[113] “How is it conceivable,” even Pfleiderer asks, “that the new community should have fashioned itself from the chaos of material without some definite fact, some foundation-giving event which could form the nucleus for the genesis of the new ideas? Everywhere in the case of a new historical development the powers and impulses which are present in the crowd are first directed to a definite end and fastened into an organism that can survive by the purpose-giving action of heroic personalities. And so the impulse for the formation of the Christian community must have come from some definite point, which, from the testimony of the Apostle Paul and of the earliest Gospels, we can only find in the life and death of Jesus” (“Entstehung des Chr.,” 11). But that the “testimony” for an historical Jesus is not testimony, and that the “definite fact,” the “foundation-giving event,” is to be looked for, if anywhere, in Paul himself and nowhere else—such is the central point of all this analysis. [↑]
[115] “Von Reimarus bis Wrede,” 396. [↑]
[117] “Gesch. Israels,” ii. 1 sqq. [↑]
[118] Holtzmann, “Zum Thema ‘Jesus und Paulus’” (“Prot. Monatsheft,” iv., 1900, 465). [↑]
[120] Neutest. Theol. ii. 4. Cf. R. H. Grützmacher: “Ist das liberale Christusbild modern? Bibl. Zeit- und Streitfragen,” 39 sq. [↑]