00.4. Preface
Preface
Glover writes in his book, “The Jesus of History” (p. 84): “I have been treating him almost as if he were an authority on pedagogy. Fortunately, he never discussed pedagogy, never used the terms I have been using. But he dealt with men, he taught and he influenced them, and it is worth our study to understand how he did it—to master his methods.” In 1906 a volume of bibliography on “Jesus Christ Our Lord” by S. G. Ayers contained five thousand titles. The name of Jesus is more written about than any other in history. Where so much has been written, it is astonishing how little attention has been paid to the pedagogy of Jesus. A few books, like that of Hinsdale, 1895; a few articles, like that by Ellis, 1902; and a few occasional pages in larger works, as in Wendt, these are all. The bibliography at the end of our own accompanying study is conspicuously and suggestively brief. The pedagogy of Jesus is a discovered and staked-out but unworked mine. Let no one try it who is not both a biblical scholar and an educator. The following pages have only scratched the surface and uncovered a few leads.
One may well wonder why it is that, though books have been written about education since the Republic of Plato and about Jesus since the gospel of Mark, it is only the present generation that has seen books written about Jesus as an educator. Perhaps it is because those who knew about Jesus did not know about education, while those who knew about education did not know about Jesus. There may also have been the feeling that reverence for Jesus as divine was inconsistent with the study of his methods as a human teacher.
Probably an apology for studying the pedagogy of Jesus is not demanded by our day. Some may still feel that Jesus as a teacher should be only heard, not studied. But what if studying his methods unstopped our ears, opened our eyes, increased our skill—nay, even developed our reverence? The aim of this series of studies is twofold: first, immediately, to see how Jesus taught, or is presented to us as having taught, and, second, ultimately, to influence our own methods of teaching morals and religion. To accomplish these aims the apparatus of scholarship will be reduced to a minimum and simplicity of presentation raised to the maximum possible. This is not so much a work to be read, or even a text to be studied, as a guide book to be followed in study classes. It is especially designed for discussional groups. I have declined to do all the student’s work for him. The teaching attitude is maintained on almost every page. The mode of presentation will, so far as possible, make the reader a sharer in the process of discovering the methods of Jesus as a teacher. This result will be accomplished by first raising questions, then giving the reader a chance to answer them for himself, and then presenting the material and reaching our own conclusion. The literature of the subject, all too brief, will be utilized in reaching our results, which, however, must rest back mainly and finally upon the four gospels themselves as our source material.
Into the credibility of the gospels, especially the Fourth Gospel, as presenting the teaching methods of Jesus, without, however, intending so to do, we do not enter, as not essential to our twofold aim indicated above.
Let me request critical reviewers not to judge the book by a viewpoint not its own, and condemn it because it does not say what they want said. Our viewpoint is not the content of the teachings of Jesus, where all the controversies rage, but the form in which this content is cast. Manifestly, it would be unfair to infer that the author does not hold certain Christological views because he is silent concerning them, and then condemn the book because those views were not defended. This material has previously been presented in the Summer School for Christian Workers of the Auburn (N.Y.) Theological Seminary, in the Southern Assembly at Monteagle, Tenn., in the Eastern Association Summer School at Silver Bay, N.Y., in the Drew Theological Seminary, and in the Newark Community Training School. It is now put into printed form “by request,” and also because it is the author’s sure conviction that our methods of moral and religious education will not be perfected until we have sat at the feet of Jesus—the Master Teacher. The quotations from President G. Stanley Hall indicate that he has helped me to see Jesus as the Great Teacher, though I do not accept his two essential conclusions that the real Christ is psychological and that religion is racially subjective. In a field of scholarship so old, and yet from the standpoint of modern pedagogy so new, may I request readers to favor me with both corrections and suggestions? And you, who at any time have worked with me through portions of this material, please receive this text in your hands with the author’s personal greeting and thanks!
H. H. H.
Leonia, N. J.
Good Friday, 1920.