Karl FHodrlch Bahrdt. Briefe tiber die Bibel im Volkston. Eine Wochenschrift von einem Prediger auf dem Lande. (Popular Letters about the Bible. A weekly paper by a country clergyman. ) J. Fr. Dost, Halle, 1782. 816 pp.
AusfUhrung des Plans und Zwecks Jesu. In Briefen an Wahrheit suchende Leser. (An Explanation of the Plans and Aims of Jesus. In letters addressed to readers who seek the truth.) 11 vols., embracing 3000 pp. August Mylius, Berlin, 1784-1792. This work is a sequel to the Popular Letters about the Bible.
Die siimtlichen Reden Jesu aus den Evangelisten ausgezogen. (The Whole of the Discourses of Jesus, extracted from the Gospels. ) Berlin, 1786.
Karl Heinrieh Ventwinl. NatUrliche Geschichte des grossen Propheten von Nazareth. (A Non-supernatural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth.) Bethlehem (Copenhagen), ist ed., 1800-1802; 2nd ed., 1806. 4 vols., embracing 2700 pp. The work appeared anonymously. The description given below is based on the 2nd ed. , which shows dependence, in some of the exegetical details, upon the then recently published commentaries of Paulus.
It is strange to notice how often in the history of our subject a few imperfectly equipped free-lances have attacked and attempted to carry the decisive positions before the ordered ranks of professional theology have pushed their advance to these decisive points.
Thus, it was the fictitious "Lives" of Bahrdt and Venturini which, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, first attempted to apply, with logical consistency, a nonsupernatural interpretation to the miracle stories of the Gospel. Further, these writers were the first who, instead of contenting themselves with the simple reproduction of the successive sections of the Gospel narrative, endeavoured to grasp the inner connexion of cause and effect in the events and experiences of the life of Jesus. Since they found no such connexion indicated in the Gospels, they had to supply it for themselves. The particular form which their explanation takes — ^the hypothesis of a secret society of which Jesus is the tool — ^is, it is true, rather a sorry makeshift. Yet, in a sense, these Lives of Jesus, for all their colouring of fiction, are the first which deserve the name. The rationalists, and even Paulus, confine themselves to describing the teaching of Jesus; Bahrdt and Venturini make a bold attempt to paint the portrait of Jesus Himself. It is
not surprising that their portraiture is at once crude an<l fantastic, like the earliest attempts of art to represent the human figure in living movement.
Karl Friedrich Bahrdt was bom in 1741 at Bischofswerda. Endowed with brilliant abilities, he made, owing to a bad upbringing and an undisciplined sensuous nature, a miserable failure. After being first Catechist and afterwards Professor Extraordinary of Sacred Philology at Leipzig, he was, in 1766, requested to resign on account of scandalous life. After various adventures, and after holding for a time a professorship at Giessen, he received under Frederick's minister Zedlitz authorisation to lecture at Halle. There he lectured to nearly nine hundred students who were attracted by his inspiring eloquence. The government upheld him, in spite of his serious failings, with the double motive of annoying the faculty and maintaining the freedom of learning. After the death of Frederick the Great, Bahrdt had to resign his post, and took to keeping an inn at a vineyard near Halle. By ridiculing WoUner's edict, he brought on himself a year of confinement in a fortress. He died in disrepute, in 1792.
Bahrdt had begun as an orthodox cleric. In Halle he gave up his belief in revelation, and endeavoured to explain religion on the ground of reason. To this period belong the "Popular Letters about the Bible," which were afterwards continued in the further series, "An Explanation of the Plans and Aims of Jesus."
His treatment of the life of Jesus has been too severely censured. The work is not without passages which show a real depth of feeling, especially in the continually recurring explanations regarding the relation of belief in miracle to true faith, in which the actual description of the life of Jesus lies embedded. And the remarks about the teaching of Jesus are not always commonplace. But the paraphernalia of dialogues of portentous length make it, as a whole, formless and inartistic. The introduction of a galaxy of imaginary characters — Haram, Schimah, Avel, Limmah, and the like — is nothing less than bewildering.
Bahrdt finds the key to the explanation of the life of Jesus in the appearance in the Gospel narrative of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. They are not disciples of Jesus, but belong to the upper classes; what r61e, then, can they have played in the life
of Jesus, and how came they to intercede on His behalf? They were Essenes. This Order had secret members in all ranks of society, even in the Sanhedrin. It had set itself the task of detaching the nation from its sensuous Messianic hopes and leading it to a higher knowledge of spiritual truths. It had the most widespread ramifications, extending to Babylon and to Egypt. In order to deliver the people from the limitations of the national faith, which could only lead to disturbance and insurrection, they must find a
the mythical explanation of the history takes a very subordinate place in the controversy. Few understood what Strauss's real meaning was; the general impression was that he entirely dissolved the life of Jesus ihto myth.
There appeared, indeed, three satires ridiculing his method. One showed how, for the historical science of the future, the life of Luther would also become a mere myth,^ the second treated the life of Napoleon in the same way; ^ in the third, Strauss himself becomes a myth.^
M. Eugbne Mussard, "candidat au saint minist^re," made it his business to set at rest the minds of the premier faculty at Geneva by his thesis, jDu systime tnytkiqut appliqui a fhtstoire de la vie dejisusy 1838, which bears the ingenious motto ov a-ta-oKliurfjLevois fjLvOoi^ (not... in cunningly devised myths, 2 Peter i. 16). He certainly did not exaggerate the difficulties of his task, but complacently followed up an "Exposition of the Mythical Theory," with a "Refutation of the Mythical Theory as applied to the Life of Jesus."
The only writer who really faced the problem in the form in which it had been raised by Strauss was Wilke in his work "Tradition and Myth."* He recognises that Strauss had given an exceedingly valuable impulse towards the overcoming of
rationalism and supernaturalism and to the rejection of the abortive
* Austiige aus der Schrifl ** Das Leben Lutkers kritisch bearbeitet." (Extracts from a work entitled "A Critical Study of the Life of Luther. ") By Dr. Casuar (••Cassowary"; Strauss = Ostrich). Mexico, 2836. Edited by Julius Ferdinand Wurm.
^ Das Leben Napoleons kritisch geprUft (A Critical Examination of the Life of Napoleon. ) From the English, wiUi some pertinent applications to Strauss's Life of Jesus. 1836. [The English original referred to seems to have been Whateley 's Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte ^ published in 18x9. and primarily directed against Hume's Essay on Miracles, — ^Translator.]
' La Vie de Strauss. Ecrite en fan 28jg. Paris, 1839.
* Ch. G. Wilke, Tradition und Mythe. A contribution to the historical criticism of the Gospels in general, and in particular to the appreciation of the treatment of m3rth and idealism in Strauss's " Life of Jesus." Leipzig, 1837.
Christian Gottlob Wilke was born in 1786 at Werm, near Zeitz, studied theology and became pastor of Hermannsdorf in the Erzgebirge. He resigned this office in 1837 in order to devote himself to his studies, perhaps also because he had become conscious of an inner unrest. In 1845 he prepared the way for his conversion to Catholicism by publishing a work entitled ' ' Can a Protestant go over to the Roman Church with a good conscience?" He took the decisive step in August 1846. Later he removed to Wtirzburg. Subsequently he recast his famous Clavis Naui ■ Testamenti PAilolcgica — which had appeared in 1 840-1 841 — in the form of a lexicon for Catholic students of theology, His Hermeneutik des Neuen Testaments, published in 1843-1844, appeared in 1853 as Biblische Hermeneutik nach kathdischen Grundsatzen (The Science of Biblical Interpretation according to Catholic principles). He was engaged in recasting his Clavis when he died in 1854.
Of later works dealing with the question of myth, we may refer to Emanuel Marius, Die Personlichkeit Jesu mit besonderer Riicksicht auf die Mythologien und Mysterien der alten Volker (The Personality of Jesus, with special reference to the Mythologies and Mysteries of Ancient Nations), Leipzig, 1879, 395 PP- J and Otto Frick, Mythus und Evangelium (Myth and Gospel), Heilbronn, 1879, 44 PP*
The difficulty involved in the conception of miracle as a proof of the Messiahship of Jesus is another discovery of Bauer's. Only here, instead of probing the question to the bottom, he stops halfway. How do we know, he should have gone on to ask, that the Messiah was expected to appear as an earthly wonder-worker? There is nothing to that effect in Jewish writings. And do not the Gospels themselves prove that any one might do miracles without suggesting to a single person the idea that he might be the Messiah? Accordingly the only inference to be drawn from the Marcan representation is that miracles were not among the characteristic marks of the Messiah, and that it was only later, in the Christian community, which made Jesus the miracle-worker into Jesus the Messiah, that this connexion between miracles and Messiahship was established In dealing with the question of the triumphal entry, too, Bauer halts half-way. Where do we read that Jesus was hailed as Messiah upon that occasion? If He had been taken by the people to be the Messiah, the controversy in Jerusalem must have turned on this personal question; but it did not even touch upon it, and the Sanhedrin never thinks of setting up witnesses to Jesus' claim to be the Messiah. When once Bauer had exposed the historical and literary impossibility of Jesus' being hailed by the people as Messiah, he ought to have gone on to draw the conclusion that Jesus did not, according to Mark, make a Messianic entry into Jerusalem.
It was, however, a remarkable achievement on Bauer's part to have thus set forth clearly the historical difficulties of the life of Jesus. One might suppose that between the work of Strauss and that of Bauer there lay not five, but fifty years — ^the critical work of a whole generation.
The stereotyped character of the thrice repeated prediction of the passion, which, according to Bauer, betrays a certain poverty and feebleness of imagination on the part of the earliest Evangelist shows clearly, he thinks, the unhistorical character of the utterance recorded. The fact that the prediction occurs three times, its definiteness increasing upon each occasion, proves its literary origin.
It is the same with the transfiguration. The group in which the heroic representatives of the Law and the Prophets stand as supporters of the Saviour, was modelled by the earliest Evangelist In order to place it in the proper light and to give becoming splendour to its great subject, he has introduced a number of traits taken from the story of Moses.
Bauer pitilessly exposes the difficulties of the journey of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, and exults over the perplexities of the "apologists." "The theologian," he says, "must not boggle at this journey, he must just believe it. He must in faith follow the footsteps of his Lord! Through the midst of Galilee and Samaria
h^d been interrupted by their joumey to Jerusalem. It seemed
to them that if they were once more on Galilaean soil tke days whlch they had spent in the inhospitable Jerusalem would cease to oppress their spirits with the leaden weight of sorrowful recollection. . . , One might almost say that they had to make up their minds to give up Jesus the author of the attempt to take Jerusalem by storm; but for Jesus the gracious gentle Galilaean teacher they kept a warm place in their hearts." So love watched over the dead until hope was rekindled by the Old Testament promises and came to reawaken Him. "The first who, in an enthusiastic vision, saw this wish fulfilled was Simon Peter." This "resurrection" has nothing to do with the empty grave, which, like the whole narrative of the Jerusalem appearances, only came into the tradition later. The first appearances took place in Galilee. It was there that the Church was founded.
This attempt to grasp the connexion of events in the life of Jesus from a purely historical point of view is one of the most important that have ever been made in this department of study. If it had been put in a purely constructive form, this criticism would have made an impression unequalled by any other Life of Jesus since Renan's. But in that case it would have lost that free play of ideas which the critical recognition of the unbridged gap admits. The eschatological question is not, it is true, decided by this investigation. It shows the impossibility of the previous attempts to establish a present Messiahship of Jesus, but it shows, too, that the questions, which are really historical questions, concerning the public attitude of Jesus, are far from being solved by asserting the exclusively eschatological character of His preaching, but that new difficulties are always presenting themselves.
It was perhaps not so much through these general ethico-religious historical discussions as in consequence of certain exegetical problems which unexpectedly came to light that theologians became conscious that the old conception of the teaching of Jesus was not tenable, or was only tenable by violent means. On the assumption of the modified eschatological character of His teaching, Jesus is still a teacher; that is to say, He speaks in order to be understood, in order to explain, and has no secrets. But if His teaching is throughout eschatological, then He is a prophet, who points in mysterious speech to a coming age, whose words conceal secrets and offer enigmas, and are not intended to be understood always and by everybody. Attention was now turned to a number of passages in which the question arises whether Jesus had any secrets to keep or not.
This question presents itself in connexion with the very earliest of the parables. In Mark iv. 11, 12 it is distinctly stated that the parables spoken in the immediate context embody the mystery of the
historical, and therefore true and self-justifying. The recognition of the claims of eschatology signifies for our dogmatic a burning of the boats by which it felt itself able to return at any moment from the time of Jesus direct to the present.
One point that is worthy of notice in this connexion is the trustworthiness of the tradition. The Evangelists, writing in Greek, and the Greek-speaking Early Church, can hardly have retained an understanding of the purely eschatological character of that selfdesignation of Jesus. It had become for them merely an indirect method of self- designation. And nevertheless the Evangelists, especially Mark, record the sayings of Jesus in such a way that the original significance and application of the designation in His mouth is still clearly recognisable, and we are able to determine with certainty the isolated cases in which this self-designation in His discourses is of a secondary origin.
Thus the use of the term Son of Man — which, if we admitted the sweeping proposal of Lietzmann and Wellhausen to cancel it everywhere as an interpolation of Greek Early Church theology, would throw doubt on the whole of the Gospel tradition — becomes a proof of the certainty and trustworthiness of that tradition. We may, in fact, say that the progressive recognition of the eschatological character of the teaching and action of Jesus carries with it a progressive justification of the Gospel tradition. A series of passages and discourses which had been endangered because from the modern theological point of view which had been made the criterion of the tradition they appeared to be without meaning, are now secured. The stone which the critics rejected has become the corner-stone of the tradition.
If Aramaic scholarship appears in regard to the Son-of-Man question among the opponents of the thorough-going eschatological view, it takes no other position in connexion with the retranslations and in the application of illustrative parallels from the Rabbinic literature.
In looking at the earlier works in this department, one is struck with the smallness of the result in proportion to the labour expended. The names that call for mention here are those of John Lightfoot, Christian Schottgen, Joh. Gerh. Meuschen, J. Jak. Wettstein, F. Nork, Franz Delitzsch, Carl Siegfried, and A. Wiinsche.^ But even a work like F. Weber's System der altsynagpgalen
^ See Dalman, p. 60 ff.
John Lightfoot. Horae Hebraicac et Talmudicae in quatuor Evangelistas. Edited by J. B. Carpzov. Leipzig, 1684.
Christian Schottgen, Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae in universum Novum Tesiamentum. Dresden-Leipzig, 1733.
Joh. Gerh. Meuschen, Novum Tesiamentum ex Talmude et antiquitatibus Hebraeorutn illustratum. Leipzig, 1736.