The position of the prospective martyr was not rendered any more easy by Strauss. In an appendix to his criticism of Schleiermacher's Life of Jesus he settled accounts with his old antagonist.[139] He recognises no scientific value whatever in the work. None of the ideas developed in it are new. One might [pg 210] fairly say, he thinks, “that the conclusions which have given offence had been carried down the Neckar from Tübingen to Heidelberg, and had there been salvaged by Herr Schenkel—in a somewhat sodden and deteriorated condition, it must be admitted—and incorporated into the edifice which he was constructing.” Further, Strauss censures the book for its want of frankness, its half-and-half character, which manifests itself especially in the way in which the author clings to orthodox phraseology. “Over and over again he gives criticism with one hand all that it can possibly ask, and then takes back with the other whatever the interests of faith seem to demand; with the constant result that what is taken back is far too much for criticism and not nearly enough for faith.” “In the future,” he concludes, “it will be said of the seven hundred Durlachers that they fought like paladins to prevent the enemy from capturing a standard which was really nothing but a patched dish-clout.”
Schenkel died in 1885 after severe sufferings. As a critic he lacked independence, and was, therefore, always inclined to compromises; in controversy he was vehement. Though he did nothing remarkable in theology, German Protestantism owes him a vast debt for acting as its tribune in the 'sixties.
That was the last time that any popular excitement was aroused in connexion with the critical study of the life of Jesus; and it was a mere storm in a tea-cup. Moreover, it was the man and not his work that aroused the excitement. Henceforth public opinion was almost entirely indifferent to anything which appeared in this department. The great fundamental question whether historical criticism was to be applied to the life of Jesus had been decided in connexion with Strauss's first work on the subject. If here and there indignation aroused by a Life of Jesus brought inconveniences to the author and profit to the publisher, that was connected in every case with purely external and incidental circumstances. Public opinion was not disquieted for a moment by Volkmar and Wrede, although they are much more extreme than Schenkel.
Most of the Lives of Jesus which followed had, it is true, nothing very exciting about them. They were mere variants of the type established during the 'sixties, variants of which the minute differences were only discernible by theologians, and which were otherwise exactly alike in arrangement and result. As a contribution to criticism, Keim's[140] “History of Jesus of Nazara” [pg 211] was the most important Life of Jesus which appeared in a long period.
It is not of much consequence that he believes in the priority of Matthew, since his presentment of the history follows the general lines of the Marcan plan, which is preserved also in Matthew. He gives it as his opinion that the life of Jesus is to be reconstructed from the Synoptics, whether Matthew has the first place or Mark. He sketches the development of Jesus in bold lines. As early as his inaugural address at Zurich, delivered on the 17th of December 1860, which, short as it was, made a powerful impression upon Holtzmann as well as upon others, he had set up the thesis that the Synoptics “artlessly, almost against their will, show us unconsciously in incidental, unobtrusive traits the progressive development of Jesus as youth and man.”[141] His later works are the development of this sketch.
His grandiose style gave the keynote for the artistic treatment of the portrait of Jesus in the 'sixties. His phrases and expressions became classical. Every one follows him in speaking of the “Galilaean spring-tide” in the ministry of Jesus.
On the Johannine question he takes up a clearly defined position, denying the possibility of using the Fourth Gospel side by side with the Synoptics as an historical source. He goes very far in finding special significance in the details of the Synoptists, especially when he is anxious to discover traces of want of success in the second period of Jesus' ministry, since the plan of his Life of Jesus depends on the sharp antithesis between the periods of success and failure. The whole of the second half of the Galilaean period consists for him in “flights and retirements.” “Beset by constantly renewed alarms and hindrances, Jesus left the scene of His earlier work, left His dwelling-place at Capernaum, and accompanied only by a few faithful followers, in the end only by the Twelve, sought in all directions for places of refuge for longer or shorter periods, in order to avoid and elude His enemies.” Keim frankly admits, indeed, that there is not a syllable in the Gospels to suggest that these journeys are the journeys of a fugitive. But instead of allowing that to shake his conviction, he abuses the narrators and suggests that they desired to conceal the truth. “These flights,” he says, “were no doubt inconvenient to the Evangelists. Matthew is here the frankest, but in order to restore the impression of Jesus' greatness he transfers to this [pg 212] period the greatest miracles. The later Evangelists are almost completely silent about these retirements, and leave us to suppose that Jesus made His journeys to Caesarea Philippi and the neighbourhood of Tyre and Sidon in the middle of winter from mere pleasure in travel, or for the extension of the Gospel, and that He made His last journey to Jerusalem without any external necessity, entirely in consequence of His free decision, even though the expectation of death which they ascribe to Him goes far to counteract the impression of complete freedom.” Why do they thus correct the history? “The motive was the same difficulty which draws from us also the question, ‘Is it possible that Jesus should flee?’ ” Keim answers “Yes.” Here the liberal psychology comes clearly to light. “Jesus fled,” he explains, “because He desired to preserve Himself for God and man, to secure the continuance of His ministry to Israel, to defeat as long as possible the dark designs of His enemies, to carry His cause to Jerusalem, and there, while acting, as it was His duty to do, with prudence and foresight in his relations with men, to recognise clearly, by the Divine silence or the Divine action, what the Divine purpose really was, which could not be recognised in a moment. He acts like a man who knows the duty both of examination and action, who knows His own worth and what is due to Him and His obligations towards God and man.”[142]
In regard to the question of eschatology, however, Keim does justice to the texts.[143] He admits that eschatology, “a Kingdom of God clothed with material splendours,” forms an integral part of the preaching of Jesus from the first; “that He never rejected it, and therefore never by a so-called advance transformed the sensuous Messianic idea into a purely spiritual one.” “Jesus does not uproot from the minds of the sons of Zebedee their belief in the thrones on His right hand and His left; He does not hesitate to make His entry into Jerusalem in the character of the Messiah; He acknowledges His Messiahship before the Council without making any careful reservations; upon the cross His title is The King of the Jews; He consoles Himself and His followers with the thought of His return as an earthly ruler, and leaves with His disciples, without making any attempt to check it, the belief, which long survived, in a future establishment or restoration of the Kingdom in an Israel delivered from bondage.” Keim remarks with much justice “that Strauss had been wrong in rejecting his own earlier and more correct formula,” which combined the eschatological [pg 213] and spiritual elements as operating side by side in the plan of Jesus.
Keim, however, himself in the end allows the spiritual elements practically to cancel the eschatological. He admits, it is true, that the expression Son of Man which Jesus uses designated the Messiah in the sense of Daniel's prophecy, but he thinks that these pictorial representations in Daniel did not repel Jesus because He interpreted them spiritually, and “intended to describe Himself as belonging to mankind even in His Messianic office.” To solve the difficulty Keim assumes a development. Jesus' consciousness of His vocation had been strengthened both by success and by disappointment. As time went on He preached the Kingdom not as a future Kingdom, as at first, but as one which was present in Him and with Him, and He declares His Messiahship more and more openly before the world. He thinks of the Kingdom as undergoing development, but not with an unlimited, infinite horizon as the moderns suppose; the horizon is bounded by the eschatology. “For however easy it may be to read modern ideas into the parables of the draught of fishes, the mustard seed and the leaven, which, taken by themselves, seem to suggest the duration contemplated by the modern view, it is nevertheless indubitable that Jesus, like Paul, by no means looks forward to so protracted an earthly development; on the contrary, nothing appears more clearly from the sources than that He thought of its term as rapidly approaching, and of His victory as nigh at hand; and looked to the last decisive events, even to the day of judgment, as about to occur during the lifetime of the existing generation, including Himself and His apostles.” “It was the overmastering pressure of circumstances which held Him prisoner within the limitations of this obsolete belief.” When His confidence in the development of His Kingdom came into collision with barriers which He could not pass, when His belief in the presence of the Kingdom of God grew dim, the purely eschatological ideas won the upper hand, “and if we may suppose that it was precisely this thought of the imminent decisive action of God, taking possession of His mind with renewed force at this point, which steeled His human courage, and roused Him to a passion of self-sacrifice with the hope of saving from the judgment whatever might still be saved, we may welcome His adoption of these narrower ideas as in accordance with the goodwill of God, which could only by this means maintain the failing strength of its human instrument and secure the spoils of the Divine warfare—the souls of men subdued and conquered by Him.”
The thought which had hovered before the mind of Renan, but which in his hands had become only the motive of a romance—une ficelle dé roman as the French express it—was realised by [pg 214] Keim. Nothing deeper or more beautiful has since been written about the development of Jesus.