Appointment in Jerusalem: A Search for the Historical Jesus.

ONE is always a little suspicious of anything calling itself "Higher." Things that are really lofty or transcendent are usually so by unspoken acknowledgment, and don't need the spatial modifier to remind us of the deference due them. Readers in search of a scholarly interpretation of the Gospels will therefore not be reassured to find the author identifying himself as a practitioner of "Higher Biblical Criticism." And indeed this, one discovers, is the modest name adopted by the whole field of modern Biblical critics, including 114 authors cited in a bibliography listing "New Views on Jesus."

In the old days, Max Dimont writes in Appointment in Jerusalem: A Search for the Historical Jesus, "The penalty for entertaining any other view [than sanctioned by Christian tradition] was usually painful death. Not until ... the Age of Rationalism did men dare to question this version. A new theological discipline was born, that of higher Biblical criticism . . . [T]he evangelists' accounts began to shatter . . ." Thus, "the melancholy task of the historian is to set faith aside, ignore expediency, and view facts dispassionately."

Although Mr. Dimont writes in a tone of curiosity and good will, this account of how the Higher Criticism was "born" does not sound very scholarly. Nor dispassionate. Nor even melancholy. It has the self-serving ring of mythology, with the Higher Critic as our new man of sorrows, born of pure reason, and leading us down the academic Via Dolorosa to hard facts.

His "facts" stand against what he calls the "improbabilities, impossibilities, and contradictions in which the Gospels abound." These suggest that the texts "grew backward," with the writers beginning at the Cross (an historical event not in dispute, Mr. Dimont believes) and reconstructing prior events to fit that ending-and not always getting their stories straight. So for instance only Luke mentions the Roman census that supposedly brought Joseph and Mary to Nazareth, "a census for which there is no historical evidence," while Matthew gives a different chain of events. Were these both inventions to satisfy the twin prophesies that the Messiah be born in Bethlehem, as required by Micah 5:2, yet also be the "Nazarene" foretold in Hosea?

Or take the resurrection of Lazarus. It appears only in John, the last Gospel to be written. Would not all four writers have thought to mention such a miracle, if it really happened? Or might it have been a bit of artistry on John's part?

Matthew, Mark, and Luke, moreover, all say Jesus was arrested on Friday by Jews, tried by the Sanhedrin, taken to Pilate at daybreak, and crucified that morning, dying at midday. In John, He is arrested by a Roman cohort on Thursday, tried only by Romans, and raised to the Cross in the afternoon, dying at nine. Might the Pharisees and Sanhedrin in fact be innocent, hauled by the later evangelists into a Roman affair? "To find the answers to these and other related puzzles, the scholars placed the evangelists in the witness box. . . . Amazing discrepancies in the testimony emerged." The witnesses discredited, Mr. Dimont proceeds through a set of "more likely" speculations about who this Jesus really was and what He really did. Having considered "The Seven Faces of Jesus," He settles on composite, the "historical Jesus," who, doubtless sincerely thinking himself the Messiah, set about to fulfill prophesy, thus consciously orchestrating His own martyrdom. Where He failed, the evangelists thoughtfully inserted the appropriate details.

Putting Mr. Dimont on the stand for a moment, one could note the self-validating quality of his argument: Where the Gospels differ, that suggests one or another is a fabrication. But if they're in accord on other points-as they are on most-that suggests conspiracy.

Or we could ask why, if the evangelists were making this stuff up, the last of them-John, writing in about A.D. 100-did not get the story straight once and for all. Even later, a good editor could have worked the copy into shape in no time at all: snipping the improbabilities sure to invite derision; removing Jesus' still more awkward assertion that all these things would be done before this generation had passed away; putting the "Sermon on the Mount" into Mark's Gospel (how could he have forgotten that!); and maybe adding a few harmless anecdotes from the protagonist's boyhood to fill in that mysterious 18-year gap. The temptation must have been strong, and no doubt the early Church had many able volunteers. It may be the best evidence of their veracity that they didn't, offering instead the explanation that the documents were "the Word of God in the words of men"-an old formulation that still answers most of Mr. Dimont's objections.

Or, again, as C. S. Lewis long ago pointed out, whether one is or is not a follower, regarding Jesus as a wise and humble ethical guide is not an option, for wise and humble ethical guides do not claim to be God among us. The limited choices-Liar, Lunatic, or Lord-thus incline one to belief.

Reading all this higher criticism, though, you begin to wonder if Mr. Dimont and those 114 authors advancing their various "New Views on Jesus" are not engaged in trying to kill a butterfly with a steamroller. The disclosure that the New Testament contains improbabilities is as recent as, oh, A.D. 101, and once we set aside modern caricatures of Bryan and Darrow, darkness and light, the more interesting question becomes, Why have so many great minds nevertheless embraced this mystery? Were Aquinas, Dante, Pascal, Milton, Dostoyevsky, and Solzhenitsyn illogical people, failing to notice what it took the higher critic to reveal?

Rigorous inquiry requires an examination of motive. Might the Age of Rationalism also be the Age of Arrogance, the search for a New Jesus an escape from the old one, and the sophistication of high criticism a veiling of the innocent eyes with which the Gospels ask to be read? Perhaps the best way to read the narratives is with a sharp, questioning mind, yet also a heart willing to respond if suddenly and unexpectedly called by name, like Zacchaeus in his tree, or Matthew sitting there at his tax table adding up the day's take.

Mr. Dimont's hard facts do indeed make one step back from the whole amazing story and ask, "Do I really believe all this?" And in that he performs a useful service. But why then is one still led by the Voice like no other, through all the improbabilities and murky mistranslations and healthy doubts, to answer Yes"?

What is clear, in any case, is that the new and higher approach somehow leads to the same error for which we deride the clerics of old who ferociously disputed whether a particular splinter belonged to the One True Cross or whether Veronica's veil really carried His image: a preoccupation with the props and trivia at the expense of the theme.

There is, one is reminded at the end of Appointment in Jerusalem, a staggering credulity of which only the determined skeptic, doubting everything but his own disbelief, is capable-an intellectual equivalent of the first shall-be-last principle. Thus we find Mr. Dimont wondering if perhaps the Crucifixion itself was not a hoax gone awry. On the Cross

Jesus said, "I thirst." Was this a code

phrase? A "bystander" just happened to

have a vessel full of vineger at hand; he

immediately saturated a sponge with the

vineger and raised it on a reed to the

mouth of Jesus.... Vinegar, which is a

stimulant, should have revived Jesus. Instead

he seemingly died. Was he perhaps

only in a coma, according to some theories,

knocked out with a drug to give the

semblance of death?

The idea would then be to cart Him off to a tomb, so that after a few days He could miraculously step forward, "resurrected"-the celebrity deriving from this feat worth even the agonies it required.

Jesus said Be ye as wise as serpents, and as harmless as doves-exactly the advice a "subversive would give his fellow undercover agents."' The cleansing of the Temple likewise suggests "a military action"; hence Jesus "the unsuccessful aspirant for the crown of King David." And what of His forgiveness of sinners like Mary Magdalene? "In clinical terms, this drastic cure effected a strong emotional transference to Jesus, and she became one of his most devoted followers."

Doubtless it would seem too pedestrian for a higher critic to say simply that Mary was converted because she found in the love of Jesus everything that her heart longed for. The mysteries of faith and love are always elusive because both, as Mary and much of humanity had somehow figured out before the Age of Rationalism, have to be experienced to be understood-and, in Christianity's paradoxical way, even then only gain in mystery. Neither comes to the merely curious, and both carry the precondition of a pure heart, the only reliable guide down the complex road to simplicity. The rationalism modern scholars bring to the pursuit is necessary and admirable, but something else is required too. Maybe a little more emotional transference.