It is the same, finally, with the story of the original evangel as with the story of the tragedy; M. Loisy fails to come within sight of historicity in the one case as in the other. Having fallen back on the thesis, so popularized by Renan, that faith in the necessary resurrection of the Messiah created the legend of the empty tomb and the divine apparitions, he proceeds to formulate the Teaching which had created the faith. The historic creed of Christianity is thus figured as a pyramid poised on the apex of a hallucination; but we are assured that the hallucination resulted from the greatness of the Personality of the slain Teacher.
Taking no note of any other conception of a possible origination of the cult, M. Loisy pronounces that to explain it we must hold that the "group of adherents" had before the crucifixion evolved a "religious life" sufficiently deep to sustain the feeling that the death of the Master was an accident, "grave no doubt [!] and perturbing, but reparable"; [175] and to explain this religious life he goes back to the Master's doctrine. And the moment he begins his exposition he vacillates anew over the old dilemma:--
Jesus pursued a work, not the propagation of a belief; he did not explain theoretically the Kingdom of Heaven, he prepared its coming by exhorting men to repent. Nevertheless even the work of Jesus attaches itself to the idea of the celestial kingdom; it defines itself in that idea, which presupposes, implies, or involves with it other ideas. It is this combination of ideas familiar to Christ that we must reconstruct with the help of the Gospels.... The idea of the kingdom of God is, in a sense, all the Gospel; but it is also all Judaism.... [176]
Exactly. Jesus, in effect, preached just what the Baptist is said to have preached; only without baptism. The monition to repent was simply the monition of all the prophets and all the eschatologists; and it had not the attraction of baptism which the evangel of the Baptist was said to have. So that the Twelve, on the showing of M. Loisy, went through Jewry uttering only one familiar phrase--and casting out devils--and dooming those who refused to hear them. And, by their own report, it was in casting out devils that they had their success. The simple name of Jesus, according to the Gospels, availed for that where he had never appeared in person. Yet, again, the name is used by non-adherents for the same purpose (Mk. ix, 38). And still M. Loisy confidently claims that there is no trace of a pre-Christian Jesus cult in Palestine! [177]