




                    The Quest of the Historical Jesus

         A Critical Study of its Progress From Reimarus to Wrede

                                    By

                            Albert Schweitzer

  Privatdocent in New Testament Studies in the University of Strassburg

                              Translated By

                        W. Montgomery, B.A., B.D.

                            With a Preface by

                        F. C. Burkitt, M.A., D.D.

      Norrisian Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge

                          Second English Edition

                                  London

                          Adam and Charles Black

                                   1911





CONTENTS


Preface
I. The Problem
II. Hermann Samuel Reimarus
III. The Lives Of Jesus Of The Earlier Rationalism
IV. The Earliest Fictitious Lives Of Jesus
V. Fully Developed Rationalism--Paulus
VI. The Last Phase Of Rationalism--Hase And Schleiermacher
VII. David Friedrich Strauss--The Man And His Fate
VIII. Strauss's First "Life Of Jesus"
IX. Strauss's Opponents And Supporters
X. The Marcan Hypothesis
XI. Bruno Bauer. The First Sceptical Life Of Jesus
XII. Further Imaginative Lives Of Jesus
XIII. Renan
XIV. The "Liberal" Lives Of Jesus
XV. The Eschatological Question
XVI. The Struggle Against Eschatology
XVII. Questions Regarding The Aramaic Language, Rabbinic Parallels, And
Buddhistic Influence
XVIII. The Position Of The Subject At The Close Of The Nineteenth Century
XIX. Thoroughgoing Scepticism And Thoroughgoing Eschatology
XX. Results
Index Of Authors And Works
Footnotes






                               [Cover Art]





_First Edition published March 1910_





PREFACE


_The book here translated is offered to the English-speaking public in the
belief that it sets before them, as no other book has ever done, the
history of the struggle which the best-equipped intellects of the modern
world have gone through in endeavouring to realise for themselves the
historical personality of our Lord._

_Every one nowadays is aware that traditional Christian doctrine about
Jesus Christ is encompassed with difficulties, and that many of the
statements in the Gospels appear incredible in the light of modern views
of history and nature. But when the alternative of __"__Jesus or
Christ__"__ is put forward, as it has been in a recent publication, or
when we are bidden to choose between the Jesus of history and the Christ
of dogma, few except professed students know what a protean and
kaleidoscopic figure the __"__Jesus of history__"__ is. Like the Christ in
the Apocryphal Acts of John, He has appeared in different forms to
different minds. __"__We know Him right well,__"__ says Professor
Weinel._(_1_)_ What a claim!_

_Among the many bold paradoxes enunciated in this history of the Quest,
there is one that meets us at the outset, about which a few words may be
said here, if only to encourage those to persevere to the end who might
otherwise be repelled halfway--the paradox that the greatest attempts to
write a Life of Jesus have been written with hate._(_2_)_ It is in full
accordance with this faith that Dr. Schweitzer gives, in paragraph after
paragraph, the undiluted expression of the views of men who agree only in
their unflinching desire to attain historical truth. We are not accustomed
to be so ruthless in England. We sometimes tend to forget that the Gospel
has moved the world, and we think our faith and devotion to it so tender
and delicate a thing that it will break, if it be not handled with the
utmost circumspection. So we become dominated __ by phrases and afraid of
them. Dr. Schweitzer is not afraid of phrases, if only they have been
beaten out by real contact with facts. And those who read to the end will
see that the crude sarcasm of Reimarus and the unflinching scepticism of
Bruno Bauer are not introduced merely to shock and by way of contrast.
Each in his own way made a real contribution to our understanding of the
greatest historical problem in the history of our race. We see now that
the object of attack was not the historical Jesus after all, but a
temporary idea of Him, inadequate because it did not truly represent Him
or the world in which He lived. And by hearing the writers' characteristic
phrases, uncompromising as they may be, by looking at things for a moment
from their own point of view, different as it may be from ours, we are
able to be more just, not only to these men of a past age, but also to the
great Problem that occupied them, as it also occupies us._

_For, as Father Tyrrell has been pointing out in his last most impressive
message to us all, Christianity is at the Cross Roads. If the Figure of
our Lord is to mean anything for us we must realise it for ourselves. Most
English readers of the New Testament have been too long content with the
rough and ready Harmony of the Four Gospels that they unconsciously
construct. This kind of __"__Harmony__"__ is not a very convincing picture
when looked into, if only because