God and Son of Man which the Church of Christ has always confessed and a critical investigation of the question how far the details of His life have been accurately preserved by tradition, and how they are to be historically interpreted. That means that Weiss is going to cover up the difficulties and stumbling-blocks with the mantle of Christian charity which he has woven out of the most plausible of the traditional sophistries. As a dialectical performance on these lines his Life of Jesus rivals in importance any except Schleierroacher's. On points of detail there are many interesting historical observations. When all is said, one can only regret that so much knowledge and so much ability have been expended in the service of so hopeless a cause.
What was the net result of these liberal Lives of Jesus? In the first place the clearing up of the relation between John and the Synoptics. That seems surprising, since the chief representatives of this school, Holtzmann, Schenkel, Weizsacker, and Hase, took up a mediating position on this question, not to speak of Beyschlag and Weiss, for whom the possibility of reconciliation between the two lines of tradition is an accepted datum for ecclesiastical and apologetic reasons. But the very attempt to hold the position made clear its inherent untenability. The defence of the combination of the two traditions exhausted itself in the efforts of these its critical champions, just as the acceptance of the supernatural in history exhausted itself in the-to judge from the approval of the many-victorious struggle against Strauss. In the course of time Weizsacker, like Holtzmann, [1] advanced to the rejection of any possibility of reconciliation, and gave up the Fourth Gospel as an historical source. The second demand of Strauss's first Life of Jesus was now-at last-conceded by scientific criticism.
That does not mean, of course, that no further attempts at reconciliation appeared thenceforward. Was ever a street so closed by a cordon that one or two isolated individuals did not get through? And to dodge through needs, after all, no special
- ↑ Holtzmann, Neutestamentliche Einleitung, 2nd ed., 1886. Weizsacker declares himself in the Theologische Literaturzeitung for 1882, No. 23, and Das apostolische Zeitalter, 2nd ed., 1890. Hase and Schenkel accepted this position in principle, but were careful to keep open a line of retreat. Towards the end of the 'seventies the rejection of the Fourth Gospel as an historical source was almost universally recognised in the critical camp. It is taken for granted in the Life of Jesus by Karl Wittichen (Jena, 1876, 397 pp.), which might be reckoned one of the most clearly conceived works of this kind based on the Marcan hypothesis if its arrangement were not so bad. It is partly in the form of a commentary, inasmuch as the presentment of the life takes the form of a discussion of sixty-seven sections. The detail is very interesting. It makes an impression of naivete when we find a series of sections grouped under the title, "The establishment of Christianity in Galilee." No stress is laid on the significance of Jesus' journey to the north. Wittichen, also, misled by Luke, asserts, just as Weisse had done, that Jesus had worked in Judaea for some time prior to the triumphal entry.
