Ebook: The birth of the Gospel: a study of the origin and purport of the primitive allegory of the Jesus

William Benjamin Smith (1850-1934) was a professor of mathematics at Tulane University. He also wrote Ecce Deus and Der Vorchristliche Jesus, studies of primitive Christianity, in addition to mathematical works. This book was published posthumously, in 1957. He writes in the Author's Foreword, "Such, then, is the aim of this volume, to render the Genesis of the Christian movement understandable as an historical process, natural and reasonable, though unique, throughout." Here are some quotations from the book: "The writer of the Fourth Gospel ... cares little or nought for what any other evangelist may have written or thought ... At times his Gospel affirms events which the Synoptic statements render impossible; at other times we have seen the claims made in this Gospel reduce to absurdity the statements of the Synoptists... In his own esteem neither he nor any other evangelist was recording history; they were painting doctrine." (Pg. 121-122) "The exposition thus far sketched seems not only to show the practical certainty of the non-existence AS A MAN of the Jesus the Christ, but also to exhibit with fair clarity both the Origin and the Content of the Primitive Propoganda, and so it may be said to make a rift at last in the persistent cloud that has hung for 1800 years about the Cradle of Christianity." (Pg. 123) "The main conclusion from our New Testament Studies is that the Gospels have full and appropriate meaning when and only when they are understood as allegorical, portraying in symbol the one and only burden of Old Testament prophecy, the marvellous endurance, century after century, of the Israel Folk in their steadfast witness for monotheism." (Pg. 143)

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