We know of no good reason why
the book should be published anonymously; for as a historical essay it
possesses extraordinary merit, and does great credit not only to its
author, but to English scholarship and acumen. [19] It is not, indeed,
a book calculated to captivate the imagination of the reading public.
Though written in a clear, forcible, and often elegant style, it
possesses no such wonderful rhetorical charm as the work of Renan;
and it will probably never find half a dozen readers where the "Vie de
Jesus" has found a hundred. But the success of a book of this sort is
not to be measured by its rhetorical excellence, or by its adaptation to
the literary tastes of an uncritical and uninstructed public, but rather
by the amount of critical sagacity which it brings to bear upon the
elucidation of the many difficult and disputed points in the subject of
which it treats. Measured by this standard, "The Jesus of History" must
rank very high indeed. To say that it throws more light upon the career
of Jesus than any work which has ever before been written in English
would be very inadequate praise, since the English language has been
singularly deficient in this branch of historical literature. We shall
convey a more just idea of its merits if we say that it will bear
comparison with anything which even Germany has produced, save only the
works of Strauss, Baur, and Zeller.

[19] "The Jesus of History" is now known to have been written by
Sir Richard Hanson, Chief Justice of South Australia.

The fitness of our author for the task which he has undertaken is shown
at the outset by his choice of materials. In basing his conclusions
almost exclusively upon the statements contained in the first gospel, he
is upheld by every sound principle of criticism. The times and places
at which our three synoptic gospels were written have been, through the
labours of the Tubingen critics, determined almost to a certainty. Of
the three, "Mark" is unquestionably the latest; with the exception of
about twenty verses, it is entirely made up from "Matthew" and "Luke,"
the diverse Petrine and Pauline tendencies of which it strives to
neutralize in conformity to the conciliatory disposition of the Church
at Rome, at the epoch at which this gospel was written, about A. D. 130.
The third gospel was also written at Rome, some fifteen years earlier.
In the preface, its author describes it as a compilation from previously
existing written mat