Himself and who met His fate for that reason. This conception is at bottom identical with Renan's. But the stroke of genius in leaving the gap between eschatological and non-eschatological elements unbridged sets this work, as regards its critical foundation and historical presentment, high above the smooth romance of the latter.
The course of Jesus' life, according to Brandt, was therefore as follows: Jesus was a teacher; not only so, but He took disciples in order to train them to be teachers. "This is in itself sufficient to show there was a period in His life in which His work was not determined by the thought of the immediate nearness of the decisive moment. He sought men, therefore, who might become His fellow-workers. He began to train disciples who, if He did not Himself live to see the Day of the Lord, would be able after His death to carry on the work of educating the people along the lines which He had laid down." "Then there occurred in Judaea an event of which the rumour spread like wildfire throughout Palestine. A prophet arose-a thing which had not happened for centuries-a man who came forward as an envoy of God; and this prophet proclaimed the immediate coming of the reign of God: 'Repent that ye may escape the wrath of God.'" The Baptist's great sermon on repentance falls, according to Brandt, in the last period of the life of Jesus. We must assume, he thinks, that before John came forward in this dramatic fashion he had been a teacher, and at that period of his life had numbered Jesus among his pupils. Nevertheless his life previous to his public appearance must have been a rather obscure one. When he suddenly launched out into this eschatological preaching of repentance "he seemed like an Elijah who had long ago been rapt away from the earth and now appeared once more."
From this point onwards Jesus had to concentrate His activity, for the time was short. If He desired to effect anything and so far as possible to make the people, before the coming of the end, obedient to the �will of God, He must make Jerusalem the starting-point of His work. "Only from this central position, and only with the help of an authority which had at its disposal the whole synagogal system, could He effect within a short time much, perhaps all, of what was needful. So He determined on journeying to Jerusalem with this end in view, and with the fixed resolve there to carry into effect the will of God."
The journey to Jerusalem was not therefore a pilgrimage of death. "So long as we are obliged to take the Gospels as a true reflection of the history of Jesus we must recognise with Weizsacker that Jesus did not go to Jerusalem in order to be put to death there, nor did He go to keep the Feast. Both suppositions are excluded by the vigour of his action in Jerusalem, and the bright colours of hope with which the picture of that period was painted
