with such overmastering power that the just claims of that which is actual and historical cannot always secure the attention which is their due. In Philo's pupil, John, we must look, not for history, but for art.
The Fourth Gospel is in fact a work of art. This was now for the first time appreciated by one who was himself an artist. Schleiermacher, indeed, had at an earlier period taken up the aesthetic standpoint in considering this Gospel. But he had used it as an apologist, proceeding to exalt the artistic truth which he rightly recognised into historic reality, and his critical sense failed him, precisely because he was an aesthete and an apologist, when he came to deal with the Fourth Gospel. Now, however, there comes forward a true artist, who shows that the depth of religious and intellectual insight which Tholuck and Neander, in opposing Strauss, had urged on behalf of the Fourth Gospel, is�Christian art.
In Bauer, however, the aesthete is at the same time a critic. Although much in the Fourth Gospel is finely "felt," like the opening scenes referring to the Baptist and to Jesus, which Bauer groups together under the heading "The Circle of the Expectant," yet his art is by no means always perfect. The author who conceived those discourses, of which the movement consists in a kind of tautological return upon itself, and who makes the parables trail out into dragging allegories, is no perfect artist. "The parable of the Good Shepherd," says Bauer, "is neither simple, nor natural, nor a true parable, but a metaphor, which is, nevertheless, much too elaborate for a metaphor, is not clearly conceived, and, finally, in places shows much too clearly the skeleton of reflection over which it is stretched."
Bauer treats, in his work of 1840, [1] the Fourth Gospel only. The Synoptics he deals with only in a quite incidental fashion, "as opposing armies make demonstrations in order to provoke the enemy to a decisive conflict."
He breaks off at the beginning of the story of the passion, because here it would be necessary to bring in the Synoptic parallels. "From the distant heights on which the Synoptic forces have taken up a menacing position, we must now draw them down into the plain; now comes the pitched battle between them and the Fourth Gospel, and the question regarding the historical character of that which we have found to be the ultimate basis of the last Gospel, can now at length be decided."
If, in the Gospel of John, no smallest particle could be found which was unaffected by the creative reflection of the author, how will it stand with the Synoptists?
When Bauer broke off his work upon John in this abrupt way�
- ↑ Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes.
