This book has grown out of lectures upon the historical Jesus given
in a good many cities of India during the winter 1915-16. Recast and
developed, the lectures were taken down in shorthand in Calcutta;
they were revised in Madras; and most of them were wholly
re-written, where and when in six following months leisure was
available, in places so far apart as Colombo, Maymyo, Rangoon,
Kodaikanal, Simla, and Poona. The reader will not expect a heavy
apparatus of references to books which were generally out of reach.

Here and there are incorporated passages (rehandled) from articles
that have appeared in The Constructive Quarterly, The Nation, The
Expositor, and elsewhere.

Those who themselves have tried to draw the likeness attempted in
this book will best understand, and perhaps most readily forgive,
failures and mistakes, or even worse, in my drawing. The aim of the
book, as of the lectures, is, after all, not to achieve a final
presentment of the historical Jesus, but to suggest lines of study
that will deepen our interest in him and our love of him.

T. R. G.
POONA, August 1916

THE JESUS OF HISTORY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
THE STUDY OF THE GOSPELS
Modern study of religion
Historicity of Jesus
The gospels as historical sources
Canons for the study of a historical figure
A caution against antiquarianism here

CHAPTER II
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
References in Gospels
Utilisation of the parables to reconstruct the domestic life
Nature. The city. The talk of the market

CHAPTER III
THE MAN AND HIS MIND
Words and looks, as recorded in the gospels
Playfulness of speech
Movements of feeling
Habits of thought: e.g. Quickness. Feeling for fact.
Sympathy. Imagination
His use of the Old Testament

CHAPTER IV
THE TEACHER AND THE DISCIPLES
THE BACKGROUND
Hardness of the human life in those times
Uncertainness as to God's plans for the nation--specially
as to His purposes for the Messiah
Uncertainty as to the immortality of the soul, and its destinies
Re-action of all this upon life
THE PROBLEM BEFORE THE TEACHER
To induce people to try to re-think God
To secure the re-thinking of life from its foundations in view
of the new knowledge
THE TEACHER AND THE DISCIPLES
His personality, and his genius