How little they dreamed of the reverence which
future generations would pay them! Poor souls, they hardly knew what
they were doing. One caught one story, and his friend another; and it is
a nice bit of mosaic which we find in their school-boy productions. No
wonder their defenders are unable to harmonize their accounts. Let any
four men who live among a legend-loving people transcribe the traditions
they hear from the lips of childhood and garrulous old age, or read in
the popular romances of the day, and it will surprise no one that they
do not agree. How can they tell the same things in the same way, since
the sources of each are so different? Nor, with only myths for warp and
woof, is it at all surprising that we have nothing more than Homeric
exaggerations when the fanciful fabric is once woven."
The introduction to the _Life of Jesus_ consists of an essay on the
historical development of the mythical theory. Having stated its present
shape and great value, it is then applied to the life of Christ in the
body of the work.
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