Paul and His Interpreters

VIII Summing-Up and Formulation of the Problem

The study of Paulinism has nothing very brilliant to show for itself in the way of scientific achievement. Learning has been lavishly expended upon it, but thought and reflection have been to seek.

Writers went to work with an almost inconceivable absence of plan, and wanted to offer solutions before they had made clear to themselves the scope of the problem. Instead of seeking a definite diagnosis, they treated the symptoms separately, with whatever means happened to come to hand.

It was inevitable, therefore, that the study of the subject should move along intricate and continually recrossing paths, and engage in long and devious wanderings, only, in some cases, to arrive back again at the point from which it started. That Paul’s doctrine of redemption was thought out on the lines of a physical nature-process had been asserted by Lüdemann as long ago as the year 1872. Nevertheless, theology hit on the plan of “spiritualising” it, and took very nearly thirty years to get back to this discovery.

The account which we have given of the history of the subject has revealed the structure of the problem and given it room to develop itself. The inner connexion of the questions determines in advance what the individual solutions can and cannot effect, and at the same time shows what must be provided for in any solution which professes to offer a really historical explanation.

To neglect this structure, this schematism of the problem is not permissible. It has not been independently invented and imposed from without upon the past history of research, but represents its actual results, and points the way for all subsequent attempts at a solution.

The problem consists in the two great questions: what Paul’s doctrine has in common with primitive Christianity, and what it has in common with Greek ideas.

It is complicated by the fact that our only information about the beliefs of the primitive Church comes from Paul. His writings are the first—and indeed the only—witnesses which we possess upon the point, since the First Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of James give us information at best about a non-Pauline, certainly not about a pre-Pauline Christianity.

The standard by which the primitiveness of Paul’s Christianity has to be measured and tested has, therefore, in the first place to be arrived at by the method of arguing backward from itself. Nevertheless, the difficulty is not so great as it appears when thus theoretically stated. The most general features of the earliest dogma can be found without difficulty in the Epistles. These consisted in the belief in the Messiahship of the Jesus who had died and risen again, and in the expectation of His parousia in the immediate future.

Moreover, the problem as a whole is simplified by the fact that the second of the fundamental questions has been clearly answered by the history of Pauline study. The answer is this: Paulinism and Hellenism have in common their religious terminology, but, in respect of ideas, nothing. The Apostle did not Hellenise Christianity. His conceptions are equally distinct from those of Greek philosophy and from those of the Mystery-religions.

The affinities and analogies which have been alleged cannot stand an examination which takes account of their real essence and of the different way in which the ideas are conditioned in the two cases. Neither Baur nor the theology which owes allegiance to him, nor the students of Comparative Religion, have succeeded in proving their assertions. It is also interesting to observe that those who undertake to explain Paul by the aid of the Graeco-Oriental Mystery-religions, entirely deny the philosophic Hellenism which a more conventional theological opinion has found in him; so that it is a case of Satan’s being driven out by Beelzebub. On the other hand, the Comparative study of Paulinism has the merit of having made an end of the “spiritualising” and “psychologising” which were practised for a whole generation.

The impossibility of anything in the nature of a Hellenic gospel being present in Paul appears from the fact, that every view of this kind when thought out in its logical implications must arrive at a point where it has to do violence to historical tradition. It became apparent that it is impossible for a Hellenised Paulinism to subsist alongside of a primitive Christianity which shared the Jewish eschatological expectations. One must either, as the Ultra-Tübingen critics did, transplant the Epistles and the doctrine from the primitive period to the second century, or, as some of the votaries of Comparative Religion have endeavoured to do, explain primitive Christianity as a product of Graeco-Oriental syncretism.

That only a very few investigators have drawn these inferences is not due to the fact that they are not justified. It was want of courage, of logical consistency, and of the necessary contempt for the rest of the facts which prevented them from making the venture. So they offered compromises, imposingly dressed out in words but inwardly untenable, and talked themselves and others into believing the impossible, namely, that a Hellenisation of the primitive Christian belief effected by Paul as an individual is really conceivable.

The half-and-half theories which represent Paulinism as consisting partly of Greek, partly of Jewish ideas, are in a still worse case than those which more or less neglect the former element. Encumbered with all the difficulties of the Hellenising theory they become involved in the jungle of antinomies which they discover or imagine, and there perish miserably.

The solution must, therefore, consist in leaving out of the question Greek influence in every form and in every combination, and venturing on the “one-sidedness” of endeavouring to understand the doctrine of the Apostle of the Gentiles entirely on the basis of Jewish primitive Christianity. That implies, in the first place, that the Pauline eschatology must be maintained in its full compass, as required by the utterances of the letters. But merely to emphasise it is not everything. The next point is to explain it. What was the scheme of the events of the End, and what answer was given by eschatological expectation to the fundamental questions which could not be avoided? Are there two resurrections or one; one judgment or two? Who are to rise again at the parousia? Does a judgment take place then? On whom is it held? What are its standards and its subject? Wherein do reward and punishment consist? What happens to the men of the surviving generation who are not destined to the Messianic kingdom? What is the relation between judgment and election? What is the fate of believers who are elect and baptised but who have fallen from grace by unworthy conduct? Can they lose their final blessedness, or are they only excluded from the Messianic kingdom? Does Paul recognise a general resurrection? If so, when does it take place? Is it accompanied by a judgment, or do only the elect rise again? When does the judgment take place at which the elect judge the angels?

Not until Pauline eschatology gives an answer to all the “idle” questions of this kind which can be asked will it be really understood and explained. And it must be somehow possible, by the discovery of its inner logic, to reconstruct it from the scattered statements in the documents. We have no right to assume that for Paul there existed in his expectation manifest obscurities, much less that he had overlooked contradictions in it.

Is there, then, any possibility of explaining the mystical doctrine of redemption and the sacramental teaching on the basis of the Jewish eschatological element?

The attempt is by no means so hopeless as it might seem in view of the general consideration that Judaism knew neither mysticism nor sacraments. It is not really a question of Judaism as such, but of apocalyptic thought, which is a separate and independent phenomenon arising within Judaism, and has special presuppositions which are entirely peculiar to it.

We saw in analysing the “physical” element in the doctrine of redemption and the sacraments that the conceptions connected therewith are conditioned by the underlying eschatology which everywhere shows through.193 It needs no special learning to make this discovery. Any one who ventures to read the documents with an open mind and pays attention to the primary links of connexion will soon arrive at this conclusion. That Paul’s mystical doctrine of redemption and his doctrine of the sacraments belong to eschatology is plain to be seen. The only question is in what way, exactly, they have arisen out of it. The future-hope, raised to the highest degree of intensity, must somehow or other have possessed the power of producing them. If the impulse, the pressing need to which they were the response, is once recognised, then Paulinism is understood, since in its essence it can be nothing else than an eschatological mysticism, expressing itself by the aid of the Greek religious terminology.

Theoretically, too, it is possible to form an approximate idea how the intensified expectation of the future might take a mystical form. In apocalyptic thought sensuous and super-sensuous converge, in such a manner that the former is thought of as passing away into the latter. Thus there is present in it the most general presupposition of all mysticism, since it is the object of the latter to abolish the earthly in the super-earthly. The peculiarity of the mysticism which arises out of Apocalyptic is that it does not bring the two worlds into contact in the mind of the individual man, as Greek and medieval mysticism did, but dovetails one into the other, and thus creates for the moment at which the one passes over into the other an objective, temporally conditioned mysticism. This, however, is only available for those who by their destiny belong to both worlds. Eschatological mysticism is predestinarian.

That a mysticism of this kind existed before Paul is not known. It may be conjectured that the conditions under which it could develop were not present until after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

But sacramental tendencies already make their appearance in the future-hope which was to lead up to Christianity. The usual view is to the effect that Paul was the first to introduce the mystical element into baptism and the Lord’s Supper. There is nothing to prove that. How can we possibly tell that these ceremonies were previously purely symbolic acts? Any one who reads with an open mind the Synoptic accounts of John’s baptism must recognise that it was not only a symbol of purification on repentance, but is thought of as in some way or other guaranteeing salvation.194 A transaction, however, which itself gives and effects such a result is to be regarded as a sacrament.

The manner in which Paul speaks of early Christian baptism and of the Lord’s Supper does not make the impression that he is asserting for the first time the effectual working of the ceremony; it is rather as if he took it for granted as something given and self-evident. This would agree with the observation noted above that the baptism of John, from which primitive Christian baptism was derived, was already thought of as a sacrament.

Whether the Lord’s Supper in the intention of Jesus Himself directly conveyed something to the partakers, or whether it only became a sacrament in primitive Christian times, must be left undecided.

That the intensified eschatological expectation should go so far as to produce sacramental conceptions is in itself intelligible. Those who stood on the threshold of the coming glory must have been eagerly anxious to gain an assurance that they themselves would be partakers therein and to obtain tangible guarantees of “deliverance” from the coming judgment. The conception of “marking out” and “sealing” plays in apocalyptic thought a very important part. Similar provisions are a characteristic product of any intense expectation of the future.

It is, therefore, highly probable that the Baptist, and primitive Christianity, created eschatological sacraments which, as already established and accredited, Paul had only to take over.

The bearing of these statements and considerations must be shown from the Epistles. How far it is possible to trace the genesis of the mysticism and the sacramental doctrine from the eschatological beliefs of the Apostle cannot be determined a priori. The one thing certain is that no other way of explanation is possible than that which leads from the circumference of his future-hope to the central idea of his “theology.” All other interpretations hang in the air.

Theology has heretofore found itself rather helpless in presence of the votaries of Comparative Religion. It could not accept their results as correct, but on the other hand it was not in a position to explain Paul’s sacramental views, because it had never taken into consideration the possibility that they might have arisen out of the Jewish and primitive Christian future-hope. There was thus no course open to it but to engage in an inglorious guerilla warfare with the new science and skirmish with it over particular passages and statements. It is only the acceptance of the fact that the Apostle’s doctrine is integrally, simply and exclusively eschatological, which puts it in a position to assume the offensive in a systematic way and with good prospect of success.

The Apostle’s most general views must be taken as the starting point from which to explain how he arrives at the paradox that the believer is united with Christ, experiences along with Him death and resurrection, and becomes a new creature, emancipated from fleshly corporeity. The assertion that these statements are meant in a “physical” sense does not carry us very far. The reason which explains their “reality” must be shown. Simply in and by themselves they are not explicable. What has been advanced regarding the solidarity of Jesus with the human race is far from sufficing to make it in any degree intelligible, especially as Paul has not in view Christ and humanity, but Christ and the elect.

The mistake in the attempts at explanation hitherto made consists in the fact that they seek to argue from the facts of the death and resurrection of Jesus, simply as such, directly to that which takes place in the believer. In reality, it can only be a question of a general event, which in the time immediately preceding the End brings about this dying and rising again in Jesus and believers as together forming a single category of mankind, and thus antedates the future into the present. For that which happens both to the Lord and to the elect it must be possible to find some kind of common-denominator which exactly contains the factors, the forces which are at work in the two cases. Since those which produce their effect in Christ are the first to become manifest, Paul can cast his theory into the form that the believers have died and risen again with Him.

The general fact which comes into question must result from the condition of the world between the death of Jesus and His parousia. The Apostle asserts an overlapping of the still natural, and the already supernatural, condition of the world, which becomes real in the case of Christ and believers in the form of an open or hidden working of the forces of death and resurrection—and becomes real in them only. The doctrine of the death and resurrection of Jesus and the mystical doctrine of redemption are alike cosmically conditioned.

It is not sufficient, however, to explain the mystical doctrine and the sacramental doctrine which is bound up with it. To the problem of Paulinism belong other distinct questions which have not yet found a solution. The primary questions are the relation of the Apostle to the historical Jesus, his attitude towards universalism195 and towards the law, and the nature of his compromise between predestinarian and sacramental doctrine.

Will his views on these points, which it has hitherto been impossible to grasp clearly, similarly admit of explanation on the basis of the unique cosmic conditions obtaining between the death of Christ and the parousia? It is to be noticed that the Apostle does not advance his assertions with reference either to earlier or to subsequent times, but simply and solely for this short intervening period. Their explanation is therefore doubtless to be looked for here.

Paul must have had more knowledge about Jesus than he uses in his teachings and polemics. His procedure is deliberate. He does not appeal to the Master even where it might seem inevitable to do so, as in regard to the ethics and the doctrine of the significance of His death and resurrection; and in fact declares that as a matter of principle he desires no longer to “know Christ after the flesh.” Psychological considerations are quite inadequate to explain these facts. It is as though he held that between the present world-period and that in which Jesus lived and taught there exists no link of connexion, and was convinced that since the death and resurrection of the Lord conditions were present which were so wholly new that they made His teaching inapplicable, and rendered necessary a new basis for ethics and a deeper knowledge respecting His death and resurrection.

The case lies similarly in regard to the Apostle’s views about universalism and the law.

It was not by his experiences among the Gentiles that he was led to universalism. And the thought is not simply that mission work among the heathen ought to be permitted. He maintains the view that there is a pressing necessity to carry the Gospel abroad. It is under the impulsion of this thought that he becomes the Apostle of the Greeks.

The sole and sufficient reason for this view he finds in the peculiar condition of the world between the death and the parousia of Christ. To it are due the conditions in consequence of which a share in the privileges of Israel is open to the Gentiles without their being obliged, by taking upon them the law and its sign, to enter into union with Israel. In saying this it is not the Apostle’s meaning that they merely do not need to do so; they must not do so, on pain of losing their salvation.

Since Ritschl, the representatives of the history of dogma have been concerned to obscure the problem of the law in Paul and to turn theology into paths of easiness. They assert that it was a purely practical question, which did not touch doctrine in the strict sense. This was the expedient by which they escaped from the difficulty when it was raised by Baur. It is time that it should be given up.

When Paul proclaims that the Greeks do not need to submit to the law, he is not led to do so by the experience that this was reasonable and practical. He declares them free because the logical implications of his doctrine compel him to do so. What Jesus thought about the matter is just as indifferent to him as His opinion regarding the legitimacy of preaching to the Gentiles. The peculiar conditions of the time between His death and His parousia forbid any extension of the law to believers outside of Israel. On the other hand, these conditions require that believers belonging to the Chosen People must continue to practise it as before. The assertion of the non-validity of the law is never intended by Paul in a sense which would justify the inference of its total abolition for all believers. It has received its death-blow, but retains its position outwardly up to the time of the parousia. For this limited period the watchword is: he who is under the law shall continue to observe it; he who is free from it shall on no account place himself under it. From one and the same fact two diametrically opposite conclusions are drawn; for so the unique character of the time demands.

What is the relation between predestination and the sacraments? Why do the elect of the final generation need a provision which was not made for those of earlier generations? This too must result from the unique character of the time. The only logical assumption is that to this special provision corresponds a special blessedness, going beyond the ordinary blessedness involved in election as such, which is reserved for the final generation and cannot be obtained otherwise than through baptism and the Lord’s Supper. But wherein does it consist?

All these questions are, like the mystical doctrine, to be answered by reference to the special conditions of the period between the death of Jesus and the parousia. It must be possible to refer back the whole of the teachings to one and the same fundamental fact. It follows that there must be no more talking about the “uniqueness of the event at Damascus” and psychologising about Paul’s “religious experience,” no more spiritualising and modernising, no making play with the distinction between religion and theology, or with the discovery or concealment of contradictions and antinomies, or other similar exercises of ingenuity.

All explanations which represent the system of doctrine as something arising subjectively in the Apostle’s mind may be assumed a priori to be false. Only those which seek to derive it objectively from the fundamental facts of the primitive eschatological belief are to be taken into consideration. The only kind of interpretation which can be considered historical is one which makes it clear how a man who believed in the death and resurrection of Jesus and His imminent parousia was, in virtue of that belief, in a position to understand the thoughts of the Apostle of the Gentiles and to follow his arguments, and was logically obliged to accept them.

And, finally, the solution must explain the enigmatic attitude which subsequent generations take up in regard to the Apostle of the Gentiles. They know him, but they owe no allegiance to him. He created no school. The theology of an Ignatius or a Justin does not attach itself to him. There is something more in this than a simple oversight. If these theologians do not turn to him for aid, though he stands like a giant among them, that must be due to the fact that it is impossible to do so, and that in the course of the natural development of things they have been led to follow quite other paths.

For some reason or other, the conditions under which he created his system must be for them unimaginable. It is true they are still in the period between the death and the parousia of Jesus, but they can no longer interpret it in the same way as the Apostle did. Why are they no longer able to bring into play the forces which he assumes to be in operation when he refers everything to the dying and rising again of Christ and the believer? Which of his presuppositions is for them lacking? May it be that the intensity of the eschatological expectation has so declined that the mysticism associated therewith can no longer maintain its ground?

The Ultra-Tübingen critics demanded of theology proof that the canonical Paul and his Epistles belonged to early Christianity; and the demand was justified.

The question is not to be decided in the domain of literary history, since the only thing we have to deal with is the self-witness of the Epistles, which can neither be strengthened nor shaken by indications drawn from elsewhere.

Argument and counter-argument must be drawn from the contents. The theological scholarship which had to meet the attacks of Steck and van Manen had no solid arguments to oppose to them. Its Paulinism was so complicated, Hellenised and modernised, that it could at need find a place in theological text-books, but not in primitive Christianity. On the other hand, an explanation which shows that the Apostle’s system is based on the most primitive eschatological premises, and at the same time makes it intelligible why subsequent generations could not continue to follow the road on which he started, thereby demonstrates his primitive Christianity and, to this extent, also the genuineness of his chief Epistles. The possibility that they might be primitive-Christian, and yet not written by the historic Apostle of the Gentiles, hardly calls for serious consideration.

Any one who works out this solution is the true pupil of Baur, however widely he may diverge from him in his views and results. By unequivocally determining the date of the writings in question on internal grounds and excluding all other possibilities he is exercising “positive criticism” in the sense intended by the Tübingen master, and justifies him in the face of the adversaries against whom he can no longer defend himself.

It may no doubt prove to be the case that this “positive” criticism will appear distressingly negative to those who look for results which can be immediately coined into dogmatic and homiletic currency.

Their opinion, however, is of small importance.

It is the fate of the “Little-faiths” of truth that they, true followers of Peter, whether they be of the Roman or the Protestant observance, cry out and sink in the sea of ideas, where the followers of Paul, believing in the Spirit, walk secure and undismayed.

Footnotes

Preface Notes

CHAPTER I Notes

CHAPTER II Notes

CHAPTER III Notes

CHAPTER IV Notes

CHAPTER V Notes

CHAPTER VI Notes

CHAPTER VII Notes

CHAPTER VIII Notes

Notes for Preface

1 Sub-title: “Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung.” English translation “The Quest of the Historical Jesus.” London, A. & C. Black, 1910, 2nd ed. 1911.

Chapter I

Notes for

2 In the Amsterdam edition of the whole in 1679, the Annotationes on the Pauline Epistles (1009 pp.), with those on the other Epistles and the Apocalypse, form vol. iii.

3 1723, 822 pp.

4 1st ed. 1742; 2nd, 1745, 232 pp. (For title see head of chapter.)

5 Bâle, 1741. Five vols., covering the whole of the New Testament. The Pauline Epistles are treated in the 3rd (820 pp.) and 4th (837 pp.). The full title is: Curae philologicae et criticae... quibus integritati contextus Graeci consulitur, sensus verborum ex praesidiis philologicis illustratur, diversae Interpretum Sententiae summatim enarrantur et modesto examini subjectae vel approbantur vel repelluntur.

6 135 pp. Later editions 1765, 1774, 1792, 1809. The last two were brought out under the care of Ammon.

7 Four parts. Parts i. and ii. form the first volume (424 pp.), part iii. = vol. ii. (396 pp.), part iv. = vol. iii. (396 pp.). Part i. is occupied with the general principles of exegesis, part ii. with the text of the Old Testament, parts iii. and iv. with that of the New Testament.

8 Four volumes. The first (in the reprint of 1776, 333 pp.): On the natural conception of Scripture. The second (in the first edition, 1772, 608 pp.): On Inspiration and the Canon, Answers to criticisms and attacks. Third (1st ed., 1773, 567 pp.): On the History of the Canon, Answers to criticisms and attacks. The fourth (1775, 460 pp.) is wholly occupied by an answer to the work of a certain Dr. Schubert.

This often mentioned but little read work does not therefore present exactly the appearance that might be expected from its title. The polemical replies occupy a much larger space than the original arguments.

9 298 pp. A striking and brilliantly written work.

10 Paraphrasis Epistolae ad Romanos... cum Dissertatione de Appendice, capp. xv. et xvi., 1769, 311 pp. (Dedicated to Johann August Ernesti.)

Paraphrasis in Primam Pauli ad Corinthios Epistolam, 1770, 540 pp. (Dedicated to Johann David Michaelis.)

Paraphrasis II. Epistolae ad Corinthios, 1776, 388 pp. Each of these works contains a preface of some length on the principles of historical exegesis. As a specimen of the paraphrase we may quote that of Rom. vi. I: Jam si haec est Evangelii tam exoptata hominibusque cunctis tam frugifera doctrina, num audebimus statuere, perseverare nos tamen posse in ista peccandi consuetudine, ut quasi eo fiat amplior gratiae divinae locus?

11 Johann David Michaelis, Einleitung in die Schriften des Neuen Bundes, 1st ed., 1750. In its successive editions this work dominates the theology of all the latter half of the eighteenth century; at the beginning of the nineteenth it is superseded by Eichhorn’s Introduction. The third edition (1777) contains 1356 pp. The Pauline Epistles occupy pp. 1001-1128.

12 Übersetzung des Neuen Testaments, 1790, 566 pp. Anmerkungen für Ungelehrte zu seiner Übersetzung des Neuen Testaments, 4 vols., 1790-92. The Pauline Epistles are treated in vols. iii. and iv.

13 Friedrich Ernst David Schleiermacher, Über den sogenannten ersten Brief des Paulus an den Timotheus. Ein kritisches Sendschreiben an Joachim Christian Gass, 1807. In his complete works this is to be found in the second volume of the first division, 1836, pp. 223-320.

14 Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, Historisch-kritische Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 1st ed., vol. iii., second half (1814), pp. 315-410.

Eichhorn points out that he had recognised the spuriousness of the three Pastoral Epistles, and had expressed his conviction in his University lectures before Schleiermacher published his criticisms of the First Epistle of Timothy.

15 Leonhard Usteri, Die Entwicklung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffs, 1824, 191 pp. The editions of 1829, 1830, and 1832 were revised by the author, who died in 1833. After his death two more appeared (1834, 1851). Reference may be made also to Usteri’s “Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians,” 1833, 252 pp.

16 The first work which undertook to give an account of the Apostle’s system of thought as such is Gottlob Wilhelm Meyer’s Entwicklung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffs, 1801, 380 pp. The author has collected the material well, but does not know in what direction Paul’s peculiarity lies.

17 Of the works which criticise Usteri and mark an advance in Pauline study the following may be named:—

Karl Schrader, Der Apostel Paulus; vols. i., 1830 (264 pp.), and ii., 1832 (373 pp.), deal with the life of the Apostle Paul; vol. iii., 1833 (331 pp.), with the doctrine; vols. iv., 1835 (490 pp.), and v., 1836 (574 pp.), contain the exposition of the Epistles.

August Ferdinand Dähne, Entwicklung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffs, 1835, 211 pp.

Mention may also be made of the chapter on Paulinism in J. A. W. Neander’s Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der christlichen Kirche durch die Apostel, 1st ed., 1832; 2nd ed., 1st vol., 1838 (433 pp.). Paul is treated in pp. 102-433; 4th ed., 1847; 5th, 1862. As typical of the exegesis of the period prior to Baur may be mentioned the Commentaries of W. M. L. de Wette on Romans (2nd ed.), 1838; 1 and 2 Corinthians, 1841; Galatians and Thessalonians, 1841.

18 H. E. G. Paulus, Des Apostels Paulus Lehrbriefe an die Galater-und Römer-Christen, 1831, 368 pp.

Notes for Chapter II Baur and His Critics

19 Albert Schwegler, Das nachapostolische Zeitalter in den Hauptmomenten seiner Entwicklung (“The Post-Apostolic Age in the main Features of its Development”), 1846, vol. i. 522 pp., vol. ii. 392 pp. In the writings which mark the course of the development of Paulinism three groups are distinguished. To the first, the apologetic group, belongs the First Epistle of Peter; to the second, the conciliatory writings, are to be reckoned the Gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles, the First Epistle of Clement, and the Epistle to the Philippians; the third is represented by the catholicising writings, the Pastorals, the Letter of Polycarp, and the Ignatian Letters.

20 Albrecht Ritschl, Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, eine kirchen-und dogmengeschichtliche Monographie, 1850, 622 pp.; 2nd ed., 1857, 605 pp.

21 Gotthard Viktor Lechler, Das apostolische und das nachapostolische Zeitalter mit Rücksicht auf Unterschied und Einheit in Lehre und Leben (... with special reference to their difference and unity in life and doctrine), 1st ed., 1852; 2nd ed., 1857, 536 pp. The portion dealing with Paul is pp. 33-154; in the 3rd ed., 1885 (635 pp.) Paul is treated on pp. 269-407.

In the first two editions the whole of the Pauline epistles are regarded as genuine; in the third the author no longer ventures to treat the Pastorals as on the same footing with the other Epistles. The very clearly and comprehensively stated problem is printed at the beginning.

22 Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre, 1853, 219 pp.

23 In 1850, Beiträge zur Erklärung der Korinthesbriefe, pp. 139-185. Continued in 1852, pp. 1-40 and 535-574. In 1855, Die beiden Briefe an die Thessalonicher; ihre Achtheit und Bedeutung für die Lehre der Parusie Christi, pp. 141-168 (... their genuineness and their significance for the doctrine of the parousia of Christ). In 1857, Über Zweck und Gedankengang des Römerbriefs nebst der Erörterung einiger paulinischen Begriffe, pp. 60-108 and 184-209 (“On the Purpose and the Argument of Romans, with a Discussion of certain Pauline Conceptions.”)

24 Paulus der Apostel Jesu Christi, 2nd ed., edited by Zeller, 1866-1867, vol. i. 469 pp., revised by Baur; vol. ii. 376 pp. contains a reprint of the chapter on Paul’s doctrine from the first edition.

25 Vorlesungen über neutestamentliche Theologie. Published by Ferdinand Friedrich Baur, 1864, 407 pp. Pages 128-207 deal with the doctrinal system of Paul.

Notes for Chapter III From Baur to Holtzmann

26 Die Pastoralbriefe kritisch und exegetisch behandelt, 1880, 504 pp. Adolf Harnack (in Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius, vol. i., 1897, 732 pp.—on Paul, 233-239) is disposed to regard the personal notices of the Pastorals as genuine with the aid of the hypothesis of the second imprisonment.

27 Kritik der Epheser-und Kolosserbriefe, 1872, 338 pp.

28 Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 1885; 2nd ed., 1886; 3rd ed., 1892. Second Thessalonians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles, spurious; Colossians, worked over. A similar critical stand-point is occupied by Adolf Jülicher, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 1894, 404 pp. The Pauline Epistles are treated in pp. 19-128.

A mediating position is taken up by E. Reuss, Geschichte der heiligen Schriften Neuen Testaments (5th ed., 1874, 352 pp.; 6th ed., 1887). All that can be said in favour of the genuineness of the Pastorals and 2 Thessalonians is set forth with the greatest completeness, since the author is very reluctant to give up these writings. See the same author’s Histoire de la théologie chrétienne au siècle apostolique (1852; 2nd ed., 1860, 2 vols., i. 489 pp., ii. 629 pp. Paulinism is treated in vol. ii., 3-262; 3rd ed., 1864). Mild polemic against Baur. Another mediating work is Willibald Beyschlag’s Neutestamentliche Theologie, 1891; 2nd ed., 1896. Only the Pastorals spurious.

A conservative stand-point is occupied by Bernhard Weiss, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 1886, 652 pp. Paul and his Epistles occupy pp. 112-332. The Pastoral Epistles are saved by the hypothesis of the second imprisonment. 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians are held to be genuine (3rd ed., 1897, 617 pp.). Conservative also is Theodor Zahn, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 1st ed., 1897, vol. i., 489 pp. Pauline Epistles, pp. 109-489. Ch. K. v. Hofmann in his Einleitung (pt. ix. of “Die Heilige Schrift,” edited by Volck, 1881, 411 pp. Pauline Epistles, 1-200) proposes by means of the hypothesis of a liberation of the Apostle from his first imprisonment to make not only the Pastorals, but also the Epistle to the Hebrews genuine. That 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians are genuine is for him self-evident. Frédéric Godet too (Introduction au Nouveau Testament, 1893, 737 pp.) regards all thirteen Epistles as genuine.

29 Typical in this respect is the procedure of Bernhard Weiss in his Neutestamentliche Theologie (1868). He treats the doctrine of the Epistles of the imprisonment and that of the Pastorals by themselves after he has developed that of the main Epistles, although he regards them all as Pauline.

30 Kritik der paulinischen Briefe, 3 pts., 1850, 74 pp.; 1851, 76 pp.; 1852, 129 pp.; Christus und die Cäsaren, 1877, 387 pp.

31 Beiträge zur Kritik der paulinischen Briefe an die Galater, Römer Philipper und Kolosser. Edited by E. Sulze, 1867, 65 pp.

32 Lüdemann was opposed by H. H. Wendt in his work Die Begriffe Fleisch und Geist im biblischen Sprachgebrauch, 1878, 219 pp.

At the suggestion of Ritschl he undertook to prove that the meaning of these two words confined itself “within the boundaries set by Old Testament usage,” and that therefore the assumption of Greek influence was unnecessary.

33 Otto Pfleiderer, Das Urchristentum, 1887.

34 Auguste Sabatier, L’Apôtre Paul, esquisse d’une histoire de sa pensée, 1870, 296 pp. (2nd ed., 1881; 3rd ed., 1897).

35 Das Evangelium des Paulus, pt. 2 (edited by Mehlhorn), 1898, 172 pp.

36 P. 31.

37 Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus, 1868, 447 pp. In this work the author collects some of his earlier and later essays. The following are its component parts, “Paul’s Vision of Christ” (1861), “Peter’s Vision of the Messiah” (1868), “Contents and Argument of the Epistle to the Galatians” (1859), “The Significance of the word σάρξ (flesh) in Paul’s System of Doctrine” (1855). The collection is dedicated to F. C. Baur, “who though dead yet lives.” In the first part of the work Das Evangelium des Paulus, 1880, 498 pp., Holsten deals with the Epistle to the Galatians and the First to the Corinthians. The second part was intended to give an exposition of Romans and 2 Corinthians and to close with a systematic account of the Pauline theology. At Holsten’s death only the closing section was found to be ready for printing. It was published in 1898 under the editorship of Carl Mehlhorn, and bears the title “Carl Holsten, Das Evangelium des Paulus, part ii., Paulinische Theologie,” 173 pp. What was thus published is based on a manuscript prepared for his lectures in the winter session of 1893-1894, and on students’ notes.

38 Albrecht Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, 1874, vol. ii. 377 pp. On Paul, pp. 215-259 and 300-369.

39 Lehrbuch der biblischen Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 1st ed. 1868, 756 pp. On Paulinism, pp. 216-507; 6th ed. 1895, 677 pp. On Paulinism, 201-463.

40 Neutestamentliche Theologie, 1st ed. 1891; 2nd ed. 1896, vol. ii. 552 pp. On Paul, pp. 1-285.

41 Ch. K. v. Hofmann, Biblische Theologie (vol. xi. of “Die heilige Schrift Neuen Testaments”; edited by Volck), 1886, 328 pp.

42 Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Kirche, vol. v., 1888, part iv. Alfred Resch, “Agrapha. Ausserkanonische Evangelienfragmente gesammelt und untersucht,” 480 pp. The “logia” numbered 13-46 he holds, on the evidence of echoes in the letters, to have been known to Paul. See pp. 152-243.

43 Die paulinische Lehre vom Gesetz (“The Pauline Doctrine of the Law”). Based on the four main Epistles, 1884, 26 pp. The second edition (1893, 33 pp.) is a revision of the first, but in the results arrived at both agree.

44 Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte. In the second edition the work bears the title Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi (English Translation: “History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ,” Edinburgh, 1885). The second volume deals with the literature and the various currents of thought. There have since appeared a third and fourth edition.

45 System der altsynagogalen palästinensischen Theologie aus Targum, Midrasch und Talmud dargestellt, 399 pp. (Edited after the author’s death by Delitzsch and Schnedermann.)

The second edition (1897, 427 pp.) bears the title Jüdische Theologie auf Grund des Talmud und verwandter Schriften (“Jewish Theology described on the Basis of the Talmud and cognate Writings”).

The earlier literature is referred to in Hans Vollmer’s Die alttestamentlichen Zitate bei Paulus (1895), 81 pp.

46 A typical utterance is that of J. Wellhausen (Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte, 6th ed. 1907, 386 pp.), “Paul has not been able to free himself from the Rabbinic methods of exegesis. He employs it in his arguments, especially in connexion with justification by faith. But the inner essence of his religious conviction was not affected by it.”

47 Paulus des Apostels Brief an die Römer in das Hebräische übersetzt, und aus Talmud und Midrasch erläutert, 1870, 122 pp.

At the beginning the author gives an interesting review of previous Hebrew translations of the whole New Testament or of single books. He also refers to the Rabbinic reasoning in the apostle’s arguments. The illustrations from the Rabbinic literature, pp. 73-100, follow the translation.

He expects as a result of this translation that it will bring into prominence the Old Testament, Rabbinic, and Hellenistic elements in the early Christian modes of thought and expression.

Earlier attempts to point out Rabbinic parallels to Pauline ideas were made by Lightfoot, Surenhus, Schöttgen, Meuschen, and Nork. Information about this literature will be found in Hans Vollmer’s work (Die alttestamentlichen Zitate bei Paulus, 1895, pp. 80, 81).

48 A good general idea of the Rabbinic literature as a whole is given by Bousset in his work Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, 1903, 2nd ed., 1906, pp. 45-53.

49 Among the few scholars who stem the tide of conventional stupidity Frederick Spitta deserves a foremost place. In his printed works, no doubt—those in question are Der zweite Brief des Petrus und der Brief des Judas (1885, 544 pp.) and the studies Zur Geschichte und Literatur des Urchristentums (vol. i. 1893; vol. ii. 1896)—he is chiefly engaged in maintaining the general thesis that the earliest Christian literature shows much more dependence on the Late-Jewish than is generally admitted. A detailed proof of this kind for the Pauline letters has only been given in his exegetical lectures, which have not been published. The stimulus which he gave to others is clearly apparent in the literature of the nineties. Kabisch’s study of the eschatology of Paul (1893) is partly based on the foundation which he had prepared.

50 Die paulinische Angelologie und Dämonologie, 1888, 126 pp.

51 Die Eschatologie des Paulus in ihren Zusammenhängen mit dem Gesamtbegriff des Paulinismus (... in its relations with the general conception of Paulinism), 1893, 338 pp. The work is dedicated to Friedrich Spitta. After a historical introduction, the principal passages which come into question are examined. After that the eschatology is developed according to its contents and motives, and in the process its relations with the various doctrines of the Pauline theology come up for discussion.

52 He did not, unfortunately, follow it up with the work on the Ethics.

53 The eschatological character of the Pauline mysticism is also pointed out by Paul Wernle in his suggestive study Der Christ und die Sünde bei Paulus (1897, 138 pp.), but he does not follow out the idea in all its consequences.

A certain recognition of the “physical” character of the doctrine of redemption is also arrived at by Adolf Deissmann. In his study, Die neutestamentliche Formel “in Christo Jesu” (1892, 136 pp.) he comes to the conviction that Paul had created the formula on the analogy of a linguistic usage already obtaining in non-biblical Greek, and intended in using it to indicate the relation to Christ as an existence within the pneumatic Christ which was to be locally conceived. He does not, however, think of explaining it from eschatology.

The old psychologising and spiritualising methods are in no way departed from by W. Brandt. In his work, Die evangelische Geschichte und der Ursprung des Christentums (“The Gospel History and the Origin of Christianity,” 1893, 591 pp.; on Paul, pp. 515-524), he maintains that it was the visions of the disciples which first made Jesus into the Messiah. Paul, he thinks, “in his profound reflexion over his conversion, came to think of this revolution in his life as a dying and rising again of his inner man.”

54 Georg Heinrici, Auslegung der Korintherbriefe (I Cor., 1880, 574 pp.; 2 Cor., 1887, 606 pp.).

55 P. W. Schmiedel, “Auslegung der Briefe an die Thessalonicher und Korinther,” in Holtzmann’s Handkommentar, vol. ii. section i.; 1st ed., 1891; 2nd ed., 1892.

56 Dogmengeschichte, 3rd ed., 1894, vol. i. On Paul, pp. 83-95. Friedrich Loofs in his Dogmengeschichte (1890, 443 pp.) takes up no definite attitude towards the Pauline problem. Reinhold Seeberg, too (Dogmengeschichte, first half, 1895, 332 pp.), does not go into the doctrine of the Apostle.

57 R. A. Lipsius, “Auslegung der Briefe an die Galater, Römer und Philipper,” in Holtzmann’s Handkommentar, vol. ii. section i. 1st ed., 1891; 2nd ed., 1892. This commentator’s position is indicated by the following remarks: “The great antithesis between flesh and spirit gradually forces out the Jewish conceptions one after another, though it is not right to say that Hebrew ideas are driven out by Hellenic ones. When Paul goes outside the circle of Old Testament views he does so in consequence of a deeper ethical grasp of the originally Hebrew antithesis between flesh and spirit, not by a borrowing of Greek ideas.”

58 Das apostolische Zeitalter, 1886, pp. 105-151.

59 It is most clearly developed by Holsten on pp. 37 and 38 of the second part of his Evangelium des Paulus, 1896.

60 Vol. i., 1880; vol. ii., 1887. See especially the Introduction and the Epilogue to vol. ii.

61 In Phil. i. 21 f. the reference is to an inner struggle which the Apostle experiences. He desires to depart and be with Christ, which, indeed, would be much better, but he knows that to remain in the flesh is more needful for the sake of his churches. From this conviction he draws the confident conclusion that he will remain with them for their progress and joy in the faith.

In Phil. iii. 8 he declares that he has counted all things but loss in order to win Christ and be found in Him, to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, to be conformed unto His death, if so be that he might attain (?) to the resurrection of the dead.

Both passages are certainly obscure, and do not to a literal interpretation yield any satisfactory meaning. One feels that the logic of these close-packed assertions is not self-evident, but must somehow depend on presuppositions of which the basis is not here given. It cannot, however, be maintained that the assumption of a spiritualising hope regarding the future makes all clear.

62 An allusion to the passage in Faust, “Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner Brust.”—TRANSLATOR.

63 Ernst Teichmann, Die paulinischen Vorstellungen von Auferstehung und Gericht und ihre Beziehung zur jüdischen Apokalyptik (“The Pauline Conceptions of Resurrection and Judgment and their relation to Jewish Apocalyptic”), 1896, 125 pp. Akin to Teichmann’s study is that of C. Bruston, “La Vie future d’après St Paul” in the Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie (Lausanne), 1894, pp. 506-530. The author maintains that Paul had never really held the conceptions connected with the resurrection of the dead at the parousia, but had always thought “spiritually” and assumed a passing into glory immediately after death. But while in his earlier writings he still used certain expressions borrowed from the “Rabbinic eschatology,” later he quite abandoned these.

64 Hermann Gunkel, Die Wirkungen des Heiligen Geistes nach der populären Anschauung der apostolischen Zeit und nach der Lehre des Apostels Paulus (“The Manifestations of the Holy Spirit according to the Popular View of the Apostolic Age and according to the Doctrine of the Apostle Paul”), 1888, 110 pp. Shortly before that appeared the purely biblico-theological treatment of it by Johannes Gloël, Der Heilige Geist in der Heilsverkündigung des Paulus (“The Holy Spirit in Paul’s Preaching of Salvation”), 1888, 402 pp. It keeps entirely to description and does not enter into the question regarding the origin and innermost essence of the Pauline doctrine. Pfleiderer’s view is, however, called in question.

65 Urchristentum, 1887. Similarly Heinrici in his commentary on 2 Corinthians.

66 F. C. Baur, Vorlesungen über die christliche Dogmengeschichte (“Lectures on the History of Dogma”), vol. i. From the apostolic period to the synod of Nicaea, 1865 (edited by Ferdinand Friedrich Baur).

67 Dogmengeschichte, 1885, vol. i.; 3rd ed., 1894; 4th ed., 1909. Wilhelm Karl, too, in his Beiträge zum Verständnis der soteriologischen Erfahrungen und Spekulationen des Apostels Paulus (“Contributions to the Understanding of the Soteriological Experiences and Speculations of the Apostle Paul,” 1899, 116 pp.), does not feel obliged to have recourse to Greek thought in order to explain the Apostle’s doctrine. He offers a thorough and independent analysis of the system which in many points is much superior to the ordinary view.

68 Edwin Hatch, Hibbert Lectures on “The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church.” The work was translated into German by Erwin Preuschen in 1892. Its divisions are: (i.) Introductory, (ii.) Greek culture, (iii.) Greek and Christian Exegesis, (iv.) Rhetoric, (v.) Philosophy, (vi.) Ethics, (vii.-ix.) Theology, (x.) Mysteries, (xi.) Corpus doctrinae, (xii.) The Transformation of the basis of Christian Unity: Doctrine in the Place of Conduct.

69 i.e. as used in this connexion, here and later, the belief in the universal destination of the Gospel, not in universal salvation.

70 Paulus in Athen. Collected Essays, vol. ii., 1894, pp. 527-543 In this essay the author seeks to exhibit with some fulness the view, which seems to him self-evident, that the Apostle was filled with the Hellenic spirit.

71 Preface to his Exposition of 2 Corinthians, 1887.

72 Holtzmann’s Handkommentar, 2nd ed. The Epistles to the Corinthians, p. 92.

73 Emil Friedrich Kautzsch, De veteris Testamenti locis a Paulo Apostolo allegatis, 1869, 110 pp.

74 Hans Vollmer, Die alttestamentlichen Zitate bei Paulus... nebst einem Anhang über das Verhältnis des Apostels zu Philo, 1895, 103 pp. (“The Old Testament quotations in Paul... with an Appendix on the Apostle’s relation to Philo”).

75 The author has had occasion to observe this in Alsatian theologians and in himself. One who is equally familiar with French and German will never, either in preaching or in conversation, give his own version of Biblical passages, but will without exception keep to the traditional form in the language which he is using, and this even where he would be capable of giving a more exact rendering. And in preaching he will turn to account the peculiarities of the wording of the version, if it lends itself to his thought, and will even perhaps use an argument which goes against the sense of the original, which he is supposed to be acquainted with—exactly as Paul does.

76 Eduard Grafe, Das Verhältnis der paulinischen Schriften zur Sapientia Salamonis (“The Relation of the Pauline Writings to the Book of Wisdom”), in the Theological Essays dedicated to Carl von Weizsäcker on his seventieth birthday, 1892, pp. 251-286.

77 Über das Verhältnis des Apostels zu Philo, an appendix to his work on Die alttestamentlichen Zitate bei Paulus, 1895, pp. 80-98. See also Carl Siegfried, Philo von Alexandria als Ausleger des alten Testaments an sich selbst und nach seinem geschichtlichen Einfluss betrachtet (“Philo of Alexandria as an Expositor of Scripture, considered both in Himself and in Regard to his Historical Influence”), 1875, 418 pp. In pp. 304-10 thoughts and passages are cited from Paul which are supposed to show affinity with Philo. The resemblance is, however, so general and colourless that it cannot be considered as proving anything. The author quotes the passages without drawing any conclusion.

78 Ernst Curtius in the essay cited above defends the historicity of Acts xvii.

79 W. Gass, Geschichte der christlichen Ethik, 1881, vol. i. 457 pp. On Paul, pp. 34-38. Theobald Ziegler, Geschichte der christlichen Ethik, 1886, 593 pp. On Paul, pp. 72-90.

80 Fr. Th. L. Ernesti, Die Ethik des Apostels Paulus, 1868, 155 pp.; 3rd ed., 1880.

81 The Christian character of Seneca’s thought was remarked as early as Tertullian, who in de Anima, xx., when he quotes a phrase from him, describes him as “saepe noster.” Augustine and Jerome know of a correspondence between Seneca and the Apostle. From the literature we may mention the following works: Amédée Fleury, Saint Paul et Sénèque. Recherches sur les rapports du philosophe avec l’apôtre et sur l’infiltration du Christianisme naissant à travers le paganisme, 2 vols., 1853, 404 and 383 pp. Seneca is supposed to have drawn on Paul. At the end of the second part the correspondence between them is printed. The work is uncritical in character. Johann Kreyher, L. Annaeus Seneca und seine Beziehungen zur Urchristentum (... and his relations with early Christianity), 1887, 198 pp. Seneca is supposed to have had some relations with Christianity in Rome even before the Apostle’s coming, and thenceforward to have entered into a close relationship with him. Charles Aubertin, Étude critique sur les rapports supposés entre Sénèque et St Paul, 1857, 442 pp. All connexion between Seneca and Christianity is denied. In the work of Michael Baumgarten, Lucius Annaeus Seneca und das Christentum (1895, 368 pp.) no connexion between Seneca and Paul is admitted.

82 See Theodor Zahn, Der Stoiker Epiktet und sein Verhältnis zum Christentum. A Rectorial address at Erlangen, 1894, 27 pp. The lecture offers proof that in spite of many resemblances of expression and in spite of his acquaintance with Christianity, the teaching of Epictetus contains nothing which really connects it with the new religion.

Inconceivable as it may appear, even the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius—of the second half of the second century—have been sometimes cited to prove the Greek character of Paul’s religious thought.

83 Theodor Simon, Die Psychologie des Apostels Paulus, 1897, 118 pp. A leisurely analysis of the material.

Notes for Chapter IV H. J. Holtzmann

84 In connexion with the following remarks on questions of principle, see also W. Wrede, Über Aufgabe und Methode der sogenannten Neutestamentlichen Theologie, 1897, 80 pp.

The essay discusses the plan and arrangement of Holtzmann’s work. On p. 32 Wrede remarks: “The treatment is far too much influenced by the desire to include all kinds of opinions from other writers. To a large extent my objections have to do with these methodological questions.”

85 Holtzmann, p. 111.

86 Cf. 2 Cor. xi. 6, where Paul speaks of himself as “inexpert in speech, but not in knowledge” (τῇ γνώσει). See also I Cor. i. 5, viii. I; Phil. i. 9, etc. “Gnostic” is used above in the general sense of one who lays stress on theoretic religious knowledge.—TRANSLATOR.

Notes for Chapter V Critical Questions and Hypotheses

87 Die Apostelgeschichte, 1850, 143 pp. Acts, it is argued, is a work of “free reflexion” in which various hands have had a part.

Kritik der paulinischen Briefe, part i., The Origin of Galatians (1850, 74 pp.); part ii., The Origin of I Corinthians (1851, 76 pp.); part iii., 2 Corinthians, Romans, the Pastoral Epistles, Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians (1852, 129 pp.). The greater part of the epistles were not written until after Acts. Certainly Galatians is later. I Corinthians is earlier than Acts, and is doubtless drawn from common sources.

The first to venture an attack on one of the main Epistles was Edward Evanson, The Dissonance of the four generally received Evangelists, and the evidence of their respective authenticity examined (translated into Dutch, 1796), who holds Romans, as well as Hebrews, Colossians, and Ephesians, to be spurious. Further information regarding this, as it seems, rather rare book would be desirable. Whether any great critical importance is to be attached to it remains questionable. [Evanson (1731-1805), a Cambridge graduate, vicar of Tewkesbury, adopted Unitarian views, and resigned his living in 1778. His grounds for rejecting Romans are, the difficulty about the existence of a church at Rome prior to Paul’s visit, the number of greetings in chapter xvi., and supposed references to the destruction of Jerusalem in xi. 12, 15, 21, 22. The treatment of the Epistles is much slighter than that of the Gospels, where he shows some insight into the difficulties of what is now known as the Synoptic problem. The Dissonance made some stir, and was answered by Joseph Priestley in Letters to a Young Man, 1792-93, and by T. Falconer, Bampton Lecture, 1810.—TRANSLATOR.]

88 See A. Schweitzer, Von Reimarus zu Wrede, pp. 137-159 (Eng. trans., The Quest of the Historical Jesus, pp. 137-160).

89 Christus und die Cäsaren, 1877, 387 pp. What the diffusely told story of the Roman court has to do with the origin of Christianity has certainly never been quite clear to any reader. In attempting to describe its contents one is never quite certain whether the author’s meaning has been rightly represented.

90 A spiritual descendant of Bauer’s who writes on popular lines is Albert Kalthoff (Die Entstehung des Christentums, 1904, 155 pp.). But neither as regards the problem nor its solution has he contributed anything to Pauline scholarship.

91 Allard Pierson, De Bergrede en andere synoptische Fragmenten, 1878, 260 pp.; on Paul, 98-112. With his doubt of the Epistles the author associates a doubt of the Gospels, and asks whether Christianity as they represent it can have been founded by a historical Jesus.

92 A. Pierson and S. A. Naber, Verisimilia. Laceram conditionem Novi Testamenti exemplis illustrarunt et ab origine repetierunt, 1886, 295 pp. The work gives a running analysis of the letters in the course of which very interesting questions are thrown out. Why is nothing said about the earthly life of Jesus? Why is no trace of the influence of this Paul’s thought to be found in history? Do the various characteristics and actions of his which are recorded show us a character which is at all intelligible?

The authors assume that the Jewish movement which led up to “Christianity” at first had only to do with the Messianic belief in general. Only later, through the blending of Greek myths with Isaiah liii., did the belief arise that the expected Messiah had already come and had passed through death and resurrection.

The analysis of the Pauline Epistles is followed by essays upon the Paul of Acts and some chapters on the Fourth Gospel. The close is formed by an essay on the gradual origin of the conception of Christ in the New Testament.

The theory that Christianity developed out of an already existing Jewish movement is maintained also by M. Friedländer in his popular and unimportant work, Das Judentum in der vorchristlichen griechischen Welt, a contribution towards explaining the origin of Christianity (1897, 74 pp.). The opposition between a conservative and a freer tendency as regards the law, which appear in the primitive Church, are here held to have appeared previously in the Judaism from which Christianity originated.

93 A. D. Loman, “Quaestiones Paulinae,” Theol. Tijdschrift, 1882, pp. 141-185, 302-328, 452-487; 1883, pp. 14-51. 1886, 42-113 (Dutch). In the prologue he tells us about the first impression which Bauer’s criticism of the Pauline epistles made upon him: “With an Apage Satana! I took leave of this antipathetic critic, firmly resolved to take no further notice of him.” The order followed is to treat first the relation of Acts to Galatians, then to discuss the “necessary proofs” of the genuineness of this work, while the witnesses from the literature, and the history of the Canon, are examined later, in the second part, 1886.

94 Rudolf Steck, Der Galaterbrief nach seiner Echtheit untersucht nebst kritischen Bemerkungen zu den paulinischen Hauptbriefen (“The Epistle to the Galatians examined with Reference to its Genuineness, with critical Remarks on the main Pauline Epistles”), 1888, 386 pp. The examination of Galatians goes only as far as p. 151; the remaining chapters deal with the order of the main Epistles, the relation of Paul to the Gospels, the quotations from the Old Testament found in the Epistles, the affinities with Philo and Seneca, the marks of later authorship, the external evidences from the New Testament and from early Christian literature. In conclusion, a hypothesis of the origin and development of Paulinism is sketched. The author tells in the preface the story of his conversion to the Dutch heresy. At first he dissented from Loman, but in the course of repeatedly treating the Epistle to the Galatians in his lectures he found to his dismay that he was gradually arriving at the theory of its spuriousness.

The views of Pierson, Loman, and Steck are critically examined by J. M. S. Baljon in his Exegetisch-kritische Verhandeling over den Brief van Paulus an de Galatiërs, 1899, 424 pp.

95 W. C. van Manen, Paulus, 3 vols. (see head of chapter for particulars). The author describes on pp. 9-11 how he came to reject the Pauline Epistles.

96 The first epistle of Clement mentions (xlvii. I) “the letter of the blessed Paul” to the Corinthians, has a direct borrowing from Romans (xxxv. 5 = the catalogue of vices in Rom. i. 29-32), and in other respects also frequently shows dependence on the main epistles. For the detailed attempt to place it at a later date see Steck, 294-310.

97 2 Peter iii. 15-17, “And count the long-suffering of the Lord as salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you, as in all his Epistles when he mentions these things, in which no doubt occur some things which are difficult to understand, which the unlearned and unstedfast wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” (The German follows Weizsäcker’s rendering.)

98 As in the present context this phrase might possibly be misleading, it may be worth pointing out that it is simply an allusion to the famous “timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” Aen. ii. 49.—TRANSLATOR.

99 The puzzle in the case of Justin is that he uses Pauline phrases, and therefore seems to know the Epistles, but never mentions their author. According to Steck the explanation of this silence lies in the fact that the Epistles are, for the author of the Apology and the Dialogue, mere literary works and not as yet Church books. The Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle of Barnabas show no certain evidence of acquaintance with the Pauline Epistles.

100 Tertullian adversus Marcionem, bk. v., goes through the Epistles of Paul as used by Marcion in those “Antitheses” which are now lost to us.

101 Theologisch Tijdschrift, 1887, pp. 382-533. “Marcions Brief van Paulus aan de Galatiërs.” The text thus arrived at is given on pp. 528-533.

Van Manen is also inclined to hold that early Church witnesses may be found for a shorter recension of Romans. See Die Unechtheit des Römerbriefs, 94-100.

A reconstruction of the Marcionite text of Galatians had already been undertaken by Adolf Hilgenfeld, Der Galaterbrief, 1852, 239 pp., pp. 218-234. He holds that it was not the original but a mutilated form.

102 Even the letter consisting of chapters i.-viii. is not, according to van Manen, all of a piece, as is evident, he thinks, from the complicated opening salutation, the vacillating use of “Jesus Christ” and “Christ Jesus,” and other peculiarities of detail. One or more treatises—on justification by faith, on the equal importance of the Gospel for Jews and Gentiles, on the significance of the law, on the sense in which believers are entitled to call Abraham their father even if they are not by birth of his posterity—may have formed the basis of the longer writing. Its close was probably formed by Rom. xv. 14-33. Later on, the essays which we have in chapters ix.-xi., xii.-xiv. and xv.-xvi. were worked in. The Epistle is supposed to have undergone several successive redactions.

103 Steck in the introduction to his work gives references to the articles which had appeared up to 1888. The chronicles of the following years appear in van Manen. At the head of the counter-movement among critics in Holland stood J. H. Scholten. His work, Historisch-critische Bijdragen naar Aanleiding van de nieuweste Hypothese aangaande Jesus en den Paulus der vier Hoofdbrieven (“Contributions to Historical Criticism with Reference to the latest Hypotheses regarding Jesus and the Paul of the four main Epistles”), 1882, 118 pp., is directed against Loman’s arguments.

From the German literature we may cite G. Heinrici, Die Forschungen über die paulinischen Briefe: ihr gegenwärtiger Stand und ihre Aufgaben (“The Study of the Pauline Letters; its present Position, and Task”). Lectures given before the theological conference at Giessen, 1886, pp. 69-120. Wilhelm Brückner, Die chronologische Reihenfolge, in welcher die Briefe des Neuen Testaments verfasst sind (“The Chronological Order in which the Epistles of the New Testament were written”), 1890, 306 pp. (An essay which received the prize offered for the treatment of this question by the Teylerian Society of Haarlem.) “On the Chronological Order of the Four main Epistles, pp. 174-203. Carl Clemen, Die Chronologie der paulinischen Briefe, 1893, 292 pp. By the same writer, Die Einheitlichkeit der paulinischen Briefe (“The Integrity of the Pauline Epistles”), 1894, 183 pp.

In these writings Clemen makes some concessions to the Ultra-Tübingen critics. Thus, for example, he is prepared to put Galatians after Romans and Corinthians. The mediating views here offered, though sometimes interesting, need nevertheless no longer occupy us, as Clemen has in the meantime completely recovered his confidence and has contradicted himself. In the first volume of his Paulus (1904, 416 pp., examination of the sources) he pronounces that the four main epistles are to be regarded as entirely genuine, if only we may divide the second Epistle to the Corinthians into four. In addition to I Thessalonians and Philippians, even Colossians and 2 Thessalonians are to be regarded as from the Apostle’s pen.

In the preface the author begs that he may not be held accountable for his views prior to his Damascus.

The second volume of the work, Paulus. Sein Leben und Werken, 1904, 339 pp., is in biographical form, and does not enter further into the problems of the doctrine.

A writer who takes the “Ultra-Tübingen” side is J. Friedrich (Maehliss). In his work entitled Die Unechtheit des Galaterbriefs (“The Spuriousness of Galatians”), 1891, 67 pp., he defends both the rights of radical criticism and of a “simplified orthography.”

104 See p. 128, sup.

105 See p. 128, sup.

106 See p. 129, sup.

107 See pp. 114 and 115 of the work cited above, p. 134.

108 Christian Hermann Weisse, Philosophische Dogmatik oder Philosophie des Christentums, 3 vols., 1855, 60, 62; vol. i., 712 pp. On the Pauline Epistles, pp. 144-147.

109 On Romans see also vol. iii. of the Philosophische Dogmatik (1862, 736 pp.), pp. 263, 264.

The Epistle to the Ephesians, the Second to the Corinthians, and the First to Timothy, Weisse holds to be “entirely unapostolic”; in the Epistle to Titus and the Second to Timothy he is prepared to recognise as a possibility the genuineness of the personal notices.

110 In 2 Corinthians, which shows no evidence of interpolation, three different letters to this church are worked up together.

111 Christian Hermann Weisse, Beiträge zur Kritik der paulinischen Briefe an die Galater, Römer, Philipper und Kolosser (“Contributions to the Criticism of the Pauline Epistles to the Galatians, Romans, Philippians, and Colossians”). Edited by E. Sulze, 1867, 65 pp. By way of introduction the pupil prefixes an essay on the principles of his master’s “stylistic criticism.”

In the reconstructed texts it is apparent that the author had spent on them, as he says in his Dogmatic, the “diligent work of many years.” It is a piece of really skilled workmanship.

112 Daniel Völter, Die Entstehung der Apokalypse, 1882, 72 pp. Die Komposition der paulinischen Hauptbriefe, 1890, 174 pp. The Epistles examined are those to the Romans and Galatians. Paulus und seine Briefe. Kritische Untersuchungen zu einer neuen Grundlegung der paulinischen Briefliteratur und ihrer Theologie, 1905, 331 pp. Here he deals with Corinthians, Romans, Galatians, and Philippians. The results arrived at in the previous book are, as a rule, taken over. Völter rejects the genuineness of 1 Thessalonians, and sees in the letters to the Colossians and Ephesians, and in the Pastorals, new “phases in the development” of Paulinism.

113 In its original form it consisted, Völter thinks, of the following sections: i. I, 5b-7, 8-17; v. I-12, 15-19, 21; vi. I-13, 6:16-23; chapters xii. and xiii.; xiv. I-xv. 6; xv. 14-16, 23b-33, xvi 21-24.

114 Völter is also able to indicate additions which have taken place subsequently to this redaction.

The interpolations in Philippians relate, according to him, chiefly to Christology and eschatology. The author of these additions had before him Romans and Corinthians in their interpolated form, and was also doubtless acquainted with Galatians.

115 The well-known German religious journal.

116 The labour of making an inventory of what has been done in this kind of criticism up to the year 1894 was undertaken by C. Clemen in his work, Die Einheitlichkeit der paulinischen Briefe an der Hand der bisher mit Bezug auf sie aufgestellten Interpolations-und Kompilationshypothesen (“The Integrity of the Pauline Epistles, with Reference to the Hypotheses of Interpolation or Compilation which have been applied to them”), 1894, 183 pp. He takes account also of all contributions to the journals. This gives a special value to this laborious and unselfish work.

A survey of previous work in conjectural criticism is given by J. M. S. Baljon in De Tekst der Brieven van Paulus aan de Romeinen, de Corinthiërs en de Galatiërs, 1884, 189 pp.

117 Friedrich Spitta, Untersuchungen über den Brief des Paulus an die Römer (“A Study of the Epistle to the Romans”), 1901, 193 pp. In the work Zur Geschichte und Literatur des Urchristentums, vol. iii. part i.

Notes for Chapter VI the Position at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

118 Otto Pfleiderer, Das Urchristentum, seine Schriften und Lehren, 2nd ed., 1902, vol. i. 696 pp. On Paul, pp. 24-335. (Eng. trans. “Primitive Christianity,” vol. i. pp. 33-471.)

119 On this point Pfleiderer follows suggestions given by Teichmann in his work, Die paulinischen Vorstellungen von Auferstehung und Gericht (“The Pauline Conceptions of Resurrection and Judgment”), 1896, 125 pp. As a matter of fact he cannot any more than his predecessors give any proof of this evolution.

120 Paul Wernle, Die Anfänge unserer Religion, 1st ed., 1901, 410 pp. On Paul, pp. 95-220. By the same author, Paulus als Heidenmissionar (“Paul as a Missionary to the Gentiles”), Lecture, 1899, 36 pp. Heinrich Weinel, Paulus, 1904, 316 pp. The book grew out of essays which the author published in the Christliche Welt. By the same author, Paulus als kirchlicher Organisator. (Inaugural Lecture.) 1899, 30 pp.

Other works from this popular literature are: Adolf Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums, 1900, 189 pp. On Paul, pp. 110-118. Georg Hollmann, Urchristentum in Corinth, 1903, 32 pp. Paul Feine, Paulus als Theologe, 1906, 80 pp. Carl Munzinger, Paulus in Corinth. Neue Wege zum Verständnis des Urchristentums (“Paul in Corinth. New Ways of arriving at an Understanding of Early Christianity.”) 1908, 208 pp. The author pictures the work of the Apostle in the Greek city in the light of analogies offered by modern missionary practice. Whether the new way really leads to a better understanding of primitive Christianity remains open to question.

As a special investigation of a point of detail at this date we may mention Karl Dick’s work, Der schriftstellerische Plural bei Paulus (“The Author’s ‘We’ in Paul’s Writings.”) 1900, 169 pp. There are not many of these studies at this period since the tendency among theologians has been more to popularisation than to scientific research.

121 Paulus als Heidenmissionar, p. 36. Ernst von Dobschütz calls attention to the dangers of this method, which easily becomes unscientific in Probleme des apostolischen Zeitalters. (Five Lectures, 1904, 138 pp. See p. 61.) Paul Feine, Das gesetzesfreie Evangelium des Paulus nach seinem Werdegange dargestellt, 1899, 232 pp. Jesus Christus und Paulus, 1902, 309 pp. Arthur Titius, Der Paulinismus unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Seligkeit (2nd Part of the work Die neutestamentliche Lehre von der Seligkeit und ihre Bedeutung für die Gegenwart—“The New Testament Doctrine of Final Blessedness and its Significance for the present Time”), 1900, 290 pp. A. Schlatter, in his NTle. Theologie (Pt. ii. The doctrine of the Apostles, 1910, 592 pp. On Paul, 199-407), follows a conservative biblico-theological method like that of B. Weiss.

122 R. Drescher, too “Das Leben Jesu bei Paulus” in Festgruss an Stade, 1900, pp. 101-161, is of opinion that the letters, rightly understood, offer us “an imposing amount of material” on the life of Jesus. The author thinks that wherever possible Paul referred to the teaching of Jesus; and he fought his battle for freedom from the law with such confidence “because he knew that he had Jesus on his side.”

It should be mentioned that J. Wellhausen takes up a similar stand-point. He gives it as his opinion, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte (6th ed., 1907, 386 pp.), that Paul “was really the man who best understood the Master and carried on His work.”

123 L’Apôtre Paul et Jésus-Christ, 1904, 393 pp.

124 Adolf Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 4th ed., 1909, vol. i., 826 pp. See p. 107. To the same effect, Adolf Jülicher, Paulus und Jesus, 1907, 72 pp. See p. 34.

125 Hermann Jakoby. Neutestamentliche Ethik, 1899, 480 pp. On Paul, pp. 243-406. Alfred Juncker, Die Ethik des Apostels Paulus, part i., 1904, 288 pp.

Among other monographs we have to notice Emil Sokolowski’s Die Begriffe Geist und Leben bei Paulus in ihrer Beziehung zu einander, 1903, 284 pp. The author ascribes little importance to Greek influence in comparison with Jewish, and tries to explain what is peculiar and vital in the Apostle’s views as due to his individual experience, especially the vision on the Damascus road.

Hans Windisch, Die Entsündigung des Christen nach Paulus, 1908, 132 pp. The difficulties raised for Paul by his mysticism are pointed out. It is shown that this, strictly speaking, makes it impossible for him to admit sin in the case of baptized persons. The eschatological character of the sacramental-mystical theory of deliverance from sin is strongly brought out. The author continues the investigation which Paul Wernle, in his work Der Christ und die Sünde bei Paulus (1897, 138 pp.), was the first to undertake. See p. 60 of the present work.

126 Wilhelm Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, 1903, 512 pp. Simultaneously appeared the same writer’s work, Die jüdische Apokalyptik, ihre religionsgeschichtliche Herkunft und ihre Bedeutung für das neue Testament (“Jewish Apocalyptic, its Origin in the Light of Comparative Religion and its Significance for the New Testament.” A Lecture, 1903.)

Eschatology receives special attention in the fine work of Hugo Gressmann, Der Ursprung der israelitisch jüdischen Eschatologie (“The Origin of the Israelitish and Jewish Eschatology”), 1905, 378 pp. The author takes up an attitude of some reserve in regard to the “religious-historical method,” and seeks to determine in the case of every statement whether it can have arisen in Israel or must be regarded as having been introduced from without.

Paul Volz, Jüdische Eschatologie von Daniel bis Akiba, 1903, 412 pp., endeavours, somewhat unconvincingly, to give a sketch of Jewish conceptions of the future age.

Everling’s investigations are continued, on modern lines, by a study of Martin Dibelius, Die Geisterwelt im Glauben des Paulus, 1909, 249 pp. (“The World of Spirits as conceived in Paul’s Belief”). In addition to the Late Jewish passages the author cites also the Rabbinical and those suggested by the Comparative Study of Religion. The excursuses on the linguistic history of the subject are very instructive (pp. 209-232). On Everling, see pp. 55-57 of the present work.

127 G. F. Heinrici’s work, Das Urchristentum, 1902, 142 pp., still occupies the old stand-point. On Paul, pp. 71-101. For what he has to say against the “physical” in the doctrine of redemption, see pp. 95, 96.

W. Bousset, Der Apostel Paulus, 1906, holds that we shall never completely understand the Apostle’s doctrine. We must make up our minds to the fact.. that in his letters we have before us only fragments of his spiritual life, the full wealth of which we can only vaguely imagine. The individual arguments of Paul look to us like erratic boulders; only toilsomely and partially can we reconstruct the connexion of thought.

128 Rendering naturhaft. Dr. Schweitzer has favoured me with the following note on this difficult concept, which from this point becomes prominent in the discussions. After consultation with him, the word has been rendered “physical,” but placed in quotation marks to indicate the special use.—TRANSLATOR. “In the special sense in which it is here used naturhaft is intended to convey that it is not a question of a purely spiritual redemption, but that the whole physical and hyperphysical being of the man is thereby translated into a new condition. Body and soul are redeemed together; and in such a way that not only the elect portion of mankind, but the whole world is completely transformed in a great catastrophic event.”

129 Neutestamentliche Theologie, vol. ii., 1897, pp. 175-187.

130 W. Heitmüller, Taufe und Abendmahl bei Paulus, 1903, 56 pp.

131 How unwilling theology was to draw this inevitable inference is to be seen from the works of Weinel and Heitmüller. They refuse to go beyond the statement that the sacraments stand in sharp opposition to the real “religion” of Paul, and think that they have solved the problem by asserting that the Apostle of the Gentiles did not notice the contradiction. Weinel remarks, “Paul himself is quite unconscious of the problem raised by the collision of the ‘physical’ doctrine of redemption of the Mysteries with the ethical doctrine of Christianity.” Heitmüller says, “These views of baptism and the Lord’s Supper stand in unreconciled and unreconcilable opposition with the central significance of faith for Pauline Christianity, that is to say, with the purely spiritual, personal view of the religious relation which stands in the foreground of Pauline religious life and religious thought.”

132 William Wrede, Paulus, 1904, 113 pp. (In the series entitled “Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher.”)

133 In the sense of the Messiah.—TRANSLATOR.

134 How far Wrede was consciously influenced by Kabisch, and how far he has the sense of creating something new, is not quite evident. He reckons the book among the “very important studies on special points,” to which he refers in the bibliography, but he does not quote it.

135 C. von Dobschütz, Probleme des apostolischen Zeitalters (“Problems of the Apostolic Age,” 1904, 138 pp.), does not enter in detail into the question regarding the genesis of the Pauline view of the law, although he treats Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity with some fulness.

136 See the present writer’s Von Reimarus zu Wrede, eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (1906, 418 pp.). On Wrede, pp. 327-347. (English translation, “The Quest of the Historical Jesus.” A. and C. Black, London, 2nd ed., 1911. On Wrede, pp. 328-348.)

137 This thesis of Wrede’s called into being a new literature upon Paul and Jesus which attacked Wrede chiefly on the score of his one-sidedness.

P. Kölbing, Die geistige Einwirkung der Person Jesu auf Paulus, 1906 (“The Spiritual Influence of the Person of Jesus on Paul”). Adolf Jülicher, Paulus und Jesus, 1907, 72 pp. Arnold Meyer, Wer hat das Christentum begründet, Jesus oder Paulus? 1907, 104 pp. (“Who founded Christianity, Jesus or Paul?”) Wilhelm Walther, Pauli Christentum, Jesu Evangelium, 1908, 51 pp. Johannes Weiss, Paulus und Jesus, 1909, 72 pp. Christus: Die Anfänge des Dogmas, 1909, 88 pp. (“Christ: The Beginnings of Dogma”).

138 Martin Brückner, Die Entstehung der paulinischen Christologie, 1903, 237 pp.

The work appeared some months before Wrede’s Paulus, but the author, who had the opportunity of personal intercourse and the interchange of ideas with him, was acquainted with his method and fundamental views. As he is also an independent thinker, his work represents not only a supplement but a real advance.

139 Viz. the Jewish conception of the Messiah.—TRANSLATOR.

140 William Olschewski replies to Wrede and Brückner in his thoughtful but obscure and heavily written dissertation, Die Wurzeln der paulinischen Christologie (1909, 170 pp.) (“The Roots of the Pauline Eschatology”). He thinks that the origin of Christianity which they suggest does not explain the “characteristic and peculiar connexion of Christology with Pneumatology,” and insists that in the Damascus vision is to be found the sufficient reason for “the intimately organic fusion” of the conception of Christ with that of the Spirit which operates through Him. In any case he holds it to be “false in principle and method to try to derive the roots of the Pauline Christology from the Jewish Apocalyptic Christology.”

141 From the literature we may mention A. Schettler, Die paulinische Formel “Durch Christus” (“The Pauline Formula Through Christ”), 1907, 82 pp. J. Haussleiter, Paulus, 1909, 96 pp. (Lectures, popular.) R. Knopf, Paulus, 1909, 123 pp. Eberhard Vischer, Der Apostel Paulus und sein Werk, 1910, 143 pp. By the same author, Die Paulusbriefe, 1906, 80 pp. A remarkably good, clearly and simply written guide to questions of “Introduction.” Julius Schniewind, Die Begriffe Wort und Evangelium bei Paulus (“The Meaning of the Terms ‘Word’ and ‘Gospel’ in Paul’s Writings”), 1910, 120 pp.

Johannes Müller, Die Entstehung des persönlichen Christentums der paulinischen Gemeinden, 1911, 306 pp. A good analysis of the general contents of Paul’s gospel. The theological system and the mysticism of the Apostle are not explained. The book is the second edition of a study which appeared in 1898 under the title Das persönliche Christentum der paulinischen Gemeinden nach seiner Entstehung untersucht (“An Investigation of the Origin of the Personal Christianity of the Pauline Churches”).

Adolf Deissmann, Paulus, 1911, 202 pp. The book grew out of lectures. The author is opposed to the method of investigation which aims at understanding the “System of Pauline Theology,” and thinks that in following these “doctrinaire interests” it would go further and further astray. For him Paul is primarily “a hero of the religious life” for whom “theology is a secondary matter.” He holds that the Apostle was more a man of prayer and testimony, a confessor and a prophet, than a learned exegete and laborious dogmatist.

His aim is, with the aid of reminiscences of two journeys to the East, to “place the man of Tarsus in the sunlight of his Anatolian home, and in the clear air of the ancient Mediterranean lands,” and he believes that when this is done “what previously tired our eyes, like a set of faded and rubbed pencil sketches, becomes at once plastic and living in its light and shadow.” This hope is by no means realised in his work. It appears here, as was also noticeable in the writer’s earlier Licht vom Osten (“Light from the East”), that he has a high appreciation of local colour and the memorials of ancient civilisation, but when it comes really to explaining the ideas he is not able to draw nearly so much profit from them as he expected. And his contempt for “doctrinaire interests” revenges itself upon his treatment. It is obscure and confused, and does not get at the essence of the thoughts. In regard to Paul’s mysticism Deissmann has applied new catchwords to old psychological considerations, but in nowise contributes to the explanation of it. After Wrede’s Paulus, his book seems a kind of anachronism. It is, besides, not fitting that what professes to be a new view should be presented in the inadequate form of a collection of lectures.

142 Adolf Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 4th ed., vol. i., 1909, 826 pp. On Paul, pp. 96-107 (3rd ed., 1893).

143 Reinhold Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 2nd ed., vol i., 1908, 570 pp. On Paul, 68-78. The first circle of ideas embraces the thoughts regarding flesh and spirit, the power of grace and the strength of sin, Christ and the new creation; the second consists of the formulas which were created in opposition to Jewish Christianity; the third has to do with the mystical body of Christ, in which the natural distinctions between men are abolished. On points of detail there are many discriminating observations. The first edition, of 1895, did not even contain any section on Paul.

The 4th ed. of Loofs’ Dogmengeschichte (1906, vol. i., 576 pp.) does not deal with the Apostle of the Gentiles, any more than the preceding editions.

144 On Kabisch see above, pp. 58-63.

145 A sifting and a survey of results is offered in the closing chapter, “Das religionsgeschichtliche Problem” (448-493) in Bousset’s book, Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, 1903 (“The Religion of Judaism in New Testament Times”).

Notes for Chapter VII Paulinism and Comparative Religion

146 Hermann Usener, Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen: “Das Weihnachtsfest” (1889, 337 pp.); “Die Sintflutsagen” (1899, 276 pp.) (“Studies in Comparative Religion, ‘Christmas,’ 1889. ‘The Flood-legends,’ 1899”). Other works which played an important part in creating the new horizon were Albrecht Dieterich’s works on Comparative Religion, Abraxas (1891, 221 pp. On a Hellenistic myth of the Creation, and Judaeo-Orphico-Gnostic cults) and Nekyia, contributions to the explanation of the “Apocalypse of Peter” (1893, 238 pp.). The description of the torments of hell in the Akhmim fragment is based, he thinks, not on Jewish eschatology, but on conceptions which are found in the Orphic literature.

147 Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, 1st ed., 1906; 2nd ed., 1909, 427 pp. Based on Lectures delivered in the year 1905 in the Collège de France.

We may note also some of the essays in Salomon Reinach’s Cultes, mythes et religions, 3 vols., 1905-1906-1908 (466, 466, and 537 pp.).

Otto Gruppe, Die griechischen Kulte und Mythen in ihrer Beziehung zu den orientalischen Religionen (“Greek cults and Myths in their relation to the Oriental Religions”), vol. i., 1887, 706 pp.; and Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte (“Greek Mythology and the History of Greek Religions”). In Iwan Müller’s Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (“Handbook of Classical Antiquities”), 1906, 2 vols., embracing 1923 pp.

Georg Mau. Die Religionsphilosophie Kaiser Julians in seinen Reden auf König Helios und die Göttermutter (“The Emperor Julian’s Philosophy of Religion in his Orations on King Helios and the Dea Mater”), 1908, 169 pp. In the appendix there is a German translation of both discourses.

Of a popular and unscientific character is H. E. de Jong’s Das antike Mysterienwesen in religionsgeschichtlicher, ethnologischer und psychologischer Beleuchtung (“The Ancient Mystery-religions in the Light of Comparative Religion, Ethnology, and Psychology”), 1909. 362 pp. The author is disposed to cite the modern occult “manifestations” in relation to the astral body in order to explain certain “appearances” in the ceremonies of initiation to the mysteries.

148 On what follows see Hugo Hepding, Attis, seine Mythen und sein Kult, 1903, 224 pp. First volume of the series of “Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten,” edited by Dieterich and Wünsch. Cf. also Ernst Schmidt, Kultübertragungen (Cultus-Transferences: “Magna Mater,” “Asklepios,” “Sarapis”). In the same series vol. viii., 1909.

149 On the original significance of the Taurobolium see Cumont, Les Religions orientales, pp. 101-103.

150 Note the admission of Hugo Hepding at the close of his chapter on the Mysteries (p. 199):—“I am well aware that this account of the Phrygian Mysteries is in its details mainly hypothetical. In view of the paucity of the information which has come down to us, nothing else is possible. In particular the association of the blood baptism with the March festival cannot be shown from our documentary material.....” He wants to distinguish between an earlier and a later form of the taurobolium. The earlier form is not a ceremony of initiation but a sacrifice. It was only the later which had in view the initiation of the individual. “The first person whom we know by literary evidence to have undergone the ceremony of the taurobolium is Heliogabalus.”

151 On the Eleusinian Mysteries see Rohde, Psyche (3rd ed., 1909) pp. 278-300. From his account it clearly appears how little we know about these ceremonies of initiation. In any case they were quite different from those of the later Mystery-religions. They belong to early Greek religion.

152 Franz Cumont, Les Mystères de Mithra (1st ed., 1899; 2nd ed., 1902).

153 Albrecht Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, 1st ed., 1903; 2nd ed., 1910 (edited after the author’s death by Richard Wünsch), 248 pp. The excursuses, pp. 92-212, really give a sketch of the fundamental ideas of the Mystery-religions in general. Cumont refuses to regard the document as a fragment belonging to a Mithras-liturgy because he cannot find in it the specific characteristics of the Persian eschatology and conception of heaven. On this controversy see the 2nd edition of the Mithras-liturgy, pp. 225-228. It would certainly have been better if Dieterich had not given the book the unnecessary and contentious title.

154 From Dieterich, p. 15.

155 Richard Reitzenstein, Poimandres. Studies in Graeco-Egyptian and Early Christian literature, 1904, 382 pp. The Poimandres “community” [Gemeinde, the word is in quotation marks in the German, perhaps to recall its frequent use in speaking of the Early Christian Church] is supposed to have been founded in Egypt about the time of the birth of Christ. Its main characteristic is the mystical basis of the doctrine. Later on, in the course of the third century (?) the Poimandres community was gradually merged in the general Hermetic communities.

156 From the literature we may note: Hermann Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments (“Contributions to the Understanding of the New Testament on the Basis of Comparative Religion”), 1903, 96 pp.

Paul Wendland, Die hellenistisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum und Christentum (“The Hellenistic-Roman Civilisation in Relation to Judaism and Christianity”), 1907, 190 pp.

Adolf Deissmann, Licht vom Osten (“Light from the Ancient East”), 1908, 364 pp. This book, which is rather rhetorically written, treats mainly the general literary side of the matter without entering specially into the religious problems and the ideas of the Mystery-religions. The same author has published a lecture, Die Urgeschichte des Christentums im Lichte der Sprachforschung (“The History of Primitive Christianity in the Light of Linguistic Research”), 1910, 48 pp.

Karl Clemen, Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments (“Interpretation of the New Testament on the Basis of Comparative Religion”), 1909, 301 pp.

Works which to a large extent deal with the same class of subject are: Wilhelm Soltau, Das Fortleben des Heidentums in der altchristlichen Kirche (“The Survival of Paganism within the Early Christian Church”), 1906, 307 pp. Adolf Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (“Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the first three Centuries”), vol. i., 1906, 421 pp.

157 Gustav Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum, 1894, 237 pp. From the same stand-point, and in some respects supplementing Anrich’s work, is Georg Wobbermin’s Religionsgeschichtliche Studien zur Frage der Beeinflussung des Urchristentums durch das antike Mysterienwesen (“Studies from the Point of View of Comparative Religion on the Question of the Influence of the ancient Mysteries upon Christianity”), 1896, 190 pp.

Johannes Geffken in his popular work, Aus der Werdezeit des Christentums, 2nd ed., 1909, 126 pp. (“From the Formative Period of Christianity”), does not hold that any very deep influence was exercised by the Graeco-Roman Syncretism on early Christianity. He is, however, of opinion that Paul “adopted all kinds of oriental views.”

158 See e.g. Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie, 2nd ed., p. 110. Typical also are pp. 176, 177, where he continually speaks of the “death and re-birth” of believers as taught by Paul.

[Wiedergeburt has been translated “re-birth” when the general sense implied in the comparison with other religions is in view; “regeneration” when the reference is primarily to the specific Christian doctrine as such.]

159 P. Gennrich in his book, Die Lehre von der Wiedergeburt.. in dogmengeschichtlicher und religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung (“The Doctrine of Regeneration... in the Light of the History of Dogma, and of Comparative Religion”), 1907, 363 pp., notes that Paul speaks only of the “new creature” and not of regeneration; but he does not investigate the cause of this peculiarity, but hastens to give a psychological explanation of his utterances as a “precipitate from his personal experience.”

160 See the introduction to Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, 2nd ed., 1909.

161 Typical in this respect is the work of Martin Brückner, Der sterbende und auferstehende Gottheiland in den orientalischen Religionen und ihr Verhältnis zum Christentum (“The divine Saviour who dies and rises again in the Oriental Religions; and their Relation to Christianity”). In the series of Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher, 1908, 48 pp. “As in Christianity, so in many Oriental religions, a belief in the death and resurrection of a Redeemer-God, who was subordinated to the Supreme God (sometimes as His Son) occupied a central place in the worship and cultus.” What manipulation the myths and rites of the cults in question must have undergone before this general statement could become possible! Where is there anything about dying and resurrection in Mithra? It is instructive to see how the author on p. 30 argues away the effect of this admission!

A popular treatment which is kept within due bounds is Adolf Jacoby’s work, Die antiken Mysterienreligionen und das Christentum (“The ancient Mystery-religions and Christianity”), 1910, 44 pp., in the series of Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher. The author deserves special credit for offering his readers typical texts from which they can form their own impression.

Dieterich remarks with great justice in the Mithrasliturgie (2nd ed., 207) how necessary it is to get beyond the catchword “Syncretistic,” and point out in every case the source of particular mythological statements and ideas.

162 O. Gruppe, too, is obliged to admit that the late Greek religious thought never really had the conception of a “world-redeemer” (Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte), vol. ii., pp. 1488-1489. It cannot, in fact, be otherwise. The “world-redeemer” of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thought corresponds to the “new world” which he is in some supernatural fashion to bring in, in order to reign in it along with the elect. Graeco-oriental religions did not look for a kingdom of that kind, and therefore the idea of the ruler of such a kingdom was also undiscoverable and unattainable for them. The Messiah is the World-redeemer or Lord of the coming age. He does not make atonement for the guilt of mankind nor for that of individuals, but suffers and dies vicariously for the elect, and in order to set the events of the End in motion. His earthly fate is nothing in itself, but falls wholly under the conception of the “Messianic woes” which are thought of as the tribulation of the Times of the End. How can it be proposed to find an analogue to a figure of this kind in myths, the scene of which is laid in the dawn of the world, and which have no sort of relation to its ultimate fate.

163 P. 102 ff. He has at this point a detailed discussion of the relations between the cultus-meal in Paul and that of the Mystery-religions.

On the sacraments see also K. Clemen, Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments, 1909, 301 pp. Baptism and the Supper, 165-207.

164 Mithrasliturgie, 2nd ed. pp. 107, 108.

165 Therefore the statement that Jesus baptized in the Judaean country (Jn iii. 22) is corrected to the effect that He Himself did not baptize, but only the disciples (Jn iv. 2).

166 Der wissenschaftliche Predigerverein.

167 W. Heitmüller, Taufe und Abendmahl bei Paulus (“Baptism and the Lord’s Supper in Paul’s teaching”). A description and an investigation in the light of Comparative Religion, 1903, 56 pp. These journeyings on pp. 40-42.

168 i.e. Materialist in his explanation, in contrast, as appears later, with Reitzenstein, who is described as the “Pneumatic” of the science.

169 Albert Eichhorn, Das Abendmahl im Neuen Testament (“The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament,” 1898, 31 pp.), similarly holds that in Paul we have before us a sacramental eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ which can only be explained as based on Oriental Gnostic presuppositions. He is, however, constrained to admit that we have no knowledge of a “sacramental meal which could have served as the model for the Lord’s Supper.” But this does not shake his faith in his theory. He thinks that proof is only wanting because there is here a gap in our historical knowledge. He has calculated out the position of the planet; the mere fact that it cannot be discovered with the telescope is wholly due to the inadequacy of the instrument.

170 See on this R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen (“The Hellenistic Mystery Religions”), p. 38.

171 Tit. iii. 5 (R. V. marg.: laver of regeneration).

172 Wilhelm Heitmüller, Im Namen Jesu. Eine Sprach-und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum Neuen Testament, speciell zur altchristlichen Taufe (“In the Name of Jesus. A New Testament Study based on Linguistics and Comparative Religion, with special Reference to Early Christian baptism”), 1903, 347 pp. In this thorough and extremely interesting study the author arrives at the result that in the employment of the name of Jesus it is taken for granted that the name in some way or other represents a power. The Christian “belief in the name,” he holds, stands on the same footing as Jewish and heathen beliefs. “The solemn pronouncement of the name of Jesus at baptism is not a merely symbolic form, having to do, for example, with the confession of the Messiahship of Jesus, but is thought of as associated with real mystical, mysterious effects; the effects must, however, be similar, mutatis mutandis, to those which are ascribed to the use of the name in other cases: a being actually taken possession of by the power which is designated by the ‘name’ of Jesus, the expulsion of all hostile powers, consecration and inspiration.” “Baptism in the name of Jesus represents, therefore, the combination of two sacramental factors—water and the name.”

Unfortunately, Heitmüller has not emphasised the fact that the Mystery-religions offer no typical analogies to this double sacrament.

It is also open to question whether the power of the name and of water suffice, as he thinks, to explain the Pauline view of baptism.

173 Paul Wernle, Die Anfänge unserer Religion, 1901, p. 129.

174 In order to preclude this misuse of it the passage may be quoted here in full:—

πείθοντες οὐ μόνον ίδιώτας ἀλλὰ καὶ πόλεις, ὡς ἄρα λύσεις τε καὶ καθαρμοὶ άδικημάτων διὰ θυσιῶν καὶ παιδιᾶς ἡδονῶν εἰσὶ μέν ἔτι ζῶσιν, εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ τετελευτήκασιν, ἃς δὴ τελετὰς καλοῦσιν, αἳ τῶ ἐκεῖ κακῶν ἀπολύουσιν ὴμᾶς, μὴ θύσαντας δὲ δεινὰ περιμένει.

... “And they persuade, not only individuals, but whole cities that sacrifices and pleasureable amusements afford absolution and purification from crimes committed, both for the living and also for the dead; these they call Mysteries (initiations), and they free us from the torments of the other world, whereas terrible things await those who neglect to offer sacrifice.” On expiation see Rohde, Psyche, i. (1903), 259 ff.

175 Regarding the evidence which has a more remote bearing on the question, see Hollmann, Urchristentum in Korinth (“Primitive Christianity in Corinth”), 1903, 32 pp., pp. 22-24.

176 R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, p. 84. The dead man is, according to Spiegelberg, represented as standing between two gods, who sprinkle the sacred fluid upon his head.

177 In I Cor. vi. 11, after saying that thieves, adulterers, slanderers, and robbers cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, the Apostle proceeds, “And such were some of you. But ye were cleansed, ye were consecrated, ye were justified.” The passage is no doubt intended sarcastically, ironically, with reference to the fact that, in spite of their baptism, according to present appearances they have not changed much. In regard to self-delusion on the ground of baptism see also I Cor. x.

178 I Cor. i. 14-16.

179 See Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen (1910), pp. 99, 100.

180 See above, p. 162, note 3.

181 In contrast with Heitmüller, who was described above as the “hylic,” materialist (see p. 205).

R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen. Ihre Grundgedanken und Wirkungen (“The Hellenistic Mystery-religions. Their fundamental Ideas and Influence”), 1910, 217 pp. The work is composed out of a lecture delivered in the Clerical Theological Society of Alsace-Lorraine (pp. 1-60), along with extensive notes and excursuses (pp. 63-214).

182 Especially impressive are the investigations regarding the pneuma. Reitzenstein believes himself to be able to show that all the passages in Paul’s writings which refer to this subject “are explicable from Hellenistic usage,” and leaves open the question whether they “are all equally easy to understand on the basis of the Hebraic use of ruach or nephesh, or the LXX. use of πνεῦμα.”

A detailed discussion is given of the following passages, Rom. vi. 1-14, xii. I ff.; I Cor. ii., xiii., xv. 34 ff.; 2 Cor. iii. 18, v.1 ff., v. 6 ff., x.-xiii., and some interesting light is thrown on the Epistle to Philemon (pp. 81, 82).

It may also be mentioned that Eduard Schwartz in his essay “Paulus” (Charakterköpfe aus der antiken Literatur, 1910, 136 pp. pp. 107-136) estimates very highly the indirect influence of the Hellenistic surroundings and language. In the second edition (1911, 142 pp.) he goes a little more fully into the individual problems of the doctrine.

183 Even Holtzmann shares this confusion. “The Pauline doctrine,” he pronounces in his New Testament Theology (ii. p. 56), “is not exactly Philonian, but doubtless, like the closely allied Philonian doctrines and the more widely divergent later views, grew out of the same stock of Jewish reflection on the Creation-narratives....”

184 Poimandres, p. 81 ff.

185 Reitzenstein takes much pains to render intelligible, by a series of examples from ancient and modern times, the “dual personality” which often seems to manifest itself in Paul (pp. 53-57. 207, 208). He overlooks the fact that in the form in which it occurs in Paul it is taken for granted by eschatology, and appears in Jesus and the disciples. It is much more primitive than anything found in Hellenistic mysticism or in any form of romanticism, since the distinction of outer appearance and inner being which occurs in Paul, depends upon the contrast of the two worlds which are struggling together for existence. The dual self-consciousness of Paul is, in contradistinction to all other cases, not subjectively but objectively conditioned. Besides, it depends on the temporal opposition of “then” and “now,” as naturally results from the ardent eschatological expectation. On the “doubling” of one’s own personality, such as is possible for Greek sensibility, see Rohde, Psyche, vol. ii. (1909), pp. 413, 414.

186 See pp. 57, 58.

187 See e.g. Reitzenstein, p. 209.

188 That Greek “eschatology” and early Christian are mutually exclusive appears clearly in Albrecht Dieterich’s Nekyia (1893, 238 pp.). The fantastic torments of hell as portrayed in the Apocalypse of Peter have nothing to do with the Jewish and primitive Christian eschatology, since the latter are concerned with the in-coming of the new world, and not with the special punishment of individuals. Dieterich is quite right when he explains this detailed description of torment as due to influences from the Orphic literature. Greek religious feeling was concerned with the fate of individuals after death. The thought of a coming world which dominates Jewish and primitive Christian eschatology is alien to it, because its “eschatology” was not created, like the former, by the historico-ethical conceptions and aspirations of successive generations of prophets.

189 Hermann Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments, 1903, 96 pp.

190 Max Maurenbrecher, Von Jerusalem nach Rom, 1910, 288 pp. This work is the continuation of Von Nazareth nach Golgatha, 1909, 274 pp.

191 W. B. Smith, Der vorchristliche Jesus, nebst weiteren Vorstudien zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Urchristentums, 243 pp. It was issued in German in 1906 with a preface by P. W. Schmiedel. The author is Professor of Mathematics in Tulane University, New Orleans. The book consists of five somewhat disconnected essays: i. “The Pre-Christian Jesus”; ii. “The Significance of the Nick-name, The Nazarene”; iii. “Anastasis”; iv. “The Sower sows the Logos”; v. “Saeculi silentium.” (Behind this title masquerades a study of the external arguments for the historicity of the Pauline Epistles, in which Smith stammers out confusedly what Steck and van Manen had clearly expressed before him.)

192 Arthur Drews, Die Christusmythe, 1909, 190 pp.

Notes for Chapter VIII Summing-Up and Formulation of the Problem

193 See above, p. 173 f.

194 Hence John’s indignation at seeing the “viper’s brood” approaching to take advantage of it?—TRANSLATOR.

195 For the sense of the term here, see above, p. 83, note. —TRANSLATOR.