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Updated: May 20, 2025
Modern criticism of the New Testament began with the stimulating works of Baur and of Strauss, whose Life of Jesus , in which the supernatural was entirely rejected, had an immense success and caused furious controversy. Both these rationalists were influenced by Hegel.
So, if I mistake not, Strauss, if he did not originate the idea of taking the mythopoeic faculty into account in the development of the Gospel narratives, and though he may have exaggerated the influence of that faculty, obliged scientific theology, hereafter, to take that element into serious consideration; so Baur, in giving prominence to the cardinal fact of the divergence of the Nazarene and Pauline tendencies in the primitive Church; so Reuss, in setting a marvellous example of the cool and dispassionate application of the principles of scientific criticism over the whole field of Scripture; so Volkmar, in his clear and forcible statement of the Nazarene limitations of Jesus, contributed results of permanent value in scientific theology.
He made the acquaintance of certain French writers, namely: Thedore-Henri Barrau, Francois Petis de la Croix, Frederic Baudry, Emile Delerot, Charles-Auguste-Desire Filon, Samuel Descombaz, and Prosper Baur.
That the story of the Acts unflinchingly shows us the weaknesses and errors of the great apostles is good evidence of its veracity. But the notion that it is a work of fiction fabricated for such purposes as are outlined above is utterly incredible. Those Epistles of Paul which Baur admits to be genuine contain abundant disproof of his theory. There never was any such schism as he fancies.
In another department of knowledge the sacred histories of Christianity have been given a new reading by scholars, among whom Strauss, Baur, and Renan are conspicuous. The general result has been to show that these scriptures are purely human documents, and the personages they describe are purely human.
Baur was himself a great investigator. Yet the movement for the investigation of the sources of biblical and ecclesiastical history which his generation initialed has gone on to such achievements that, in some respects, we can but view the foundations of Baur's own work as precarious, the results at which he arrived as unwarranted. New documents have come to light since his day.
It is for the historian with sympathy and imagination to find out what their inherent reason was. One other thing distinguishes Baur as church historian from his predecessors. He realised that before one can delineate one must investigate. One must go to the sources. One must estimate the value of those sources. One must have ground in the sources for every judgment.
Close by was Niebuhr's History, in the title-page of which a few lines in the historian's handwriting bore witness to much 'pleasant discourse between the writer and Roger Wendover, at Bonn, in the summer of 1847. Judging from other shelves farther down, he must also have spent some time, perhaps an academic year, at Tübingen, for here were most of the early editions of the Leben Jesu, with some corrections from Strauss's hand, and similar records of Baur, Ewald, and other members or opponents of the Tübingen school.
The result has been that not only have Volkmar and Hilgenfeld proved their point to their own satisfaction, but they also convinced Ritschl and partially Baur; and generally we may say that in Germany it seems to be agreed at the present time that the hypothesis of a mutilated Luke suits the dogmatic argument better than that of later Judaising interpolations.
The principle of an ideal humanity existed before Christ in the bright form of a typical man, but was manifested to mankind in the person of Christ." Such, according to Baur, is Paul's interpretation of the Messianic idea. Paul knows nothing of the miracles, of the supernatural conception, of the incarnation, or of the Logos.
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