XXXVII The Teaching of Jesus IT was while Augustus Caesar, the first of the Emperors, was. reigning in Rome that Jesus who is the Christ of Christianity was born in Judea. In his name a rehgion was to arise which, was destined to become the official religion of the entire Roman Empire. Now it is on the whole more convenient to keep history and theology apart. A large proportion of the Christian world believes that Jesus was an incarnation of that God of all the Earth whom the Jews first recognized. The historian, if he is to remain historian,, can neither accept nor deny that interpretation. Materially Jesus appeared in the likeness of a man, and it is as a man that the his- torian must deal with him. He appeared in Judea in the reign of Tiberius Caesar. He was a prophet. He preached after the fashion of the preceding Jewish prophets. He was a man of about thirty, and we are in the pro- foundest ignorance of his manner of life before his preaching began.. Our only direct sources of information about the life and teaching of Jesus are the four Gospels. All four agree in giving us a picture of a very definite personality. One is obliged to say, " Here was a man. This could not have been invented." But just as the personality of Gautama Buddha has been dis- torted and obscured by the stiff squatting figure, the gilded idol of" later Buddhism, so one feels that the lean and strenuous personality of Jesus is much wronged by the unreality and conventionality that a mistaken reverence has imposed upon his figure in modern Christiaru art. Jesus was a penniless teacher, who wandered about the dusty sun-bit country of Judea, living upon casual gifts of food ; yet he is, always represented clean, combed, and sleek, in spotless raiment, erect,, and with something motionless about him as though he was gliding; through the air. This alone has made him unreal and incredible- to many people who cannot distinguish the core of the story fronk the arnamental and unwise additions of the unintelligently devout^ 205
