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

of Jesus, primarily for the use of students.) 1829. 205 pp. This work conta

864. Edited by Rütenik. The edition is based upon a stud

te. Eine Kritik des Schleiermacher'schen Lebens Jesu. (The Christ of Faith an

although at the decisive cases they are content to leave a question-mark instead of offering a solution. They might, in fact, be described as the sceptics of rationalism. In another respect, however, they aim at something beyond the range of rationalism, inasmuch as they end

ioneer like Baur, and he does not meet the present age on the footing of a contemporary, offering it problems raised by him and still unsolved. Even his "Church History," with its twelve editions, has already had its day, although it is still the most brilliantly written work in this de

n 1823. In 1824-1825 he spent eleven months in the fortress of Hohenasperg, where he was confined for taking the part of the Burschenschaften,25 and had leisure for

reconstruct the life of Jesus on a purely historical basis. There is more creative power in it than in almost any of his later works. It manifests already

ion, the fact which is to be retained is that Jesus, in the company of two unknown persons, appeared to the disciples in unaccustomed splendour. Their identification of His companions as Moses and Elias is a conclusion which is not confirmed by Jesus, and owing to the position of the ey

aves open the possibility of miracle. He proceeds somewhat similarly in explaining the raisings from the dead. They can be made intelligible by supposing that they were cases of coma, but it is also possible to look upon them as [pg 060] supernatural. For the two great Johannine miracles, the change of the water into wine and the increase of the loaves, no naturalistic explanation can be admitted. But how unsuccessful is his attempt to make the increas

trance. But the direct impression made by the sources points rather to a supernatural event. Either view is compatible with the Christian faith. "Both the historically possible views-either that the Creator gave new life to a body which was really dead, or that the latent life reawakened in a body which was only seemingly dead-recognise in the resurr

he Johannine miracles as authentic, whereas those of the Synoptists may be regarded as resting upon a misunderstanding on the part of the authors, because they are not reported at first hand, but from tradition. Thus the discrimination of the two lines of Gospel tradition comes to the aid of t

w. The same fate befalls all the incidents in which angels figure, and the miracles at the time of the death of Jesus. He

, the conjecture may be permitted that He from whose religion was to go forth the ideal view of marriage, so foreign to the ideas of antiquity, found in His own time no heart worthy to enter into this covenant with Him." It is on rationalistic lines also that Hase explains the betrayal by Judas. "A pure

of Jesus. In the first He accepted almost without reservation the popular ideas regarding the Messianic age. In consequence, however, of His experience of the practical results of these ideas, He was led to abandon this error, and in the second period He developed His own distinctive views. Here we meet for the first time the idea of two different periods in

remained wedded to the eschatological view. After the death of Jesus this view prevailed so strongly in the primitive community of disciples that they interpolated their expectations into the last discourses of Jesus. According to Hase, the apocalyptic discourse in Matt. xxiv. was originally only a prediction o

s only in moments of enthusiastic admiration, rather than with settled conviction, that even the disciples looked on Him as the Messiah. This indication of the central imp

lue lies in the sphere of dogmatics, not of history. Nowhere, indeed, is it so clear that the great d

rtly because it had to be reconstructed from students' note-books, partly because immediately after Schleiermacher, in 1832, had delivered the course for the last time, it was rendered obsolete by the work of Strauss. For the questions raised by the latter's Life of Jesus, pub

r as he represents it. For him the empirical has simply no existence. A natural psychology is scarcely attempted. He comes to the facts with a ready-made dialectic apparatus and sets his puppets in lively action. Schleierm

ampered with. It is equally necessary to avoid Ebionism which does away with the Divine in Him, and Docetism [pg 063] which destroys His humanity. Schleiermacher loves to make his hearers shudder by po

n the life of Jesus come into view one after another, but none of them is posed or

ntre and there keeps spinning away. You look on fascinated, and before you know it, you are entangled in the web. It is difficult even for a reader who is

ordance with the passage in Daniel. On this Schleiermacher remarks: "I have already said that it is inherently improbable that such a predilection (sc. for the Book of Daniel) would

upon the baptism," he says, "leads either to the Gnostic view that it was only there that the λ?γο? united itself with Jesus, or to the rationalistic view that it

nest-bungling. Nothing new has been added to what he says, and no one else has succeeded in saying it with the same amazing subtlety. It is true, also, that no one else has shown the same skill in concealing how much in the way of miracle he ulti

rely functional nature can be removed by mental influence." But where, on the other hand, the effect produced by Christ lies outside the sphere of human life, the difficulties involved become insoluble. To get rid, in some measure, of these difficulties he makes use of two expedients. In the first place, he admits that in particula

a return to consciousness from a trance-state, or a supernatural restoration to life, thought of as a resurrection. He goes so far as to say that the decision

n order that the bodies might at once be taken down, Christ appeared to be really dead, and this, moreover, although it was contrary to their exp

ion is what really happened was reanimation after apparent death. "If Christ had only eaten to show that He could eat, while He really had no need of nourishment, it would have been a pretence-something docetic. This gives us

ee because He could there enjoy greater privacy and freedom from observation in His intercourse with them. The difference between the present and the past was only that He no longer showed Himself to the world. "It was possible that a movement in favour of an earthly Messia

ut what was seen was incomplete, and has been conjecturally suppl

as if resurrection and reanimation were synonymous terms? Further, is it really true that faith has no interest whatever in the question whether it was as risen from the dead, o

ries. In this respect he simplified matters for himself, as compared with the rationalists, even more than Hase. The miracle at the baptism is only intelligible in the narrative of the Fourth Gospel, where it is not a question of an external occurrence, but of a purely subje

that we have certainly found in these for the most part simple narratives of the last moments of Christ two incidents, such as the rending of the veil of the Temple and the opening of the graves, in reference to which we cannot possibly suppose that they are literal descriptions of act

ind and sea. Here we must suppose either an alter

res on the life of Jesus became so celebrated-enabled dogmatics, thoug

pel that the consciousness of Jesus is truly reflected. In this connexion he expressly remarks that of a progress in the teaching of Jesus, a

s the narrative of an eyewitness and forms an organic whole. The first three Gospels are compilations formed out of various narratives which had arisen independently; their discourses are composite structures, and their presentation of the history is such that one can form no idea of the grouping of events." The "crowded days," such as that of the sermon on the mount and the day of the

ands closer than the others, we may perhaps find the key in the fact that John, too, mentions it as a prevailing opinion in Jerusalem that Jesus was a Galilaean, and that Luke, when he has got to the end of the sections which show skilful arrangement and are united by similarity of subject, gathers all

days at Jerusalem in Mark and Matthew, and has no suspicion that if only a single one of

he infers from the silence of John that it cannot have taken place. "The other Evangelists," he explains, "give us an account of a sudden depression and deep distress of spirit which fell upon Jesus, and which He admitted to His disciples, and they tell us how He sought relief from it in prayer, and afterwards recovered His serenity and resolution. John pa

t possible to write a Life of Jesus. It is, therefore, not by accide

g