Wieseler,[1] Lange,[2] and Ewald,[3] maintain the same point of view, only that their defence is usually much less skilful.
The only writer who really in some measure enters into the difficulties is Ammon. He, indeed, is fully conscious of the difference, and thinks we cannot rest content with merely recognising it, but must find a solution, even if rather a forced one, "by subordinating the indefinite chronological data of the Synoptists, of whom, after all, only one was, or could have been, an eyewitness, to the ordered narrative of John." The fourth Evangelist makes so brief a reference to the Galilaean period because it was in accordance with his plan to give more prominence to the discourses of Jesus in the Temple and His dialogues with the Scribes as compared to the parables and teaching given to the people. The cleansing of the Temple falls at the outset of Jesus' ministry; Jesus begins His Messianic work in Jerusalem by this action of making an end of the unseemly chaffering in the court of the Temple. The question regarding the relative authenticity of the reports is decisively settled by a comparison of the two accounts of
- ↑ Chronologische Synapse der vier Evangelien. (Chronological Synopsis of the four Gospels.) By Karl Georg Wieseler. Hamburg, 1843. Wieseler was born in 1813 at Altencelle (Hanover), and was Professor successively at Giittingen, Kiel, and Greifswald. He died in 1883.
- ↑ Johann Peter Lange, Pastor in Duisburg, afterwards Professor at Zurich in place of Strauss. Das Leben Jesu. 5 vols., 1844-1847.
- ↑ Georg Heinrich August Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel. (History of the People of Israel.) 7 vols. Gottingen, 1843-1859; 3rd ed., 1864-1870. Fifth vol., Geschichte Christus' und seiner Zeit. (History of Christ and His Times.) 1855; 2nd ed., 1857. Ewald was born in 1803 at Gottingen, where in 1827 he was appointed Professor of Oriental Languages. Having made a protest against the repeal of the fundamental law of the Hanoverian Constitution he was removed from his office and went to Tubingen, first as Professor of philology; in 1841 he was transferred to the theological faculty. In 1848 he returned to Gottingen. When, in 1866, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the King of Prussia, he was compulsorily retired, and, in consequence of imprudent expressions of opinion, was also deprived of the right to lecture. The town of Hanover chose him as its representative in the North German and in the German Reichstag, where he sat among the Guelph opposition, in the middle of the centre party. He died in 1875 at Gottingen. His contributions to New Testament studies were much inferior to his Oriental and Old Testament researches. His Life of Jesus, in particular, is worthless, in spite of the Old Testament and Oriental learning with which it was furnished forth. He lays great stress upon making the genitive of "Christus" not "Christi," but, according to German inflection, "Christus'."
