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

istory of the Last Three Years of the Life of Jesus.) 3 vols., 1400

entwarf. (Essay upon the Plan which the Founder of the Christian Religion adopted for the Benefit of Mankind.) 500 pp.

und Characterzüge Jesu. (History of Jesus, with a Deline

e und gemütvolle Leser, 1816. (The History of Jesus for thoughtful and sympathetic rea

n Gottes Sohn, der Welt Heiland. Nach Johannes Evangelium. (The Son of God, the Saviour of the World, as portrayed by John's Gospel.) Accompanied by a rule for

by a rationalism less complete, as yet not wholly dissociated from a simple-minded supernaturalism. Its point of view is one at which it is almost impossible for the modern man to place himself. Here, in a single consciousness, ortho

id upon the doctrinal conception of Jesus; at least these writers had no intention of laying hands upon it. Their purpose was simply to gain a clearer view of the course of our Lord's earthly and human life. The theologians who undertook this task thought of themselves as merel

it is a firmly established principle that the teaching of Jesus, and religion in general, hold t

. All of them make it a principle to lose no opportunity of reducing the number of miracles; where they can explain a miracle by natural causes, they do not hesitate for a moment. But the deliberate rejection of all miracles, the elimination of everything supernatural which int

ing for is not the past, but itself in the past. For it, the problem of the life of Jesus is solved the moment it succeeds in bringing Jesus near to its o

led to drive it from the field. A seventh edition of Hess's Life of Jesus appeared as late as 1823; while a fifth edition of Reinhard's work saw the light in 1830. And when Strauss struck the death-blow of out-and-out rationalism, the half-and-half rationalism did not perish with it, but al

f respect for the language of Jesus. He must speak in a rational and modern fashion, and accordingly all His utterances are reproduced in a style of the most polite modernity. None of the speeches are allowed to stand as they were spoken; they are t

the pioneers of the historical study of His life. The defects of their work in regard to aesthetic feeling and historical grasp are outwei

uminster at Zurich, and later "Antistes," president, of the cantonal synod. In this capacity he guided the destinies of the Church in Zurich safely

ed upon a harmonizing combination of the four Gospels. The matter of the Synoptic narratives is, as in all the Lives of Jesus prior to S

must be careful, however, not to prize miracles for their own sake, but to look primarily to their ethical teaching. It was, he remarks, the mistake of the Jews to regard all the acts of Jesus solely from the point of view of the

the certainty of the general resurrection of the dead. The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness was a stratagem of Satan by which he hoped to disco

ake and were drowned; while by this accommodation to the fixed idea of the demoniacs, Jesus effected their cure. Perhaps, too, Hess conjectures, the Lord desired to test the Gadarenes, and to see whether they would attach greater

is destroyed. The parables are barely recognisable, swathed, as they are, in the mummy-wrappings of his paraphrase; and in most cases their meaning is completely travestied by the ethical or historic

sewhere receive comfort and consolation." The question addressed by the Pharisees to John the Baptist, and his answer, are given dialogue-wise, in fustian of this kind:-The Pharisees: "We are directed to enquire of you, in the name of our president, who you profess to be? As people are at present expecting the Messiah, and seem not indisposed to accept you in that capacity, we are the more anxious that you should declare yourself with regard to your vocation and person." [pg 031] John: "The conclusion might have been drawn from my discourses that I was not th

s disciples, so that he had the foremost place among them. Then Jesus threw His arm round the boy and pressed him tenderly to His breast. The disciples looked on in astonishment, wondering what this meant. Then He explained to them," etc. In these expansions Hess does not always escape th

1753. In 1792, after he had worked for fourteen years as Docent in Witte

his celebrated "System of Christian Ethics" (5 vols., 1788-1815) he makes copious use of them. His sermons-they fill thirty-five volumes, and in their day were regarded as models-show some power and depth of thought, but are all cast in the same mould. He seems to have been haunted by a fear that it mi

ew miracles into his narrative, and the definition by which he disintegrates the conception of miracle from within leaves no doubt as to his own position. What he says is this: "All that which we call miraculous and supernatural is to be understood as only relatively so, and implies nothing further than an obvious exceptio

der to prove His uniqueness, Reinhard has to show that His plan for the welfare of mankind was something incomparably higher than anything which hero or sage has ever striven for. Reinhard makes the first attempt to give an account of the teaching of

sayings which assert the prerogative of Israel, and he discusses them at length. He finds the solution in the assumption that Jesus in His own

an was entirely independent of politics. He never based His claims upon His Davidic descent. This was, indeed, the reason why He held aloof from His family. Even the entry into Jerusalem had no Messianic significance. His plan was so entirely non-political that He would, on the contrary, have welcomed the severance of all connexion between the state and religion, in order to avoid the risk of a conflict b

and religion into the closest connexion. "The law of love was the indissoluble bond by which Jesus for ever united morality with religion." "Moral instructi

r of its influence. Then an improvement of the social condition of mankind must be introduced, since the level of morality depends upon social conditions. Jes

was to maintain its freedom by the aid of religion, and religion was not to be withdrawn fr

tics of a religion which is to be the religion of all ma

hat, prior to Jesus, no great man of antiquity had devised a plan of beneficence of a scope commensurate wit

-who that knows anything of the human mind can conceive these two as united in a single soul?" But Jesus was no visionary enthusiast. "With what calmness, self-mastery, and cool determination does He think out and pursue His divine purpose?" By the truths which He revealed and declared to be divine communications He [pg 034] did not desire to put pressure upon the human mind, but

suspicion how full of enthusiasm Jesus w

Reinhard accepted? How does he harmonise the symbolical view of Baptism and the Lord's Supper which he here expounds

nswer. For him the one circle of thought revolves freely withi

e lines as that of Reinhard. It is disfigured, however, by a number of lapses of taste, and by

oroughgoing rationalism, "whose would-be helpful explanations are often stranger than the miracles themselves." A certain amount of miracle must be maintained, but no

ch the answer must be "Yes, and No," as in the case of every attempt to classify those men of lonely greatne

d avowed earlier in his "Letters referring to the Study of Theology."21 He grasps this incompatibility, it is true, rather by the aid of poetic, than of critical insight. "Since they cannot be united," he writes in his "Life of Jesus according to John," "they must be left standing independently, each evangelist with his own special merit. Man, Ox, Lion, and Eagle, they advance together, supporting the throne of glory, but they refuse to coalesce i

play, as the circumstances of the time demanded, to Greek ideas. "There was need, in addition to those earlier, purely historical Gospels, of a Gospel

the Graeco-Roman world, and the Evangelist was unwilling "that this Palestinian superstition should become a permanent feature of Christianity, to be a reproach of scoffers or a belief of the foolish." His recording of the raising of Lazarus is, in spite of the silence of the Synoptists, easily explicable. The latter could not yet tell the story "without exposing a family which was s

optic representation. "The Gospel of Mark is not an epitome; it is an original Gospel. What the others have, and he has not, has been added by them, not omitted by h

dly towards the Jews, because Christianity had not yet separated itself from Judaism. Matthew is more hostile towards them because his Gospel was written at a time when Christians had given up the hope of maintaining amicable relations with the Jews and were gro

rth. They are the sacred epic of Jesus the Messiah, and model the history of their hero upon

dduced as evidence for the Gospel; the Gospel is its own evidence. The miracles stand outside the possibility of proof, and belong to mere "Church belief," which ought to lose itself more and more in the pure Gospel. Yet miracles, in a limited sense, are to be accepted on the ground of the historic evidence. To refuse to

d and solved before it should be possible to entertain the hope of forming a really historical conception of the life of Jesus. In reading Herder one is apt to fancy that it would be possible to pass straight on to Strauss. In reality, it was necessary that a very prosaic spirit, Paulus, should intervene, and should attack the question of miracle from a purely historical standpoint, before Strauss could give expression to the ideas of Herder in an effectual way, i.e. in such a way as to produce

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