Marcan tradition. Scarcely ever has a description of the life of Jesus exercised so irresistible an influence as that short outline-it embraces scarcely twenty pages-with which Holtzmann closes his examination of the Synoptic Gospels. This chapter became the creed and catechism of all who handled the subject during the following decades. The treatment of the life of Jesus had to follow the lines here laid down until the Marcan hypothesis was delivered from its bondage to that a priori view of the development of Jesus. Until then any one might appeal to the Marcan hypothesis, meaning thereby only that general view of the inward and outward course of development in the life of Jesus, and might treat the remainder of the Synoptic material how he chose, combining with it, at his pleasure, material drawn from John. The victory, therefore, belonged, not to the Marcan hypothesis pure and simple, but to the Marcan hypothesis as psychologically interpreted by a liberal theology.
The points of distinction between the Weissian and the new interpretation are as follows:-Weisse is sceptical as regards the detail; the new Marcan hypothesis ventures to base conclusions even upon incidental remarks in the text. According to Weisse there were not distinct periods of success and failure in the ministry of Jesus; the new Marcan hypothesis confidently affirms this distinction, and goes so far as to place the sojourn of Jesus in the parts beyond Galilee under the heading "Flights and Retirements."[1] The earlier Marcan hypothesis ex- pressly denies that outward circumstances influenced the resolve of Jesus to die; according to the later, it was the opposition of the people, and the impossibility of carrying out His mission on other lines which forced Him to enter on the path of suffering.[2] The Jesus of Weisse's view has
- ↑ Holtzmann, Kommentar zu den Synoptikern, 1889, p. 184. The form of the expression (Fluchtwege und Reisen) is derived from Keim.
- ↑ "Thus the course of Jesus' life hastened forward to its tragic close, a close which was foreseen and predicted by Jesus Himself with ever-growing clearness as the sole possible close, but also that which alone was worthy of Himself, and which was necessary as being foreseen and predetermined in the counsel of God. The hatred of the Pharisees and the indifference of the people left from the first no other prospect open. That hatred could not but be called forth in the fullest measure by the ruthless severity with which Jesus exposed all that it was and implied - a heart in which there was no room for love, a morality inwardly riddled with decay, an outward show of virtue, a hypocritical arrogance. Between two such unyielding opponents-a man who, to all appearance, aimed at using the Messianic expectations of the people for his own ends, and a hierarchy as tenacious of its claims and as sensitive to their infringement as any that has ever existed-it was certain that the breach must soon become irreparable. It was easy to foresee, too, that even in Galilee only a minority of the people would dare to face with Him the danger of such a breach. There was only one thing that could have averted the death sentence which had been early determined upon-a series of vigorous, unambiguous demonstrations on the part of the people. In order to provoke such demonstrations Jesus would have needed, if only for the moment, to take into His service the popular, powerful, inflammatory Messianic ideas, or rather, would have needed to place Himself at their service. His refusal to enter, by so much as a single step, upon this course, which from any ordinary point of view of human policy would have been legitimate, because the only practicable one, was the sole sufficient and all-explaining cause of His destruction."-Holtzmann, Die synoptischen Evangelien, 1863, pp. 485, 486.
