The Origins of Christianity - With an Outline of Van Manen's Analysis of the Pauline Literature #228019

Afteb reading the celebrated article on Paul in the third volume of the Encyclojxzdia Biblica, my thought was that, if the conclusions stated could be established by analysis, then Professor van Manen must be regarded as the Copernicus of New Testament criticism. To place the Pauline writings, along with the rest of the New Testament, in the second century, would both remove an anomaly and make possible a consistent deduction of the process by which Christianity came into being. Study of his original work has, so far, confirmed my view. At the same time, I was under the impression that the result might be also to disclose a stratum of genuine historical tradition in the Gospel narrative. I did not, indeed, think that, for example, a single indubitable saying of Jesus could be determined. What I imagined might become a practicable problem was to trace the original Judseo-Christian movement, as distinguished from Pauline or Gentile Christianity, to an impulse from a personal teacher who had made a profound impression by his continuance of the effort of Hebrew prophecy towards universalising the mainly national ethics of older Hebraism.