Years passed by after his death, and
the popular imagination went wild with reports and exaggerations of the
once obscure Nazarene. Great as the ideas of the people were before
Christ appeared, they were infinitely magnified during the lapse of the
thirty years between his death and the composition of the Gospels. These
narratives are consequently not a representation of history, but of
morbid popular fancies. The evangelists did not intend to deceive their
readers; their picturesque sketches were only designed to clothe the
ideal in the garb of the real. "Be not so unkind," Strauss says in
effect, "as to charge these poor uneducated men with evil purposes. They
were very unsophisticated, and did not know enough to have any extended
plan of trickery. They heard wonderful stories floating about, just such
as one meets with in all countries after a prominent man has died; and,
as they had a little capacity for using the pen, they wrote them down to
the best of their ability. Their writings are curious but very
defective, since the authors were too unpractised in literary work to
perfect a master-piece.
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