miraculous is ever outside the province of history. Jesus was a
miracle, and as such, at least, we are safe in declaring him un-
historical.

We pass on now to the presentation of evidence which we venture to
think demonstrates with an almost mathematic precision, that the Jesus
of the four gospels is a legendary hero, as unhistorical as William
Tell of Switzerland. This evidence is furnished by the epistles
bearing the signature of Paul. He has been accepted as not only the
greatest apostle of Christianity, but in a sense also the author of
its theology. It is generally admitted that the epistles bearing the
name of Paul are among the oldest apostolical writings. They are older
than the gospels. This is very important information. When Paul was
preaching, the four gospels had not yet been written. From the
epistles of Paul, of which there are about thirteen in the Bible--making
the New Testament largely the work of this one apostle--we learn that
there were in different parts of Asia, a number of Christian churches
already established. Not only Paul, then, but also the Christian
church was in existence before the gospels were composed. It would be
natural to infer that it was not the gospels which created the church,
but the church which produced the gospels. Do not lose sight of the
fact that when Paul was preaching to the Christians there was no
written biography of Jesus in existence. There was a church without
a book.

In comparing the Jesus of Paul with the Jesus whose portrait is drawn
for us in the gospels, we find that they are not the same persons at
all. This is decisive. Paul knows nothing about a miraculously born
savior. He does not mention a single time, in all his thirteen
epistles, that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that his birth was