Chalmers, has always been kindled afresh at the flame
- ↑ The Composition of the Four Gospels, cc. i. and ii.
