Wolfgang Kirchbach. Was lehrte Jesus? Zwei Urevangelien. (What was the teaching of Jesus? Two Primitive Gospels.) Berlin, 1897. 248 pp. 2nd revised and greatly enlarged edition, 1902, 339 pp.
Albert Dulk. Der Irrgang des Lebens Jesu. In geschichtlicher Auifassung dar- gestellt. (The Error of the Life of Jesus. An Historical View.) 1st part, 1884, 395 pp.; 2nd part, 1885, 302 pp.
Paul de Regla. Jesus von Nazareth. German by A. Just. Leipzig, 1894. 435 pp.
Ernest Bosc. La Vie esoterique de Jesus de Nazareth et les origines orientales da christianisme. (The secret Life of Jesus of Nazareth, and the Oriental Origins of Christianity.) Paris, 1902.
THE IDEAL LIFE OF JESUS AT THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY is the Life which Heinrich Julius Holtzmann did not write-but which can be pieced together from his commentary on the Synoptic Gospels and his New Testament Theology. [1] It is ideal because, for one thing, it is unwritten, and arises only in the idea of the reader by the aid of his own imagination, and, for another, because it is traced only in the most general outline. What Holtzmann gives us is a sketch of the public ministry, a critical examination of details, and a full account of the teaching of Jesus. He provides, therefore, the plan and the prepared building material, so that any one can carry out the construction in his own way and on his own responsibility. The cement and the mortar are not provided by Holtzmann; every one must decide for himself how he will combine the teaching and the life, and arrange the details within each.
We may recall the fact that Weisse, too, the other founder of the Marcan hypothesis, avoided writing a Life of Jesus, because the difficulty of of fitting the details into the ground-plan appeared to him so great, not to say insuperable. It is just this modesty which constitutes his greatness and Holtzmann's. Thus the Marcan hypothesis ends, as it had begun, with a certain historical scepticism.[2]
- ↑ Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, Handkommentar. Die Synoptiker. 1st ed., 1889; 2nd ed., 1901. Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie, 1896, vol. i.
- ↑ In the Catholic Church the study of the Life of Jesus has remained down to the present day entirely free from scepticism. The reason of that is, that in principle it hasremained at a pre-Straussian standpoint, and does not venture upon an unreserved spplication of historical considerations either to the miracle question or to the Johannine question, and naturally therefore resigns the attempt to take count of and explain the great historical problems. We may name the following Lives of Jesus produced by German Catholic writers:- Joh. Nep. Sepp, Das Leben Jesu Christi. Regensburg, 1843-1846. 7 vols., 2nd ed., 1853-1862. Peter Schegg, Sechs Bucher des Lebens Jesu. (The Life of Jesus in Six Books.) Freiburg, 1874-1875. c. 1200 pp. Joseph Grimm, Das Leben Jesu. Wurzburg, 2nd ed., 1890-1903. 6 vols. Richard von Kralik, Jesu Leben und Werk. Kempten-Nurnberg, 1904. 481 pp. W. Capitaine, Jesus von Nazareth. Regensburg, 1905. 192 pp. How narrow are ihe limits within which the Catholic study of the life of Jesus moves even when it aims at scientific treatment, is illustrated by Hermann Schell's Christus (Mainz, 1903. 152 pp.). After reading the forty-two questions with which he introduces his narrative one might suppose that the author was well aware of the bearing of all the historical problems of the life of Jesus, and intended to supply an answer to them. Instead of doing so, however, he adopts as the work proceeds more and more the role of an apologist, not facing definitely either the miracle question or the Johannine question, but gliding over the difficulties by the aid of ingenious headings, so that in the end his book almost takes the form of an explanatory text to the eighty-nine illustrations which adorn the book and make it difficult to read. In France, Renan's work gave the incentive to an extensive Catholic "Life-of- Jesus" literature. We may name the following:- Louis Veuillot, La Vie de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ. Paris, 1864. 509 pp. German by Waldeyer. Koln-Neuss, 1864. 573 pp. H. Wallon, Vie de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ. Paris, 1865. 355 pp. A work which met with a particularly favourable reception was that of Pere Didon, the Dominican, Jesus-Christ, Paris, 1891, 2 vols., vol. i. 483 pp., vol. ii. 469 pp. The German translation is dated 1895. In the same year there appeared a new edition of the "Bitter Sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ" (see above, p. 109 f.) by Katharina Emmerich; the cheap popular edition of the translation of Renan's "Life of Jesus"; and the eighth edition of Strauss's "Life of Jesus for the German People." We may quote from the ecclesiastical Approbation printed at the beginning of Didon's Life of Jesus. "If the author sometimes seems to speak the language of his opponents, it is at once evident that he has aimed at defeating them on their own ground, and he is particularly successful in doing so when he confronts their irreligious a priori theories with the positive arguments of history." As a matter of fact the work is skilfully written, but without a spark of understanding of the historical questions. All honour to Alfred Loisy! (Le Quatrieme Evangile, Paris, 1903, 960 pp.), who takes a clear view on the Johannine question, and denies the existence ot a Johannine historical tradition. But what that means for the Catholic camp may be recognised from the excitement produced by the book and its express condemnation. See also the same writer's L'Evangile et l' Eglise (German translation, Munich, 1904 189 pp.), in which Loisy here and there makes good historical points against Harnack's "What is Christianity?"
