of John has not the character of an essentially historical source "being, rather, a brilliant subjective portrait," "a didactic, quite as much as an historical work," he produces his Life of Jesus by "combining and mortising together Synoptic and Johannine elements." The same uncertainty prevails in regard to the recognition of the definitely eschatological character of Jesus' system of ideas. Beyschlag gives a very large place to eschatology, so that in order to combine the spiritual with the eschatological view his Jesus has to pass through three stages of development. In the first He preaches the Kingdom as something future, a supernatural event which was to be looked forward to, much as the Baptist preached it. Then the response which was called forth on all hands by His preaching led Him to believe that the Kingdom was in some sense already present, "that the Father, while He delays the outward manifestation of the Kingdom, is causing it to come even now in quiet and unnoticed ways by a humble gradual growth, and the great thought of His parables, which dominates the whole middle period of His public life, the resemblance of the Kingdom to mustard seed or leaven, comes to birth in His mind." As His failure becomes more and more certain, "the centre of gravity of His thought is shifted to the World beyond the grave, and the picture of a glorious return to conquer and to judge the world rises before Him."
The peculiar interweaving of Synoptic and Johannine ideas leads to the result that, between the two, Beyschlag in the end forms no clear conception of the eschatology, and makes Jesus think in a half-Johannine, half-Synoptic fashion. "It is a consequence of Jesus' profound conception of the Kingdom of God as something essentially growing that He regards its final perfection not as a state of rest, but rather as a living movement, as a process of becoming, and since He regards this process as a cosmic and supernatural process in which history finds its consummation, and yet as arising entirely out of the ethical and historical process, He combines elements from each into the same prophetic conception." An eschatology of this kind is not matter for history.
In the acceptance of the "miracles" Beyschlag goes to the utmost limits allowed by criticism; in considering the possibility of one or another of the recorded raisings from the dead he even finds himself within the borders of rationalist territory.
Whether Bernhard Weiss's [1] is to be numbered with the liberal
- ↑ Bernhard Weiss, Das Leben Jesu. 2 vols. Berlin, 1882. See also Das Markusevangelium, 1872; Das Matthausevangelium, 1876; and the Lehrbach der neutestamentlichen Theologie, 5th ed., 1888. Bernhard Weiss was born in 1827 at Konigsberg, where he qualified as Privat-Docent in 1852. In 1863 he went as Ordinary Professor to Kiel, and was called to Berlin in the same capacity in 1877. Among the distinctly liberal Lives of Jesus of an earlier date, that of W. Kruger- Velthusen (Elberfeld, 1872, 271 pp.) might be mentioned if it were not so entirely uncritical. Although the author does not hold the Fourth Gospel to be apostolic he has no hesitation in making use of it as an historical source. There is more sentiment than science, too, in the work of M. G. Weitbrecht, Das Leben Jesu. nach den vier Evangelien, 1881. A weakness in the treatment of the Johannine question and a want of clearness on some other points disfigures the three-volume Life of Jesus of the Paris professor, E. Stapfer, which is otherwise marked by much acumen and real depth of feeling. Vol. i, Jesus-Christ avant son ministere (Fischbacher, Paris, 1896); vol. ii. Jesus-Christ pendant son ministere (1897) ; vol. iii. La Mart et la resurrection de Jesus-Christ (1898). F. Godet writes of "The Life of Jesus before His Public Appearance" (German translation by M. Reineck, Leben Jesu vor seinem dffentlichen Auftreten. Hanover, 1897). G. Langin founds his Der Christus der Ceschichte und sein Christentum (The Christ of History and His Christianity) on a purely Synoptic basis. 2 vols., 1897-1898. The English Life of Jesus Christ, by James Stalker, D.D. (now Professor of . rc" History in the United Free Church College, Aberdeen), passed through numberless editions (German, 1898; Tubingen, 4th ed., 1901). Very pithy and interesting is Dr. Percy Gardner's Exploratio Evangelica. A Brief Examination of the Basis and Origin of Christian Belief. 1899; 2nd ed, 1907. A work which is free from all compromise is H. Ziegler's Der geschichtliche Christus (The Historical Christ). 1891. For this reason the five lectures, delivered in Liegnitz, out of which it is composed, attracted such unfavourable attention that the Ecclesiastical Council took proceedings against the author. (See the Christliche Welt, 1891, pp. 563-568, 874-877.)
