The Quest of the Historical Jesus / A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede

von Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Braunschweig, 1778, 276 pp. (The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples. A further

vom Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger. (Reply to the anonymous Fragments, especial

matter is not, after all, of much importance. If a difficulty arises in regard to the Holy Scripture and we cannot solve it, we must just let it alone." When the Lutheran theologians began to consider the question of harmonising the events, things were still worse. Osiander (1498-1552), in his "Harmony of the Gospels," maintained the principle that if an event is recorded more than once in the Gospels, in different connexions, it happened

who, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, had become the most powerful potentate in Hindustan. In the seventeenth century the Persian text was brought to Europe by a merchant, and was translated into Latin by Louis de Dieu, a theologian of the Reformed Church, whose intention in publi

f Jesus by Johann Jakob Hess15 (1741-1828), written from the standpoint of the older rationalism, but it retains so much supernaturalism and follows so

ifetime, all of them asserting the claims of rational religion as against the faith of the Church; one of them, for example, being an essay on "The Leading Truths of Natural Religion." His magnum opus, however, which laid the historic basis of his attacks, was only circulated, during his lifetime, among his acquaintances,

e titles of Fragment

ation of

of Reason i

tion which all men should hav

g of the Israelites

he Old Testament were not w

e story of th

Jesus and Hi

It exposes all the impossibilities of the narrative in the Priestly Codex, and all the inconsistencies which arise from the combination of vari

nd terse, pointed and epigrammatic-the language of a man who is not "engaged in literary composition" but is wholly concerned with the facts. At times, however, it rises to heights of passionate feeling, and then it is as though the fires of a volcano were painting lurid pictures upon

h the sources, had undertaken the criticism of the tradition. It was Lessing's greatness that he grasped the significance of this criticism, and felt that it must lead either to the destruction or to the re-casting of the idea of revelation. He recognised that the introduction of the historical e

nts had carelessly forgotten. In [pg 016] the course of the night it would have burned down, and set fire to the stairs. To make sure that the fire should break out in the day-time, I threw some straw upon it. The flames burst out at the sky-light, the fire-engines came hurrying up, and the fire, which in the night might have been dangerous, was promptly extinguished.' 'Why did you not yoursel

ry walls, and to summon to the defence "some one who should be as nearly the ideal defender of religion as the Fragmentist was the ideal assailant." Once, with prophetic insight into the

the teaching of the Apostles in their writings and what Jesus Himself in His own lifetime proclaimed and taught." What belongs to the preaching of Jesus is clearly to be re

o have it understood in its known and customary sense. That means that Jesus took His stand within the Jewish religion, and accepted its Messianic expectations without in any way correcti

hism and confession of the Church at its commencement consisted of a single phrase. Belief was not diffi

om of God, it was no wonder that in a few days, nay in a few hours, some thousand

lly think of the customary meaning of the term and the hopes which attached themselves to it. "The purpose of sending out such propagandists could only be that the J

hat, under the leadership of Jesus, the Kingdom of Messiah was about to be brought in. For them there was no difficulty in accepting the belief that He was the Messiah, the Son of God, for this belief did not involve anything me

enlighten us, for they presuppose a knowledge of the conception. "If we could not gather from the writings of the Jews some further information as to

lar dogmatic conceptions, and go out into a wholly Jewish world of thought. Only those who carry the teachings of the catechism back into the preaching of the Jewish Messiah will arrive at the idea t

ice in the time of the coming Kingdom; a [pg 018] new and deeper morality must come into being. This demand is the only point in which the preaching of Jesus went beyond the ideas of His contemporaries. But this new morality does not do away with the Law, for He explains it as a

to the Gentiles the coming of the Kingdom of God. Evidently, therefore, His purpose did not embrace them. Had it been otherwise, t

en Jesus, but also because it is universalistic in outlook, and because it implies the doctrine of the Trinity and, consequently, the metaphysical Divine Sonship of Jesus. In this it is inconsistent with the earliest traditions r

we cannot be sure about the origin of Baptism, though we can be sure of its meaning. Baptism in the name of Jesus signified only that Jesus was the Messiah. "For the only change which the teac

was passing away, and was intended "as an anticipatory celebration of the Passover of the New Kingdom." A Lord's Suppe

made known, even in cases where they could not possibly be kept hidden, "with the sole purpose of making people more eager to talk of them." Other miracles, however, have no basis in fact, but owe their place in the narrative to the feeling that the miracle-stories of the Old Testament must be repeated in the case of Jesus, but on a grander scale. He did no really miraculous works; otherwise, the demands for a sign wo

sciples and said to them: "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes" (Matt. x. 23). He thought that, at the prea

, bid defiance to the authorities. In the temple He arrogates to Himself supreme power, and in glowing words calls for an open revolt against the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees, on the ground that they have shut the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven and forbidden others to go in. There is no doubt, now, that He

e people became involuntary. Before His arrest He was overwhelmed with dread, and on the cross He closed His life with the words "My God! my God! why hast Thou forsaken me?" "This avowal cannot, without violence, be interpreted otherwise than as [pg 020] me

places in the eyes of all the world as the friends and ministers of the Messiah, as the rulers of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus never disabused them of this sensuous hope, but, on the contrary, confirmed them in it. When He put an end to the quarrel about pre-

ays: "Truly I say unto you there are some standing here who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." There is no justificatio

ain, otherwise they would not have so played the coward at His death, nor have been so astonished at His "resurrection." The three or four sayings referr

ansferred everything to the supernatural sphere. Appearing first in Daniel, this expectation can still be traced in the Apocalypses, in Justin's "Dialogue with Trypho," and in certain Rabbinic sayings. According to these-Reimarus makes use especially of the statements of Trypho-the Messiah is to appear twice; once in human lowliness, the second time upon the clouds of heaven. When the first [pg 021]

nd another ventures to slip out. They learn that no judicial search is being made for them." Then they consider what is to be done. They did not take kindly to the idea of returning to their old haunts; on their journeyings the companions of the Messiah had forgotten how to work. They

of the Messiah, and while awaiting the future glory, would share their possessions with them. So they stole the body of Jesus and hid it, and proclaimed to all the world tha

been able to plan this fraud and organise their communistic fellowship. But, as it was, the new society was not even subjected to any annoyance in consequence of t

eople off somehow or other. The author of 2 Peter [pg 022] has a much clearer notion of what he would be at, and undertakes to restore the confidence of Christendom once for all with the sophism of the thousand years which are in the sight of God as one day, ignoring the fact that in the promise the reckoning was by man's years, not by God's. "Nevertheless it served the turn of the Apostles so well with those simple early Christians, that after the first believers had been bemused with it, and the period originally fix

our Christianity rests upon a fraud. In view of this fact, what is the evidential value of any miracle, even if it could be held to be authentic? "No miracle would prove that two and two make five, or that a circle has four angles; and no miracles, however numerous, could remove a contradiction which lies on the surface of the teachings and records of Christianity." Nor is t

be a proof that the Parousia had really taken place at the time for

t we should recognise a historical performance of no mean order in this piece of Deistic polemics. [pg 023] His work is perhaps the most splendid achievement in the whole course of the historical investigation of the life of Jesus, for he was the first to grasp the fact that the world of thought in which Jesus moved was essentially eschatological. T

f this fundamental error. It was, of course, a mere makeshift hypothesis to derive the beginnings of Christianity from an imposture. Historical science was not at that time sufficiently advanced to lead even the man who had divined the fundamentally

rk the thesis is ignored or obscured that Jesus, as a historical personality, is to be regarded, not as the founder of a new religion, but as the final product of the eschatological and

as the first, after eighteen centuries of misconception, to have an inkling of what eschatology really was. Then theology lost sight of it again, and it was not until after the lapse of more than a hundred years that it came in view of eschatology once more, now in its true form, so far as that can be historically determined, and only after it had been led astray, almo

ations in order to represent the actual movement of the history. In so doing he made the mistake of placing them in consecutive order, ascribing to Jesus the political Son-of-David conception, and to the Apostles, after His death, the apocalyptic system based on Daniel, instead of superimposing one upon the other in such a w

ngdom of God), in conjunction with the great and rapid success of His preaching constituted a problem, a

the law, and the process by which the disciples came to take up a freer attitude, was grasped and explained by him so accurately that modern

creation, in consequence of events and circumstances which added something to that preaching which it did not previously contain; and that Baptism and the Lord

al and literary criticism. He felt that merely to emphasise the part played by eschatology would not suffice, but that it was necessary to assume a creative element in the tradition, to which he ascribed the miracles, the stories which turn on the [pg 025] fulfilment of Messianic

espite the rocks that encumber its course and the windings of its valley, finds its way inevitably to the sea. No erudition can supply the place of this historical instinct, but erudition sometimes serves a useful purpose, inasmuch as it produces in its possessors the pleasing belief that they are historians, and thus secures their services for the cause of history. In truth they are at best merely doing the preliminary spade-work of history, collecting fo

and to cause the artificial to be preferred to the natural. And this happens not only with those who deliberately shut their minds against new impressions, but also with those whose purpose

stianity, was urged to do away with the offence. As Origen of yore with Celsus, so Semler takes Reimarus sentence by sentence, in such a way that if his work were lost it could be recovered from the refutation. The fact was that Semler had nothing in the nature of a complete or well-

is historically so certain that the Fragmentist's attack must inevitably be defeated at this point, because he takes account only of the sensuous representation." But his attack was not defeated. What happened was that, owing to the respect in which Semler was held, and the absolute incapacity of contemporary theology to overtake the long stride forward made by Reimarus, his work was neglected, and the stimulus which it was capable of imparting failed to take effect. He had no predecessors; neither had he any disciples. His work is one of those supremely great works which pass and leave no trace, because they are before their time; to which later generati

e future historical treatment of the life of Jesus breaks off with a sudd

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