The Higher Critics: An Annotated Chronology, 1710-1917

Ray Dyer, PhD

(Victorian Web Home —> Religion —> The Higher Criticism)

The following timeline of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century biblical scholarship concentrates upon three crucial questions about the life of Jesus: (1) Historical or Supernatural, asserted by Strauss (1835). (2) Synoptic or Johannine, asserted by F.C. Baur-Tubingen School (1847) and H.J. Holtzmann (1863). (3) Eschatological or non-Eschatological, asserted by Johannes Weiss (1892) QHJ: 237.

1710. Halle, Germany. A Bible group begins distribution of low-cost Bibles to the poor (1804). University of Halle founded as Lutheran foundation 1694, “the first modern university”. Had renounced religious orthodoxy in favour of objective-rational science and investigation. Canonical texts were replaced by systematic lectures, and German replaced Latin as language of instruction.

1711. William Whiston 1667-1752, a scholar based at the University of Cambridge, England, published Primitive Christianity Revived, 5 vols., as a result of which he lost his academic post owing to “theological Arianism”.

1737. Alexander Cruden 1701-1770. “Alexander the Corrector” of the people. Scots book-seller in London produced 3-column 854 page Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. Whilst the Preface gives a number of diligent precursors, Cruden was on good authority “probably the most influential” OCB: 131. The listing of Proper Names begins at 719. Old Testament citations of the holy names “El” at 729-30; “Jehovah” 736. Astruc (1753) may well have used such a valuable research tool, and Colenso (1862) almost certainly, in arriving at formative notions of “J” and “E” prior to Julius Wellhausen (1878).

1740. William Stukeley 1687-1765. Cambridge and London, FRS. Antiquarian, especially of Temples. Stonehenge. A Temple Restored to the British Druids, published 1740. Avebury, 1742. Provided a much-lengthened timeline for pre-Roman Britain, and by association for minds enquiring into theological beginnings and scripture. Turned the tide of opinion against Archbishop Ussher’s 1625 calculation of 4004 BCE for the Creation, printed into the margins of Genesis in many Bibles. (1763 1822 1857).

1741. “The Great Awakening” in the American colonies. Jonathan Edwards 1703-58 pioneer and theologian, champions new call through pamphlets. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion 1742. A Careful and Strict Enquiry into Freedom of the Will 1754.

1743. Charles Chauncey 1705-87 long-lived colonial and eventual U.S. clergyman. Opposed views of Edwards (1741 passim) with the reply Seasonal Thoughts on the State of Religion, a Reply to Jonathan Edwards…. Much later Salvation of All Men 1774, also published anon. By 1782 Unitarianism would be unveiled.

1745. Books rather than people are now burned. Julien LaMettrie (1709-1751), French physician and philosopher, in his Natural History of the Soul had offered an openly materialistic theory of mind too offensive for the Church . Cf. David Hume at Edinburgh (1739 1748). Denis Diderot 1713-84 being too Deist and materialist suffered his Pensees Philosophiques burned by the Paris Parliament. (1799 1837 1881).

1745. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), a Hamburg philologist and professor, begins publishing on Natural Religion. His more controversial views for “The Rational Worshippers of God” would be circulated anonymously and taken up by Lessing (1774), Strauss (1862), and others.

1750. Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791, Gottingen, Professor of Oriental Languages, publishes Introduction to the New Testament, 2 vols. 4th edition 1788. English translation 1826, 6 vols. Rationalist study of Bible without doctrinal assumptions. Influenced Semler and Paulus.

1751. J. Jakob Wettstein. Novum Testamentum Graecian. Amsterdam 1752.

1752. Semler (1775) becomes Professor of Theology at Halle (1710).

1753. Jean Astruc (1684-1766), Professor of Medicine at Paris and a Bible-Pentateuch scholar, produced Conjectures on the original accounts of which…Moses availed himself in composing the Book of Genesis — a textual study indicating two “sources” or traditions “Jahvist” and “Elohist”. Astruc influenced Eichhorn, De Wette, and Colenso on Mosaic authorship of Genesis and the Pentateuch.

1763. Excavations begin at Pompeii, discovered 1748. Lengthening chronologies arrive for Pagan-Roman-New Testament and Acts of the Apostles. (1740, 1822, 1857).

1768. J. J. Hess (1741-1828) in Zurich. publishes History of the Last Three Years of the Life of Jesus, 3 vols. 7th ed. 1823. Maintains full and popular acceptance of supernaturalism, miracles and the divinity. Rebuttal by Strauss NLJ: 5-8.

1772. Giambernardo de Rossi’s Della Lingua Propria di Cristo (Parma editora) examines the evidence that Jesus spoke Aramaic. Earlier scholars — J. C. Scaliger in France and Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) had furthered understanding of New Testament languages: Syrian, Hebrew, “Chaldee” (proto-Aramaic). (1817)

1774. Annie Lee (1736-84) moves from Massachusetts to New York, beginning revival of Spiritualism as a lay person’s approach to the new spiritual “need of the Age”.

1774. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), the Enlightenment “Father of German Literature,” published anonymously on Gospel origins including little-known and ground-breaking works of Reimarus. The “Wolfenbuttel fragments”, six to 1777 plus The aims of Jesus and his disciples. A further instalment of the anonymous Wolfenbuttel fragments, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Brunswick (in German) 1778. English translation by Voysey, A. 1879, “The Object of Jesus and his Disciples, as seen in the New Testament”. First historical conception of a “Life” of Jesus, stirring much controversy. QHJ: 13-26. Influenced Strauss (1862) who rejected “Fraud hypothesis” of disciples stealing the body and concocting the resurrection. Overturned “proof from miracle” and “proof from prophecy”. Remained anon. to 1814. English translations 1879, 1962. Final seventh Fragment 1970 Philadelphia & London. (1862)

1775. Johann Salomo Semler (1725-91), Professor of Theology at Halle (1752), publishes Free Research on the Canon, 4 vols. 1771-75, which breaks with the doctrine of inspiration and distinguishes between the Bible and the word of God. Opposed Wolfenbuttel fragments in 1779. Influenced Paulus.

1776. Johan Jakob Griesbach (1745-1812), Professor first at Halle and then at Jena 1775, was first to challenge “Received Text” of Gospels (1831 Lachmann). He coined the term “synoptic” for the first three gospels. Epochal textual critic. Synopsis of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, 1774-76. The “Griesbach hypothesis,” gave priority to Matthew, was accepted by Strauss, Baur, and many other scholars through early Victorian years (1832). Cf. “Marcan hypothesis” (1831 ibid) (1838 1850). QHJ: Chap. X.

1778. J. G. Korner, De sermonibus Christi “agraphois” on agrapha, unwritten sayings/fragments. (1889).

1779. Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752-1827), a student of Michaelis, and classicist Heyne Gottingen (analysis of myth: Heyne-Eichhorn-Gabler-Strauss). Influenced by Semler, he became Professor of Oriental Languages at Jena in 1775 and Professor of Philosophy at Gottingen in 1788. His Urgeschichte (Primitive Gospel), which hypothesized that the first three gospels had a common source, was very influential; rev. ed., 3 vols., by Gabler 1790-93. Introduction to New Testament 1780-83. New Testament 1804-12, 3 vols.

1779. David Hume (1711-1776). His Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1882) is published posthumously 1779.

1783. Moses Mendelsohn (1729-1786), a German-Jewish scholar and friend of Lessing, publishes Jerusalem, a defence of Judaism as a religion.

1783. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Prolegomena to Critique (1781). Followed by Critique of Practical Reason (1788) with morality and the “categorical imperative”.

1783. Charles Simeon (1759-1836). Begins the Evangelical Movement at Cambridge, England.

1787. Johann Philip Gabler (1753-1826), a pupil of Griesbach (1776) and Eichhorn, serves as Professor of Theology at Altdorf from 1785 and at Jena from 1804. His lecture On the proper distinction between biblical and dogmatic theology (English translation 1980) gave birth to modern Old Testament and New Testament Theology. (1800 1806).

1790. William Paley (1743-1805), a Cambridge Anglican theologian and Deist, and Archdeacon of Carlisle (in Northwest) England publishes Horae Paulinae, which attacks the idea that the New Testament is a “cunning fable” (1774) (Reimarus 1779, seventh Wolfenbuttel fragment). Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. Philadelphia: J. Morgan, 1802.

1792. Baptist Missionary Society London. 1794 London Missionary Society. 1798 Church Missionary Society London. (1803 1810 1816)

1794. Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) Medical Alienist (or psychologist) at Bicetre Asylum, Paris, publishes Memoir on Madness that argues for more humane and more investigative care of the insane. Victorian developments in medical psychology later play a part in studies of the multi-facetted Jesus of the Gospels. (1889, 1912).

1796. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), a leading German literary, Romantic and philosophy figure, publishes Vom Erloser der Menschen (The Redeemer of Men, as Portrayed in the First Three Gospels) and The Son of God, the Saviour of the World, as Portrayed in John’s Gospel in 1797, both of which go beyond Rationalism. Herder is the first to show incompatibilities of Synoptic Gospels and John. Precursor of Strauss QHJ: 36.

1796. Thomas Paine (1737-1809), the English and American political writer in an age when atheism was viewed as criminal, argues for a sceptical Deism in which God is a non-intervening Creator in The Age of Reason (Dover editions 2006), which many contemporaries condemn as atheist.

1799. J. G. Fichte (1762-1814), Professor of Philosophy at Jena beginning in 1794 and friend of Schiller and Goethe, is dismissed from academic post for alleged atheism.

1799. Friedrich Schleirmacher (1768-1834). the “Father of Modern Theology,” emphasized historical examination of the origins of Christianity. He taught at Halle until 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars, at which point the liberal torch passed to Gottingen. He held the position of Professor of Theology at Berlin from 1810. He addressed Speeches on Religion to its “cultured despisers”. He was the first to lecture on “The Life of Jesus” beginning in 1819 . He employed rational methods in the service of theological aims (sic).

1800. Georg Lorenz Bauer (1755-1806), the Professor of Oriental Languages at Altdorf in 1789, moved to Heidelberg as Professor of Biblical Exegesis in 1805, applying Heyne’s work on Myth (1799) to Old Testament Theology 1796. New Testament Theology 1800-02, 4 vols. His work had the effect of separating the two Testaments into Old and New.

1800. H. E. G. Paulus (1761-1851) served as Professor of Oriental Languages & Exegesis at Jena and then as Professor of Theology at Wurzburg from 1803. A rationalist, he offered natural explanations of all miracles in his Gospel Commentary on the Synoptics, 3 vols. 1800-1804. Much respected by many contemporaries, he was later criticised by D. F. Strauss for ignoring mythical-symbolic interpretations.

1803. Pennsylvania Evangelical Association and the Albright Brethren both founded.

1804. British and Foreign Bible Society founded.

1806. Wilhelm De Wette (1780-1849), a pupil of Griesbach, Gabler, and Paulus, becomes Professor of Theology Heidelberg in 1807, Berlin in 1810, and Basel in 1822. The foremost Bible scholar of his time, he offered an enduring and suggestive theory of religion in Contributions to Old Testament, 2 vols. 1806-07. Dr Wette provided date for Pentateuch source “D” (Deuteronomist) added to “J” and “E” of Astruc. Contributions to New Testament 1805. Influenced Baur’s Tubingen School and Vatke (1835) Strauss (1835) among others.

1810. Salem Bible Society Massachusetts. Salem Evangelical Library 1818.

1813. Methodist Missionary Society founded in London and the Female Bible Society in Geneva, New York.

1816. 130 regional associations join to form the American Bible Society, New York.

1817. H. F. W. Genesius (1786-1842) publishes his Hebrew and Chaldaic Lexicon first translated into English by E. Robinson (Connecticut 1836) and S. P. Tragelles (London 1857). The Lexicon, a fundamental tool for specialist scholars, appeared in many editions to 1990, including that from Oxford U.P.

1818. Pioneer archaeologists begin retrieving antiquities from Bible Lands. Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778-1823) excavates the Temple of Abu Simbel in Egypt and C. J. Rich (1787-1821), who publishes Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon (3rd ed. London: Longmans, Green & Co), brought back clay cylinder-seals, pot fragments, bitumen and coins. (1839). These artifacts later influenced Botta. Cf. (1822)

1819. Schleiermacher in Berlin inaugurates serious academic studies of the life of Jesus, which inevitably threw history and theology into conflict: “dogma and history were developed separately, the attempt to combine them being first made in the eighteenth-century (1768). A tendency to blend incongruities is characteristic of an age of transition… And so the conception of a life of Christ was ominous of coming change [and] the general disruption of traditional belief…When the biography was seriously taken up, the fate of the theological conception (dogma) was sealed…” — D. F. Strauss, ‘On the idea of a life of Jesus’ NLJ, I: 3. The Christian Faith 1821-22. English translation 1928.

1820. Karl Gottlob Bretschneider (1776-1848), Superintendent at Gotha, argues in Probabilia de evangelii et epistolarum Joannis… (Leipzig), against the apostolic origin of Fourth Gospel. His work created the “Johannine question” and separation of John from first three synoptic gospel but was overshadowed by Schleiermacher’s authority [QHJ: 85] but supported by Strauss (1864, I:120).

1822. Jean Francois Champollion (1790-1832), Professor of History at Grenoble 1809-16. translated the trilingual Rosetta Stone and its Egyptian hieroglyphics, to 1824, which opens the road to later Egypt Exploration Society, Palestine Exploration Society (1865) and clarifications of Biblical settings, languages, mysteries. “Egypt” cited in Genesis 15:18, 45: 9; Exodus, 3: 20 and many more, incl. “Daughter in Egypt” “Into Egypt” “King” and “Land of Egypt”. (1737, Cruden, pp. 728-9, 1840 ed. London: Ward, Lock & Co.)

1822. Johann Ludwig John Lewis Burckhardt (1784-1817), a Swiss traveller and savant, discovered the desert city Petra. His Travels in Syria and The Holy Land, which was published posthumously by the Africa Association, stimulates theological scholars, churchmen, and others to travel to Holy Land. (See 1841 1854 1856 1865)

1822. Friedrich Bleek (1793-1859), a Berlin academic of wide theological studies, who studied with de Wette Schleiermacher, identified the Book of Joshua as continuation of Old Testament Pentateuch-Hexateuch. (See 1753 1862 1878)

1827. Hengstengberg, Ernst Wilhelm 1802-69. Professor of Theology Berlin 1826. Founded journal Evangelische Kirchenzeitung 1827. Viewed Wolfenbuttel Fragments (1774) as a major contribution to studies of historic kernel of Christianity. QHJ: 107.

1828. Paulus published an expanded Life of Jesus, 2 vols. with extended Gospel commentaries. Miracles were still approached totally rationally-empirically and would be severely criticised by David Friedrich Strauss, whilst largely neglected decades later by Alfred Edersheim.

1829. Karl August von Hase (1800-1893). Tubingen. Jena 1830-90 Professor Theology. Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Jesus, primarily for the use of students), pp.205. 5th ed. 1885. Many editions to 1876 when the "Handbook" was recast. The rationalist approach to miracle was asserted but not accomplished in major cases.QHJ: 58-60 sees a general advance over the rationalist Paulus . On the cures of Jesus, Hase resorts to Animal Magnetism/"spirit over Nature", and follows Eichhorn on Myth. Hase prefers the Gospel of John to the Synoptics.

1830. Schleiermacher Brief Outline of the Study of Theology of 1811. 2nd ed. English translation 1966. A key figure in the "Turn to Religion" and the belief that rational procedures cannot resolve the "question" of God. See Schweitzer for fuller detail.

1831. Karl Lachmann (1793-1851). Professor of German and Classics at Berlin 1827. Lachmann's great contribution was to break away from the New Testament in "Textus receptus"/received text/Byzantine based on poor/recent manuscripts/previous translations/Latin Vulgate only. Novum Testamentum Graece Latine, using 4th cent. Greek uncial MSS and Latin Vulgate. His 2nd ed. 2 vols. 1842 & 1850 used extra Mss to appease his critics. Cambridge U.P. 2016.

1831. August Friedrich Gfrorer (1803-61), the Tubingen and Stuttgart curate and independent scholar of Kritische Geschichte des Urchristentums, Vol. I (Critical History of Primitive Christianity). Vol. II, The Secret Legend 1838. Gfrorer became opposed to Strauss and Weisse. Schweitzer viewed Gfrorer's work as an "imaginative life" of Jesus. QHJ: 162-66.

1832. Albert Barnes (1798-1870). Gospel Minister Philadelphia. Barnes on the New Testament. Illusd & Annotated ed. London: Blackie & Sons c.1840. This was a standard student/study commentary in 11 vols. with pretensions to being a "Harmony" of the Gospels. Matthew was accepted as First over against Luke, p. xvi. No intimation appears of the approaching priority of Gospel of Mark c.1835. Vol. I Matt-Mark, pp. xvi+404 with copious notes to all verses.

1833. Oxford Tractarians - John Keble, John Henry Newman, R.H. Froude, Edmund Pusey - began the move to greater liturgical ritual and ceremony over Biblical Criticism: the Oxford Movement to c.1841 and their 90th Tract. Keble preached the crucial Assize Sermon (text) in St. Mary's Cathedral Christ Church, Oxford, on Sunday 14th July, The National Apostasy, forerunner to Newman's Tract No. 1. (text)

1833. Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1830-33). Introduces ideas of "successive strata", slow deposition and increasingly lengthy time-scales to wider groups of scholars and thinkers, and resistant theologians.

1834. Clement Brentano (1778-1842). The Bitter Sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a fragment issued on the revelations of Anna Katharina Emmerich (1774-1824), an Augustinian nun who manifested stigmata and visions at Dulmen over a number of years. See Emmerich.

1835. Johann Karl Wilhelm Vatke (1806-1882). Early association with Strauss in Berlin 1830. Professor Old Testament History 1837. Die Religion des Alten Testaments (The Religion of the Old Testament). No English translation made. Vatke made the crucial observation that Pentateuch and Priestly Law came later than Monarchy and Prophets: "P" later than "D"(Deuteronomist). See Wellhausen.

1835. David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874). Pupil of F.C.Baur at Tubingen. Lectureship. He was early influenced by Hegel and Dialectic Philosophy, history and logic. Strauss outgrew Schleiermacher's preference for the Fourth gospel, and Hase/mainstream theology. Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Jesus), 2 vols. (Tubingen: Verlag von C.F.Osiander, 1835 & 1836). This work, which overturned the historical validity of the Fourth gospel in favour of the Synoptic gospels, replaced Supernaturalism/Miracle and much contrary countering Rationalism, with Myth following Heyne and Eichhorn on the universal cultural tendency to produce a legendary hero figure. Strauss encountered immediate fame and antagonism, losing his Tubingen and later posts, though the Higher Criticism and the Liberal approach to the lives of Jesus received a major boost. See Keim and others through c.1860-c.1890.

1837. Christian Gottlob Wilke (1786-1854). Pastor. Tradition und Mythe, Leipzig. Wilke followed mythological treatment of Strauss. Das Urevangelist (The Primitive Gospel Author) (Dresden & Leipzig, 1838) assigned priority to the Gospel of Mark, which is now widely accepted. QHJ: 112-4. Lachmann c.1835 also had some input to the "Marcan hypothesis." See href="#holtzmann">H. Holtzmann.

1837. August Tholuck (1799-1877), Professor of Theology at Halle (1826-77), was an exponent of "mediating theology" and an early critic of Strauss, appealing to Animal Magnetism as mediating means to preserving belief in supernaturalism and miracles, as would Hase by 1876 and perhaps Nippold later.

1837. August Wilhelm Neander (1789-1850), Professor of Theology at Berlin 1813, converted from Judaism. He was a more sensitive critic of Strauss than was Tholuck. Das Leben Jesu-Christi. 7th ed. (Hamburg, 1872). Schweitzer noted that Neander could not be read "without pain," QHJ: 102. He was of the Apologetic school on the question of miracle, along with Tholuck, Ebrard and many others.

1838. Christian Hermann Weisse (1801-1866), Professor Extraordinary of Philosophy at Leipzig. His A Critical and Philosophical Study of the Gospel History, 2 vols. (Leipzig) was a positive criticism of Strauss, arguing for priority of Mark over Matthew in a 2-source hypothesis. It offered a rejection of eschatology and Jewish apocalyptic, all of which returned decades later.

1838. Charles Christian Hennel (c.1810-1850), a London friend of George Eliot, published An Enquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity (London, 1838). German ed. 1840 with preface by D. F. Strauss.

1839. C.J.Rich (n.d.). Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon (London: J. Duncan) was published posthumously by his wife Mary Rich, who unlike Isabel Burton did bot burn her husband's mss.

1840. Bruno Bauer (1809-1882). University of Berlin 1834, Bonn 1839. Bauer was influenced by Hegel's dialectic and by Vatke. His positive review of Strauss is in Jahrbuch fur wissenschaftliche Kritik (1836). He produced Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes (Criticism of the Gospel History of John). Bremen, pp.435. Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1841-42). Forced into retirement, he continued with Kritik der Evangelien, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1850-51) — the first truly dispassionate accounts of Jesus, to which Schweitzer devoted an admiring chapter in QHJ, Chap. XI. Bauer separated the canonical Mark and Ur-Marcus to produce a most radical reinterpretation. He also examined the role of the Roman Imperium upon the "world soul", as would Otto Pfleiderer some four decades later. His close contemporaries found Bauer altogether too eccentric, and his books all but disappeared from biblical controversies.

1840. D. F. Strauss published Christian Theology in its Historical Development and in its Antagonisms with Modern Science, the larger work of which the controversial "Life" had been merely a Prolegomena. Strauss rejected all forms of personal immortality. As a later authority trenchantly noted, what really separated Strauss from his contemporary theologians was "not the application of the mythological explanation to the gospel history" but rather "the question of personal immortality" (QHJ: 73).

1841. Edward Robinson (1794-1863). Connecticut Bible-scholar who from c.1838 followed Bible clues to Holy Land places. Bible Researches in Palestine and Adjacent Countries. (London). He discovered the Siloam tunnel in Jerusalem, and translated in 1836 the Hebrew-Chaldaic Lexicon of 1817 by Genesius.

1841. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) studied Theology, then Philosophy with Hegel, writing on "The Philosophy of Christianity" 1839. His major work was Wesen des Christentums, 1841.(English translation The Essence of Christianity (1854) by Marian Evans (George Eliot), who was more impressed with the work's "Love is God" than with its Homo hominis deus est (Haight: 137). Feuerbach influenced Strauss, Bruno Bauer, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud, who adopted Feuerbach's theme of "illusion" in religion.

1841. Alexander Schweizer (1808-88), Professor of Pastoral Theology at Zurich (1835), was a pupil of Schleiermacher. Schweizer’s The Gospel of John Critically Examined and its Importance as a Source for the Life of Jesus argued for two authors in Fourth gospel, as had Weisse a few years earlier. Schweizer identifies them as Jerusalem-spiritual and Galilean-historical in order to explain the Fourth gospel's contradictions (QHJ: 127-28).

1842. Eduard Reuss (1851-1911), Professor of New Testament at Strasbourg, taught K.H. Graf. His History of Sacred Writings of the New Testament defended the Marcan hypothesis of Wilke et al. See also H.Holtzmann.

1842. Paul-Emile Botta (1802-1870), a French archaeologist who knew of the early works of C.J. Rich, excavated the ruins of ancient Assyria. The Assyria Room in the Louvre, Paris, from 1847 helped arouse interest in the history of Bible Lands, as had Champollion's discoveries earlier in the 1820s. "Assyria" occurs in Genesis 2:14, 25:18 and many related texts.

1843. Sir Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895), brother of Canon George Rawlinson of University of Oxford, studied Persian and cuneiform inscriptions on the giant Rock of Behistun, Persia (now Iran; c.1835-38). With other scholars he deciphered the Old Persian-Elamite-Babylonian trilingual inscriptions. H.C. Rawlinson, Archaeologia, 34 (1853): 74. He and Botta are known as the "Fathers of Assyriology".

1843. Heinrich Georg August Ewald. (1803-1875), Professor of Oriental Languages at Gottingen 1827-37, was dismissed as one of the "Gottingen seven" because of his shoes political affiliations and later taught at Tubingen and Gottingen (1866). He was a pupil of Eichhorn and a teacher of Wellhausen. Ewald produced the important early Old Testament work Geschichte des Volkes Israel (History of Israel), 5 vols. (Gottingen, 1843-55; 2nd ed. 1857; English translation 7 vols. 1864-68). His "Life of Jesus Christ", translation by Octavius Glover (London, 1865) was however "worthless" despite its Old Testament trappings and learning (QHJ: 117n3).

1843. Johann Nepomuck Sepp (1816-1909), priest, Professor of History at Munich. As a Catholic scholar he produced Das Leben Jesu-Christi, 7 vols. (Regensburg; 2nd ed. 1853-62). One of a number of Catholic writers who produced similar multi-volume "Lives", his was carefully noted in QHJ: 294n2.

1844. Constantin von Tischendorf (1815-1874) was a German oriental and textual scholar and held the position of Professor Extraordinarius in Theology at Leipzig (1845). At St. Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt, he discovered the most complete 4th cent. uncial MSS in Greek: Codex Sinaiticus, now in the British Library, London. See also Codex Alexandrinus there; and Codex Vaticanus at Rome. Tischendorf used the manuscripts for his critical editions of the New Testament based on early Greek texts. Novum Testamentum Graece, various editions 1841, 1849; 7th ed. 1859; 8th ed. 1869-72 in 4 vols. Cambridge Library Collection UK. In one vol. 2013. This latter contains the Prolegomena and other additions by various scholars (1884 & 1890).

1845. Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894), the British linguist and archaeologist, discovered ancient Nineveh — at Mosul in northern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) — in the local mound named Kuyunjik. Like Botta, he was familiar with the books and travels of C.J. Rich, c. 1816-1820. Layard produced Nineveh and its Remains in 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1848). Layard created a sensation in London when the monumental winged bull-sculpture was hauled upon the steps of the British Museum (prompting Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem “The Burden of Nineveh” (text). "Nineveh," which appears in the Genesis 10: 11, and 2-Kings 19: 36, would never again seem so distant and mysterious.

1846. Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1899), a pupil of F. C. Baur, became Professor of Theology at Gottingen in 1864 and in 1846 became noted for his revised views on the gospel of Luke based upon the 2nd century CE Marcion, himself an early critic of Holy Canon (OCB: 102-3).

1846. Anon. (George Eliot, 1819-1880). The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, 3 vols. from 4th German ed. 1840 (returning to agreement with 1st ed.) (London: Chapman. 3rd ed. 1898). Preface by Otto Pfleiderer. The English translation of the "Leben Jesu" of David Friedrich Strauss was made at the request and urging of Eliot's family friend Charles Hennell of London. Strauss contributed a Preface, in Latin, to evade undue rancor at the disclosures. Reissued in 1972. Whilst Eliot's edition of Strauss was largely lost to the 20th century, at least one contemporary noted that "everyone recognised the merits of the work" (Martha Blind, 1883, "George Eliot. A Biography", Chap. 4: 34). Eliot herself recalled that the task had "made her ill dissecting the beautiful story of the resurrection" (Gordon Haight, George Eliot. A Biography [Oxford U.P: 1968], 58 citing Letters).

1847. F.C.Baur (1792-1860) of the Tubingen School held the position of Professor of Theology (1826). Baur presented his aims and views in Kritische Untersuchungen uber die kanonische Evangelien (A Critical Examination of the Canonical Gospels). Tubingen. He saw Mark based on Matthew & Luke (now reversed); fully demonstrated the irreconcilability of all three Synoptic gospels against Fourth gospel (John), and refuted its historical character (today partially restored). Baur showed that each of the four gospels has its own leaning or tendency — "Tendenzkritik". Otto Pfleiderer praised Baur as "the first who dared to apply to the history of Christianity the thought of "evolution"...", and who also restrained himself from "the Romantic deification of the person of Jesus and his segregation from all historical conditions and limitations" (“Introduction,” Christian Origins, 1906: 20). English translation by Daniel A. Huebsch. (New York & London: T. Fisher Unwin). Baur's contribution to the Petrine-Paul controversy is highlighted by OCB: 322.

1847. Christoph Frederich von Ammon (1766-1850), who was Professor of Theology at Erlangen 1790, Gottingen 1794-1804, and Senior Court Chaplain on 1813, was distinguished for his historico-critical rationalism, as was Paulus. von Ammon, who was influenced by Kant's Kritik of 1788, wrote History of the Life of Jesus with constant reference to extant sources, 3 vols. (1842-47).

1850. Bruno Bauer like the later Nietzsche continued to publish "with a hammer", to the point of doubting that any historical Jesus ever existed. Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs (Criticism of the Gospels, and History of their Origin), 2 vols. Berlin 1850-51. QHJ: 157. See also Kalthoff and Pfleiderer.

1850. Hilgenfeld, Das Markusevangelium (The Gospel of Mark).

1851. In London the Great Exhibition brought the world and the future to "all England" at rail-travel speed. Many thoughtful minds would never be the same. T.H.Huxley, newly a Fellow of the Royal Society, in London met the physicist John Tyndall, another scientist-empiricist moveing away from the Protestant belief. After experiencing the Exhibition, Huxley saw it as "the great Temple of England" where daily "50,000 people worship". He then drew the Biblical comparison: "They come to it as the Jews came to Jerusalem at the time of the Jubilee", (Desmond: 165 citing Letters of T.H. Huxley).

1851. Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901). Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge formed the Cambridge Group with Lightfoot and Hort. In 1890 Westcott would be made Bishop of Durham. His Introduction to the Study of the Gospels together with A History of Canon (1855) helped establish the legitimacy of biblical criticism and study within the Church of England.

1852. Studies had by now spread to questions of forgeries and interpolations into Biblical texts. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha are more prominent. (NLJ I: 52-3 citing reputed "prophecy of Enoch", Aristobolus of Alexandria, and Friedlieb's "Sibylline Oracles" 1852; NLJ 231n, citing studies of Hilgenfeld 1857 and others).

1854. The Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt left England for the first of four lengthy visits to the Holy Land and Jerusalem. His paintings of View of the Dead Sea and Mount Moab, The Scapegoat and others would appear in London and Oxford.

1854. At Rome Pope Pius IX declares the total sinlessness of Mary Virgin, in a Papal Bull of December 8.

1854. Adolf Hilgenfeld (1823-1907), a follower of F.C. Baur and the Tubingen School, became Professor of Theology at Jena in 1890. His Die Evangelien defended the gospel sequence of Matthew-Mark-Luke.

1856. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-1881) of Christ Church Oxford and Dean of Westminster, London. After visiting the Bible Lands, Stanley wrote Sinai and Palestine (London: John Murray, 1856).

1856. Weisse, The Present Position of the Problem of the Gospels (Leipzig) attempts to use the First Epistle of John as the key to identifying authentic historical elements in the related Gospel of John, assuming two authors at work in the latter (NLJ, I: 129-34). His approach is known as the Theory of Separation in the Fourth Gospel.

1856. Karl Heinrich von Weizsacker (1822-1899), who succeded to the Chair of F.C. Baur at Tubingen in 1861, edited Jahrbucher fur deutsche Theologie for 1856-78.

1857. Hilgenfeld produced a major work pioneering the study of Judische Apokalyptik (Jewish Apocalyptic), preceded by Dillmann's "Henoch" of 1851. These two introduced the importance of the "Eschatological Question" (QHJ: 222 & Chap. XV). From 1858 Hilgenfeld served as editor of Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie.

1857. C.K.J. "Chevalier" Bunsen (1791-1860) employed the Universal History of Egypt. Part V as his basis for challenging the "short chronology" of the Bible (Bibelwerke fur die Gemeinde (Bible Works for the Municipality), Vol. IX, Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Jesus), edited by the authoritative H. J. Holtzmann.

1858. Clement Brentano edited his 1834 interview notes with Anna Katharina Emmerich, for Life of Jesus, 3 vols. (Regensburg, 1858-60). Sanctioned by the Bishop of Limberg, this work, which ran to many reprints, managed to achieve some degree of harmony between the Synoptics and John (QHJ: 109). Not surprisingly, it argued strongly against the interpretations of both Rationalism and the Mythology of D.F. Strauss as well as against the Fourth Gospel isolation by F.C. Baur.

1859. Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray). The book was based on decades of field-work and the joint-presentation with botanist Alfred R. Wallace (1823-1913) to the Linnaean Society of London in 1858. Lengthy timelines required for many successive modifications in the evolution of species now complemented the lengthy geological ages Lyell had described in 1833. Homo sapiens had finally acquired a rigorously demonstrable lineage that challenged the Bible and religious views of the creation.

1860. The watershed Oxford Debate between T.H. Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford, at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Huxley stayed at rooms of Christ Church anatomist George Rolleston. The great meeting, on the last Saturday of June, drew huge crowds of almost a thousand to the long west-room of Oxford's new Benjamin Woodward Gothic Revival University Museum. The Bishop castigated the seven breakaway Anglican theorists and recent contributors to Essays and Reviews, including Benjamin Jowett , the Regius Professor of Greek, for his "The Interpretation of Scripture," which denied verbal inspiration and the scriptural account of the creation. Darwin's recent Origin was also overly ridiculed by the Bishop, who was reminded of the gravitas of the scientific discussion. Huxley, Lubbock, and Hooker "shut up the bishop and his laity" (Desmond: 279 citing Letters of T.H. Huxley).

1860. Karl Theodor Keim (1825-1878). Educated at Tubingen (1851-55), became Professor of Theology at Zurich where his inaugural address powerfully impressed many, including the younger man H.J. Holtzmann (QHJ: 211). The Human Development of Jesus Christ. An Academic Address by Dr. Th. Keim (1861). This short publication was noted by Strauss as a "truly natural account" based on psychology and history (NLJ, I: 42-43). Also influenced was Renan.

1862. Strauss’s Hermann Samuel Reimarus and his "Apology for the Rational Worshippers of God", was the debut appearance in the literature of the name of the original author of the celebrated/notorious Wolfenbuttel Fragments of Lessing. Strauss, who had by no means been idle in his enforced retirement, produced several papers for Hilgenfeld's Journal of Scientific Theology (1863): "The parable of the fruitful field", "Jesus's invocation of woe upon Jerusalem", "Schleiermacher and the Resurrection of Jesus".

1862. The discovery of new and primitive species of fossil trilobites along the coastline of Wales — Ancient Cambria — lead to establishing the existence of a Cambrian Era some hundreds of millions of years before the Jurassic of the dinosaurs — more support for "long chronologies" of Lyell, Darwin, and Science.

1862. John William Colenso (1814-1883), Cambridge Mathematician and Fellow, and First Bishop of Natal, South Africa (1853), published The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined, 7 vols. (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1862-79; New York: D. Appleton & Co), which asserted “the Pentateuch, as a whole, cannot personally have been written by Moses” and which pointed many mathematical inconsistencies in the scriptures. His awareness of the supportive works of de Wette and Vatke apparently came only later. The attempt to excommunicate him caused a schism in the S. African Church and an unsuccessful attempt to remove him from his bishopric back in England. Colenso's critics in Europe included Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy attacked him as too "revolutionary". A more positive influence was upon Keunen.

1863. Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany (1807-1876), who wrote as Richard von der Alm, was a cleric, librarian, and anti-ecclesiastical rationalist first at Nuremberg and then at Munich. His Theologische Briefe...der deutschen Nation (Theological Letters to the Cultured Classes of the German People), 3 vols., placed the primitive eschatology of Reimarus and of Strauss into a historical "Life" of a Jesus who must expect Divine intervention. The Paschal meal is morphed into an Essene "love feast", and the Resurrection to a belief based on the intense emotional visions of the disciples (QHJ: 166-72).

1863. Ernest Renan (1823-1892) studied at the Paris Seminary but left upon encountering German works in the Higher Criticism. After travel in Bible Lands he held a brief tenure as Professor of Semitic Languages, College de France. Renan's La Vie de Jesus aroused controversy, and the author was removed from his post. As with the Leben Jesu (French ed. 1840) of Strauss, Renan's "Life" was also part of a larger plan, which included St. Paul (1869) and L'Anti-Christ (1873). His was the first Roman Catholic life of Christ to make positive use of the extant Biblical Criticism, and all in popular lyrical French (QHJ: Chap. XIII. Renan's work was translated into English by W. G. Hutchinson as The Life of Jesus (London, 1864).

1863. Heinrich Julius Holtzmann (1832-1910) served as the Professor of New Testament studies at Heidelberg (1865), then Strasbourg (1874), where he taught Albert Schweitzer. Holtzmann's Die synoptischen Evangelien (The Synoptic Gospels) studiously confirmed the works of Lachmann, Wilke, and Weisse on the Marcan Hypothesis of priority and the 2-source question (QHJ: 294). Holtzmann also produced Der geschichtliche Christus (The Historical Christ), 3rd edn 1866, not finally surpassed until Wrede.

1863. T.H. Huxley, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (London & Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1863); French edition: La Place de l'Homme dans la Nature (Paris: Bailliere et Cie, 1870).

1864. Posthumous publication of Schleiermacher’s 1832 lecture notes as Das Leben Jesu (Berlin: Rutenik, 1864); English translation, 1975. His noted compromises on Miracle and the Fourth Gospel were still adhered to, as was the Divinity of Jesus with no loss of the humanity. To fail the divinity test was "Ebionite", whilst rejecting the humanity was "Docetic". Such continued positions, argued Strauss were "frail bulwark against the inroads of mythical interpretation" (NLJ, I: 26).

1864. D.F. Strauss finally recast and re-presented his classic work, as Das Leben Jesu fur das deutsche Volk bearbeitet (Leipzig), pp. 631. English translation A New Life of Jesus, 2 vols. 2nd ed. (London & Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1879). The first volume provides a critical review of emerging Higher Criticism, followed by an “Historical Outline of the Life of Jesus” while the second recounts the “Mythical History of Jesus,” comparing the gospel account to previous legendary births of heroes and leaders, such as those in the writings of the Roman Seutonius, showing marked parallels of miracles in the Evangelists (NLJ, II: 69-86). Strauss also points out that the Old Testament Prophets served as obvious prototypes for Jesus’s raising the dead: "As Elijah and Elisha had each raised a dead body to life, so Jesus the Messiah must at least have done as much. Matthew and Mark are satisfied with one history of this...the daughter of Jairus...Luke gives two...the one just mentioned (and) the youth of Nain...John only one indeed, the raising of Lazarus...of such a character that...every other is superfluous" (206-7). Whilst critics have readily pointed to how little overall progress had taken place in the views of Strauss from his first Life to the second, the ailing scholar's psychological instinct was nonetheless sure. "What men wished to be most certain of by these stories of the raising of the dead, was the future resurrection of the dead by the power of Christ on his coming again" (213). One is reminded of the lament of Marian Evans, his English translator, that it "made her ill dissecting the beautiful story of the crucifixion" (Haight 58). See George Eliot.

1864. Weizsacker, Untersuchungen uber die evangelische Geschichte (Studies in the Gospel History) (Gotha )appears, with a similar ground-plan to "works of Renan, Strauss, Schenkel...and Keim (on) the Jesus of liberal theology" (QHJ: 200). In the Fourth Gospel Weizsacker found "genuine apostolic reminiscences...a great mystic, and...a philosophy", which latter was new in uniting with that gospel (201). Eventually came to reject John, as did Holtzmann and others.

1864. Daniel Schenkel (1813-1885), a Swiss Protestant theologian, published Das Charakterbild Jesu (Wiesbaden) translated into English as A Sketch of the Character of Jesus (London 1869). Strauss took issue with Schenkel in "The Schenkel Controversy in Baden", Appendix to (1865) below.

1864. Timothee Colani (1824-1888), who served as a pastor in Strasbourg (1851) becoming Professor of Pastoral Theology (1864), published Jesus-Christ et les croyances messianiques de son temps (Strasbourg) made a pioneering attempt to assess the Jewish beliefs of Jesus and the eschatological question - both touched upon by Strauss and Renan. Colani rejected eschatology, declaring the apocalyptic discourses to be interpolations from a 1st cent. Jewish-Christian text. His systematic scrutiny of the Synoptic apocalypse materials was "a contribution to criticism of the utmost importance" (QHJ: 224-25). See Hilgenfeld and Volkmar.

1864. John Henry Newman (1801-1890), one of the founders of the Oxford movement before converting to Roman Catholicism, responded to an attack on his honesty by Charles Kingsley, one of the proponents of Muscular Christianity, wrote Apologia Pro Vita Sua [A Defence of One's Own Life], which appeared in bi-monthly parts (1862-64) and later in volume form (London: Longmans, 1864. Revised 1865 with many reprints). For him the differences with Kingsley had turned upon "the real meaning of the terms employed", and those could only be grasped by "the religious mind". The Apologia captivated both "all England" and the Catholic hierarchy in Rome, which had long been suspicious of Newman. For him, wrote William Barry, "Divine Truth and human language were incommensurable" Newman (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1904), pp. 127 passim, 249, comparing Pascal 251f. Newman’s was a subtle — some might say a casuist — position, that left open what has always been apparent to some of the greatest scientists and thinkers: Science cannot deal with the question of God, nor with the ultimate reductio question, "Why?" Forty years later and before going off to find his own true life and meaning at his hospital of Lambarene, French Gabon, Schweitzer would survey in some detail the parallel contributions to the Jesus of History versus the Jesus of Faith debate. He would conclude that "it is not Jesus as historically known", but rather "Jesus as spiritually risen" within us that is most significant (QHJ: 399). It was a hard creed to come by, as Jesus had warned with his "eye of a needle" (Matthew 19: 24, Mk. 10: 25, Luke 18: 25); and with "narrow is the way" (Matthew 7: 14).

1865. Strauss published his Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der Geschichte. Eine Kritik des Schleiermacher'schen Lebens Jesu (The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History. A Criticism of Schleiermacher's Life of Jesus Berlin. Also Die Halben und die Ganzen (The Half-wayers and the Whole-wayers) (QHJ: 193).

1865. Palestine Exploration Fund (P.E.F.) founded in London. Much early mapping of the Holy land was performed by military specialists. A certain Lt. Kitchener was active and produced reports including "Synagogues of Galilee" (P.E.F. Report July 1878), cited in Edersheim, I: 433n2. The celebrated Cana of Galilee was possibly identified as the village Kefr Kenna, by Lt. Condor, Tent-Work in Palestine, I: 150-55. Also Zeller, Quarterly Report of P.E.F 3 (1869) cited in Condor.

1865. Abraham Keunen (1828-1891), a Dutch Protestant scholar who was Professor of New Testament at Leiden (1853) and of Old Testament (1877), was early influenced by Ewald. His own work major was Historisch-Kritik Onderzoek (Historical Criticism of the Old Testament), 3 vols. (1861-65; 2nd ed. 1885-93). Keunen later was influenced by Colenso and Graf.

1866. Karl Heinrich Graf (1815-1869), a pupil of Albrecht Reuss, became a notable Old Testament scholar. His The Historical Books of the Old Testament preceded the more celebrated work by Wellhausen, giving eventually the modern Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis. Graf recognised that the basic document "P" or Priestly Code, which dated from late the post-Exile years, was preceded by the Prophets. Graf influenced Keunen and others, whilst working independently of Wellhausen.

1867. Keim. Die Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, 3 vols. Zurich to 1872. English translation by E. M. Geldert & Arthur Ransom, The History of Jesus of Nazareth, 6 vols. London, 1873-83. Keim produced the fullest critical Life of Jesus since Strauss, who favoured Keim's treatment on developmental lines "carried out according to the strictest laws of psychology and history." Such was, according to Strauss, "the demand of our age" (NLJ I,: 42-46). The study nevertheless continued to point to the incomplete and resistant treatment of miracles and the Resurrection. Even so, Schweitzer graced Keim's opus with the verdict that "Nothing deeper or more beautiful" had since been written on the subject (QHJ: 214). On that, however, Cf. Edersheim.

1869. The artist Holman Hunt left England for a second Jerusalem visit, where he painted The Shadow of Death (1870-73), which represented Jesus as a muscular working carpenter.

1870. Society of Biblical Archaeology founded in London by Samuel Birch (1813-85), Egyptologist and Keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum. Birch had c.1857 supported the Bibelwerke of Chevalier Bunsen, based on Egyptology's "long chronology".

1870. The First Vatican Council at Rome promulgated an Encyclical of Papal Infallibility in an effort to control doctrinal truth. This was later strongly satirised by writer Lytton Strachey in “Cardinal Manning,’ the seventh chapter of his iconoclastic Eminent Victorians (London: Chatto & Windus, 1918).

1871. Charles Darwin publishes his The Descent of Man, and Sex in Relation to Selection (London: John Murray. New York: D. Appleton & Co), which denied much of the teaching of church and religion, and which demonstrated the relations of Homo sapiens in nature. Darwin’s blow to tradition joined Galileo's 1632 disproof of that the sun, planets, and other celestial bodies rotate around the earth (which spatial positioning made man the center of the universe). To these two would subsequently be added Sigmund Freud's demonstration of the power of the unconscious forces in the control of the central ego, thereby completing a triumvirate of what Freud termed "narcissistic blows" against humanity's egoism (Freud 1917, "A difficulty in the path of psycho-analysis", S.E. 17: 135-144).

1872. George Smith (1840-76), Assistant Keeper at the British Museum, translates the Babylonian Flood story from ancient clay tablets of the Biblical Nineveh/Assyria. The Chaldean Account of Genesis ( New York: Scribner & Sons, 1876).

1874. Bruno Bauer continued to pose newly discovered problems for Primitive Christianity and its origins amid the role of the decaying ancient Roman Empire. Philo, Strauss, Renan und das Urchristentum (Berlin 1874). Strauss himself had hinted at such materials, in a section on "Development of Greco-Roman Cultivation", with the Mysteries and the Logos, the invisible as well as the visible; the secret languages of Therapeuts and Essenes, and Roman Eclecticism, until "everything on all sides at that time was pressing towards a point at which we see Christianity immediately appear" (NLJ, I: 241ff, 251). See also Otto Pfleiderer's several relevant works.

1874. Keunen. English translation of his major work The Religion of Israel to the Fall of the Jewish State, 3 volumes, which was followed by The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, 2 vols. English translation 1877. The Hexateuch (London 1886).

1874. Emile Schurer (1844-1910). Professor Extraordinarius of Theology at Leipzig 1873, examined the Jewish background of emerging Christianity in many editions of his major work, Geschichte des judischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, 2 vols. to 1886. English translation History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (Edinburgh 1885; 2nd edn 1895). A revised modern edition of this important work was made by Geza Vermes & F.Millar eds. , 4 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973-87). The original work was employed diligently throughout Edersheim. Schurer would continue to publish his crucial studies, with Das messianische Selbstbewusstsein Jesu Christi (1903), on the messianic nature of Jesus.

1875. Artist Holman Hunt leaves England for his third Jerusalem trip. See The Triumph of the Innocents, completed in 1887.

1876. Hase publishes final revision of his established handbook of student lectures, Geschichte Jesu (Leipzig), pp. 612. (The History of Jesus. Academic Lectures revised). Almost fifty years had witnessed many changes in Biblical Criticism, and also in the scholar whom Schweitzer called "the great Jena professor, his Excellency von Hase". The so-called Liberal Lives theological studies of Jesus had changed, with von Hase a major source. As always he remained subtle, penetrating, and finally indecisive. On Synoptics versus John he was enigmatic; on Miracle more evasive while still sentimental. "Hase had been penetrated by the influence of Strauss and had adopted from him the belief that the true life of Jesus lies beyond the reach of criticism" (QHJ: 214). It was a conclusion many more would come to share.

1878. Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), a pupil of Ewald, became Professor of Old Testament at Griefswald in 1872, then of Semitics at Marburg in 1885 and Gottingen in 1892. As the leading Old Testament "Source Critic", Wellhausen produced Israelitische und judische Geschichte. 2nd ed. Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels 1883. 3rd ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1895); English translation Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1885); many later editions/imprints. The work demonstrates that Judaism was post-Exile, before which Israel had no food laws and no Priestly Code "P". Wellhausen thus completed, as independently did Graf, the Old Testament developmental source-sequence of "J", "E", "D" and "P" — the Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis. Cf. de Wette, Vatke. Wellhausen's preliminary studies had appeared in Weizsacker's journal Jahrbucher fur deutsche Theologie (1876-77).

1878. August Wunsche (1838-1912). This German Christian scholar of Hebrew literature, made thorough comparisons of parallel passages between the Talmud-Midrash and the New Testament, as had Cambridge scholar John Lightfoot centuries earlier (Leipzig, c.1674, 1678). Wunsche's work was published as Neue Beitrage zur Erlauterung der Evangelien aus Talmud und Midrasch (Gottingen). Such materials were basic to the studies of Schurer and Edersheim, though much criticised on finer points by the latter, who preferred Schurer as a source, whilst being himself an expert Hebrew textual scholar.

1880. James Stalker (1848-1927), Professor of Church History, United Free Church College, Aberdeen, published his Life of Jesus Christ (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark. Chicago & New York: American Tract Society). This was one of the relatively few English-based studies in a field largely dominated by German as the lingua franca. (German translation 1898. 4th ed. Tubingen 1901).

1881. B.F. Westcott was, with F.J.A. Hort (1828-92), a prominent member of a committee composed of British and American scholars tasked with preparing New Testament. Revised Version. May 17th 1881 saw the appearance of the "WH" or Westcott & Hort New Testament in the Original Greek, and separately the much-awaited new English translation of the "R.V." or Revised Version (Oxford & Cambridge: University Presses; New York: Harper & Bros. of Franklin Sq). The full Bible appeared in 1885, the Apocrypha in 1895, and the American Revised Version in 1901. The new style of modern English struggled to compete with the older more lyrical A.V. or Authorized Version, as noted by Lewis Carroll in his correspondence, Letters II: 843, 895.

1881. William Robertson Smith (1846-1894) is dismissed from his academic post at Aberdeen University, for "heresy" in his discussions of biblical criticism. The specific offending article appeared in Encyclopaedia Britannica 1875-89, the famed "Scholar's Edition", where Robertson Smith outlined the work and views of Wellhausen. In 1885 he was made a Fellow of University of Cambridge. In 1882 he had published The Prophets of Israel (Edinburgh: A.&C. Black), which popularised the works of Ewald, Graf, Keunen and Wellhausen. Robertson Smith's own classic work continued with Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. The Fundamental Institutions. First Series. (London: A.&C. Black, 1899; New York: D. Appleton & Co. Schocken Books Inc., 1972; also available as an EBook). This work introduced the concept of "Primal Religion" to wider scrutiny, proposing that sacrifice functioned not to propitiate but to communion with the Deity. Social-anthropological treatments were thereby pioneered for these and other religious practices and institutions. The Second & Third Series were published posthumously from lecture notes (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995). Among others, the Cambridge scholar J.G.Frazer (1854-1941) appears to have benefitted from the method and materials of Robertson Smith.

1881. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). In his later days the German philosopher dated to 1881 his initial conception of "the idea of eternal recurrence", which for him was "the highest formula of affirmation", Ecce Homo citing "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" Part I, originally published in 1883 on the cusp of Nietzsche's incipient mental deterioration. Ecce Homo, which was written in 1888, in a marked autobiographical vein, was published posthumously by Nietzsche's sister in 1908. Elsewhere in Die frohliche Wissenschaft 1882 (The Gay Science. [N.B. in the 1880s "Gay" did not imply homosexuality, though, as a Punch cartoon demonstrates, it was used with reference to prostitution]. “Gay” here means "light-hearted or merry.” Here Nietzsche celebrated "the greatest" contemporary event, namely that "God is dead", by which he meant that belief in the Christian god "has become unbelievable". Such news that "the old God is dead" was to "We...free spirits" like a "new dawn" when "every daring venture of new knowledge is again permitted" (The Gay Science, 2nd revised ed. 1887; New English translation by R.J.Hollingdale, A Nietzsche Reader (London: Penguin Books, 1977): 208-10.

1882. Gustav Volkmar (1809-1893), Docent in Theology at Zurich (1853), gave priority to the second Gospel (Mark) and rejected any Jewish Apocalyptic or Messianic claim in Jesus Nazarenus und die erste christliche Zeit (Jesus the Nazarene and the Beginnings of Christianity) Cf. Colani.

1882. Bernhard Weiss (1827-1918) was a New Testament scholar at Konigsberg to 1852, then in Kiel as Professor of Theology in 1863, and at Berlin in 1877. His Das Leben Jesu (Berlin), was a work had the same problems as the more important work of Schleiermacher (QHJ: 216-18). The real fault in the work, noted with some profound hindsight twenty or so years later by Schweitzer, was Weiss's pursuit of "so hopeless a cause" — namely, that of a full life of Jesus from the insufficient extant sources (218). Cf. the even greater such effort by Edersheim.

1883. Alfred Edersheim (1825-1889) was a converted Jewish Christian and Grinfield Lecturer on the Septuagint at Oxford. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah 2 vols. (London, New York & Bombay: Longmans, Green & Co. 3rd ed. 1889, 1900). The title indicates a basis in studies such as Schurer, Wunsche, and related authorities of Jewish inter-testamental culture and belief. The Messiahship is also clearly visible from the start in a work that everywhere accepted miracles while also treating the fourth gospel as sound history. Nonetheless, Edersheim employs a valuable chronological framework in following the trajectory of the Ministry of Jesus in close and enormous detail with copious notes. Strauss, Keim and similar Higher Critics are largely deflected, as are Rationalists such as Paulus. The case of the Stilling of the Storm on the Lake in Matthew viii: 18, 23-27, typifies Edersheim's method: He rejects all critical treatments on the grounds that "not one agrees with the others", preferring the gospel narrative as given with "the consensus of the three Evangelists". These formed part of the "original" tradition, with no motive for "invention", and the accounts are told with a "simplicity of language" and "vividness of detail that carry their own evidence" (I: 603). Despite such flawed psychology and epistemology, the Oxford scholar's work everywhere invokes daily Biblical scenes carefully researched and reconstructed such as few others can match. Edersheim, used cautiously, is an excellent secondary source.

1884. Friedrich Emil Kautzsch (1841-1910) was Lecturer at Leipzig from 1869 and from 1872 Professor of Theology at Basle, where he knew Nietzsche. He also taught at Tubingen from 1880 and Halle from 1888. Kautzsch was a textual and linguistic specialist in Grammars of Biblical Aramaic. Grammatik des Biblisch-Aramaisch. He was a founder member of the German Society for Exploration of Palestine, and editor of Theologische Studien und Kritiker, 1888- . Cf. Dalman.

1884. Albert Dulk (1819-1884), a political and social reformer who visited Sinai and wrote Der Irrgang des Lebens Jesu (The Error of the Life of Jesus), 2 vols to 1885. Dulk gives a dispassionate view of the Galilean teacher of deep religious insight, yet who was doomed to be destroyed the moment he allowed himself to assume such overly transcendental aspects as "divine sonship" and eschatological expectations. Such a fate may also be that of Religion, posits QHJ: 324.

1885. J. B. Lightfoot (1828-1889), the English & Cambridge Professor and an outstanding New Testament historian, became Bishop of Durham in 1879. His book on Ignatius, a study of the Epistles, showed seven to be genuine. The work was used to revise Baur's late 2nd-cent. date for the Synoptics, redated by Lightfoot to the last third of 1st-cent. AD/CE. See Weizsacker. Lightfoot was editor of Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology (1854-59).

1885. Willibald J.H. Beyschlag (1823-1900), Professor of New Testament Exegesis at Halle from 1860m was the liberal-Protestant author of Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Jesus), 2 vols. (1885-86). The excellently arranged preliminary study and scholarly apparatus of the first volume is then followed by a disencumbered life in the second. Beyschlag insists on merging the Synoptics and John, and on retaining the eschatology with the spiritual, against Volkmar. Many inconsistencies are thereby noted by Schweitzer. Beyschlag attempts to resolve the problems by postulating three stages in the development of Jesus: (1) Preacher of a future and supernatural Kingdom. (2) Growing belief that the Kingdom was then presenting itself, as seen in the changes brought about in the people who flocked to Him in the middle part of the Public Life. (3) As failure began to mark the scene, thought shifted to "beyond the grave" and a "glorious return" (QHJ: 215-16).

1885. Adolf Neubauer (1831-1907), Reader in Rabbinical Hebrew at Oxford to 1900, worked as sub-librarian of the Bodleian Library for which he acquired many valuable mss. from the Cairo Geniza-Ben Ezra Synagogue and elsewhere. Studia Biblica. Essays in Biblical Archaeology, Criticism and Kindred Subjects by Members of the University of Oxford.

1886. Adolf Harnack (1851-1930), Professor of Church History at Giessen (1879), Marburg (1886), and Berlin (1889), wrote his massive standard work The History of Dogma. English translation 1894-99 from the German edn 1886-89, 7 vols.

1886. Hans Heinrich Wendt (1853-1928) of Gottingen held the Professorships of Systematic Theology at Kiel and Heidelberg. Wendt gave special attention to the Teachings of Jesus in Die evangelischen Quellenberichte uber die Lehre Jesu, 2 vols. (1886 & 1890. English translation The Teaching of Jesus by J. Wilson. Edinburgh, 1892; 3rd German ed. 1903). Wendt preserved both the Synoptics and John, but with a caveat. As had the anti-Johannine Critical School of liberal lives - Holtzmann, Weizsacker, Hase and others - Wendt suppressed the "fundamentally eschatological character of the Marcan and Matthaean Jesus", which Schweitzer noted must necessarily be decided upon (QHJ: 219-20).

1886. Weizsacker corrected the datings of F.C. Baur for Early Christianity in The Apostolic Age. English translation 2 vols. (1894-95).

1888. Wilhelm Baldensperger (1856-1936), the Professor of New Testament at Giessen, wrote Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der messianischen Hoffnungen seiner Zeit (The Self-Consciousness of Jesus in the Light of the Messianic Hopes of His Time), 2nd ed. (Strasbourg/Strassburg, 1892; 3rd ed. 1903).

1888. Hermann Gunkel (1862-1932). At Gottingen Gunkel was a founder-member of the History of Traditions school, with Bousset, Wrede, Johannes Weiss and others. He began with New Testament studies at Gottingen, then moved to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and a full Professorship at Giessen in 1907. His The Influence of the Holy Spirit. The Popular View of the Apostolic Age and the Teaching of the Apostle Paul was tn 1888 the first book from the new Gottingen group (English ed. 1979). It argued that The New Testament should be understood in its 1st-century religious and cultural contexts rather than directly from the Old Testament. Late Judaism was thus the "real matrix of the gospel". See his later work What Remains of the Old Testament, German ed. 1901.

1888. Adolf Julicher (1857-1938) was Professor of New Testament Studies at Marburg (1888-1923). As a textual critic, his classic work was on the Parables. Die Gleichnisreden Jesu 2 vols. (Freiburg, to 1889). (Exposition of the Parables in the First Three Gospels) pp.641. Julicher rejected allegorical interpretations, preferring to leave parables with their natural linguistic meanings — an approach criticised in the 1920s as too narrow.

1889. Alfred Resch (n.d.) published a collection of some 300 extracanonical sayings/fragments as agrapha attributed to Jesus (OCB: 17). (Anon. Agrapha. Aussercanonische Schriftefragmente. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs Buchhandlung. 1906; available on archive.org).

1889. T.H. Huxley publishes his ground-breaking “Agnosticism and Christianity” in a London periodical, Nineteenth Century Magazine/ Huxley coined his new term after attending a discussion group on Greek Gnostics. Greek "gnosis" = knowledge.

1889. Friedrich Nippold (1838-1918) was a physician and alienist (psychiatrist) who studied medico-psychological aspects of academic and popular lives of Jesus that had used notions of Mesmerism/Hypnosis: Die psychiatrische Seite der Heilstatigkeit Jesu. Nippold's publications formed a large specialist opus. See also Tholuck and Schweitzer’s M.D. thesis of 1912.

1889. H.J. Holtzmann. Handkommentar. Die Synoptiker. 3rd ed. (1901). Also Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie (1896; 2nd ed. 1912). According to Holtzmann's major pupil Albert Schweitzer, these later works provide with no unwarranted interpretation, "The ideal Life of Jesus", i.e. that available to each reader from the synoptic commentary and theology there presented (QHJ: 203-4, 294).

1890. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942), British archaeologist and Fellow of the Royal Society, arrived at Tel el-Hesi mound, Palestine to commence stratigraphy of the remains. Petrie identified a "Jewish" sequence/layer between a dateable Mycenaean lower layer and a dateable Greek upper stratum. His findings were published as Tell el Hesy (Lachish) (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1891). See also Some Sources of Human History (London: S.P.C.K., 1919). The Status of the Jews in Egypt (London: Allen & Unwin, 1922).

1891. Henri "Pere" Didon (1840-1900) was a Dominican priest and popular author whose Jesus-Christ, 2 vols. (Paris, 1891; German translation, 1895) confronted "irreligious a priori theories with the positive arguments of history", cited from Approbation, in author's Forward. The Critical-Historical questions, however, were largely missed (QHJ: 295n). The work was typical of a large Catholic literature in France following Renan. A rare exception was Alfred Loisy (294n2).

1892. Luther's German Bible. Final Revised Edition. (A New Testament had appeared in 1522; Old Testament 1534).

1892. Johannes Weiss (1863-1914) was Professor of New Testament at Marburg from 1895 and Heidelberg from 1908. Weiss treated the crucial eschatological question in the 67 pages of Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (Gottingen). (The Preaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God). Revised 2nd ed. 1900, pp. 210. English translation 1972. Cf. Colani and Volkmar. The new History of Religions School asserted that the New Testament must be understood in context of the 1st-century Jewish-Judaic background, including the eschatological-messianic hopes of Daniel and Enoch. Eschatology from Greek Eskhatos = “last and final things.” As Jesus put it in Matthew 6: 33, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God." That kingdom was an entirely future Kingdom to come (QHJ: 238; OCB: 192-94).

1892. M. Kahler (1835-1912), Professor of Theology at Halle from 1862, who opposed liberal life of Jesus studies, was a proponent of the "Faith versus History" debate. In The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historical Biblical Christ (2nd ed. 1896; English translation 1964 he argued that Christianity was only interested in the latter - "The real Christ is the preached Christ" - foreshadowing the theology of Karl Barth and R. Bultmann in the 1920s, and modern studies of the Apostle Paul, the Kerygmatic Christ, and the beginning of a "New Quest".

1892. Wilhelm Bousset (1865-1920), Professor of New Testament Exegesis at Gottingen and co-founder with Gunkel, Wrede, and Heitmuller of the Form Critical-History of Religions school. He later became New Testament Professor at Giessen. His classic work disputed the recent position of Johannes Weiss in Jesu Predigt in ihren Gegensatz zum Judentum. Ein religions-geschichtlicher Vergleich (The Antithesis between Jesus's Preaching and Judaism. A Religious-Historical Comparison). (Gottingen, 1892). Bousset's differences with Weiss did not go so far as to deny the realism of including the Jewish background to the Gospels. Bousset looked to the "joy in life" of Jesus and to the spiritualisation of the eschatological hope (QHJ: 243ff and Die judische Apokalyptik [Berlin, 1903]).

1893. Charles A. Briggs (1841-1913), a New York-born Hebrew scholar and theologian, was expelled from the Presbyterian Church after a heresy trial of 1892 for "liberal views". Cf. Strauss, Robertson Smith, and others.

1893. Wilhelm Brandt (1855-1915) was born in Amsterdam of German parents. A Pastor, he studied at Strasbourg, then Berlin 1891-92, before becoming Lecturer in General History of Religion at Amsterdam in 1893. De evangelische Geschichte und der Ursprung des Christentums, Leipzig. (The Gospel History and the Origin of Christianity). Brandt gave a thorough-going sceptical criticism of Pilate's attitude and role in the Trial, dealing with the "Life", eschatology, poetic invention by the gospel writers, and other difficulties. Cf. Otto Pfleiderer, much influenced by Brandt.

1894. Gustaf Dalman (1865-1941) was Professor of Theology & Oriental Languages at Leipzig. His books provided fundamental textual tools. Grammatik des judische-palestinensischen Aramaisch, Leipzig. (Grammar of Jewish-Palestinian Aramaic. With Appendix on Messianic Texts). Die Worte Jesu,Leipzig 1898. English translation The Words of Jesus by D.M.Kay. (Edinburgh, 1902). Dalman there touched upon the controversy over the expression "the Son of Man". Dictionary of Aramaic, 1901. See Arnold Meyer.

1894. William Sanday (1843-1920), Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at Oxford from 1885, was the leader of the Christ Church Synoptic Problem Seminar, which resulted in a number of crucial publications in "Oxford Studies": Studies in the Synoptic Problem (1911). The elegant Synoptic Tables of B.H. Streeter in 1924 would come from the same source. Sanday also produced Outlines of the Life of Christ (1905); Christologies Ancient and Modern (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910). Sanday regularly reported to the Anglican Committee on advances in German Biblical Criticism.

1895. A year of many significant new editions: 8th German ed. of the "New Life" of 1864 by D.F. Strauss; the popular ed. in German translation of Renan; a German translation of Didon. A new printing also appeared of the widely-read Anna Katharina Emmerich by Clement Brentano.

1896. Arnold Meyer (1861-n.d.) was Professor of New Testament & Pastoral Theology at Zurich. His Jesu Muttersprache, Leipzig. (The Mother Tongue of Jesus) argued that biblical Aramaic was a North Semitic language, with similarities to Assyrio-Babylonian to the East and Canaanitish-Hebrew to the West. See Dalman.

1896. Hans Lietzmann (1875-1942) was Professor of Church History at Jena whose Der Menschensohn (The Son of Man) (Freiburg) was a largely linguistic study. Cf. Dalman

1897. Dr. Edwin Hatch (1835-89) was an Oxford scholar specialising in the New Testament and Early Church History. He was part of the notable Oxford Group with William Sanday, Basil Streeter. and Charles Burney. A Concordance to the Septuagint and other Greek Versions of the Old Testament. Parts I-V with Henry A. Redpath.

1897. B.P. Grenfell (1869-1926), an Egyptologist at Queens College Oxford, published Sayings of Our Lord (London: Egypt Exploration Fund with A.S. Hunt). The basis of the book was the celebrated fragment of a mid 2nd-century Gospel of Thomas found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt.

1897. Karl Budde (1850-1935) served as Professor of Old Testament at Bonn from 1879, Strasbourg from 1889, and Marburg from 1900. Commentary on Judges. Religion of Israel to the Exile, in American Lectures on the History of Religions. 4th Series. (New York & London: G. Putnam's Sons). Budde there significantly extended the earlier work of Wellhausen beyond the Pentateuch. See also Budde's Samuel (1902).

1898. Dalman’s study of the controversial phrase "Son of Man" appears.

1899. Percy Gardner (1846-1937), Professor of Archaeology University of Cambridge (1879-87) and Professor of Classical Archaeology at Oxford (1887-1925), offers a clear presentation of the issues of biblical criticism is by a non-theologian in Exploratio Evangelica. A Brief Examination of the Basis and Origin of Christian Belief (London: A.&C. Black; New York: Putnam's Sons. 2nd ed. 1907). Gardner's work should be compared closely to the 1905 non-technical outline by the eminent theologian Otto Pfleiderer.

1900. Grenfell with A.S. Hunt, Fayum Towns and their Papyri (London: Egypt Exploration Fund) adds to the iconic Oxyrhynchus Fragment of papyrus, with others relating to Coptic Christian documents, fragments, and lost gospels.

1901. Gunkel sanctions an epochal new first edition of The Legends of Genesis. English translation by W.H. Carruth, Professor of German at Kansas University (Chicago: Open Court Publ. Co.) An Introduction, based on Gunkel's prior technical works: Schopfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit. Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung uber Genesis 1.... (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1895). Gunkel views the Patriarchal legends as part of a tribal oral tradition, rather than having been produced by single gifted or named figures. The context of the stories is used to reconstruct their developmental stages. EBook is available.

1901. Oskar Holtzmann (1859-1934), who studied theology at Strassburg, Gottingen, and Giessen, and the Seminary of Friedberg (1877-83), became the Associate Professor of New Testament Exegesis at Giessen in 1890. He based his Das Leben Jesu (Tubingen) on the Marcan framework and the eschatological preaching of the Kingdom, being a Lecture in response to Wrede. The Giessen Holtzmann also produced Das Messianitatsbewusstsein Jesu und seine nueste Bestreitung. Vortrage 1902; and the engagingly titled War Jesus Ekstatiker? (Was Jesus an Ecstatic?). (Tubingen, 1903). His "Life of Jesus" has been seen as rigorously scientific and yet doomed to failure because it shared premises with the failing liberal lives of Jesus era (QHJ: 295).

1901. Wilhelm Wrede (1859-1906) was a German Lutheran theologian, Associate Professor of Theology at Breslau from 1893 and Full Professor from 1896. Independently of Schweitzer he published a seminal work which drew to a close the nineteenth-century's Higher Criticism pursuit — or the quest for a historical Jesus in Das messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien...des Markusevangeliums (Gottingen, The Messianic Secret in the Gospels...Gospel of Mark). Wrede found the Marcan gospel document to be essentially dogmatic and full of contradictions with the supposed historical thread. The idea of the hiding of the Messianic claims from the disciples and people — The Messianic Secret — is employed to resolve those contradictions. In doing so, it removed all possibility of achieving the Liberal theological hope — a consistent life of any historical Jesus. Paulus (Halle, 1904; Tubingen, 1907; English translation by Paul: London, 1907).

1901. Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965). became New Testament Lecturer at University of Strasbourg where he had been a student. Das Messianitats und Leidensgeheimnis (Tubingen & Leipzig; The Secret of the Messiahship and the Passion...The Life of Jesus). (OCB: 322). Cf. Wrede.

1901. The Magdalen Papyrus. Three late 1st-century fragments of Matthew 26: 6-7, found in a Luxor market by Oxford scholar Rev. C.B. Huleatt.

1902. Otto Pfleiderer (1839-1908) of Tubingen held the position of Professor of Theology at Jena from 1870, and of Systematic Theology in Berlin from 1875. His Das Urchristentum, seine Schriften und Lehren.... 2nd ed. 2 vols. (Berlin, 1902); English translation Primitive Christianity. 2 vols. London. From 1st edn 1887). From 1887 to 1902 Pfleiderer's views on the relevant issues, including the historicity of Mark, eschatology, and so on, underwent considerable change, prompted by more radical scholars, such as Brandt. Pfleiderer, whom Schweitzer described as "one of the greatest" of Biblical scholars, accepted Mark's eschatology of the Kingdom but was now much more sceptical on the matter of the Secret Messiahship (QHJ: 311-12). The views of Pfleiderer would continue to evolve, as seen below.

1903. Wellhausen now turned to the new Testament. Das Evangelium Marci. (A Commentary on the Gospel of Mark) added weight to views of Mark as already an historic document, as early shown by F.C. Baur. Wellhausen would continue to publish, with Julicher and with Harnack. Die christliche Religion, mit Einschluss der Israelitisch-judischen Religion 1906. (The Christian Religion, with Annex/Appendix on the Israelitish-Jewish Religion).

1903. H.V. Hilprecht (1859-1925), an American archaeologist, published Explorations in Bible Lands During the 19th Century (Philadelphia: A.J. Holman & Co.) Hilprecht's finds included c. 18,000 clay tablets of the Kassite Period. By 1970 only some nine hundred had been translated and published (Oates, J. 1979). Babylon. (London: Thames & Hudson). Hilprecht was nevertheless able to demonstrate much underlying Panbabylonism in Old Testament religion.

1903. Alfred Firmin Loisy (1857-1940), a French-Modernist Catholic priest and theologian trained at Grande seminaire de Chalons-en-Champagne (1874-79), and at the Institute Catholique de Paris 1878-79, becoming Instructor in Hebrew there in 1881. Loisy later studied under Renan at the College de France, becoming influenced by his more progressive views. Loisy's final Lecture of November 1893 showed a new acknowledgement of the non-Mosaic and non-Historical nature of Pentateuch sources. Cf. Colenso, Wellhausen and others. Loisy's New Testament views became even more difficult for the Church: Le Quatrieme Evangile (Paris, 1903) denied the Johannine historical position, and led to the author's removal from his post. Excommunication followed in 1908, with the publication of Loisy's Les Evangiles Synoptiques. (The Synoptic Gospels). He was however welcomed as Professor of the History of Religions at the College de France (1908-31).

1904. Bousset, Jesus. Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbucher.... Halle. English translation (Jesus) by J.P. Trevelyan (London 1906).

1904. Grenfell, New Sayings of Jesus and Fragments of a Lost Gospel from Oxyrhynchus (London: Egypt Exploration Fund). For a modern treatment of this and later work, including the discovery of the related 13 codices at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945, see: R. Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas. (London: Routledge, 1997). Also OCB: 17-19.

1905. Pfleiderer. Now appeared in English translation by D.A. Huebsch Die Entstehung des Urchristentums (Munich, 1905; Christian Origins by Otto Pfleiderer. [London & New York: T. Fisher Unwin, 1906]). An almost identical title had been published in 1904, by Albert Kalthoff (1850-1906), member of the Bremen group with Friedrich Steudel and others who no longer believed in the existence of an historical Jesus: Die Entstehung des Christentums. Neue Beitrage zum Christusproblem (Leipzig). Cf. Bruno Bauer.

1905. B.H. Streeter (1874-1937). Oxford Fellow 1905-, was a prominent member of the New Testament textual and synoptic problems group of William Sanday.

1906. Albert Schweitzer, D.Theol., D.Phil., D.Med. was curate and then Lecturer in Theology, University Strasbourg from 1902, Principal of College of Theology from 1903. Von Reimarus zum Wrede (The Quest of the Historical Jesus. A Critical Study of its Progress From Reimarus to Wrede [London: A.&C. Black.] Preface by F.C. Burkitt D.D., Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge). Gifted with that human center that balances logic and emotion, scholarship and sentiment, science and art, Schweitzer sums up the nineteenth-century struggle to comprehend the figure of Jesus and the status of his religion. Historical knowledge, notes Schweitzer, may clarify but "cannot call spiritual life into existence", and the historical Jesus "will be to our time a stranger and an enigma" (397). As Kahler had said, "The real Christ is the preached Christ", to which Schweitzer adds "Jesus as spiritually arisen within" (QHJ: 399).

1908. Wilhelm Heitmuller (1869-1926). Professor of New Testament at Marburg from 1908 and Bonn from 1920, he taught Rudolf Bultmann, who succeeded him at Marburg in 1921. He founded the journal Theologische Rundschau with Bousset. Taufe und Abendmahl bei Paulus (Baptism and Eucharist by Paul [1903]). Revised and with title expanded in 1911 to im Urchristentum (In the Apostolic Age).

1909. Otto Pfleiderer. English translation Primitive Christianity, Vol. 2. (London, 1909). Desribed as a "remarkable and profound presentation of Jesus" (QHJ: 309n2).

1911. Sanday achieved major book publication in series of Oxford Studies in Synoptic Problems.

1912. Albert Schweitzer publishes his MD thesis, Strasbourg 1911. The Psychiatric Study of Jesus. Exposition and Criticism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948). Cf. Nippold

1913. R.H. Charles (1855-1931). A British scholar of Dublin and Oxford, Charles contributed to literature on the Jewish messianic apocalypse with The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press). See also his "The Son of Man" in the Expository Times (1903).

1913. Bousset publishes his classic and cumulative work Kyrios Christos. Geschichte des Christusglaubens...bis Irenaeus. English translation A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus. Various publishers and EBook.

1914. R. Koldewey, The Excavations at Babylon (London: Macmillan). Finds of artefacts began in 1899. Many were related to the Old Testament sites of Assyria, Babylon, Nineveh, Sennacherib, and Nebuchadnezzar). Work was interrupted by the Great War 1914-1919, which would severely test European beliefs, scholarship, and wider life.

1914. Charles Fox Burney (1868-1925). Senior Scholar & Lecturer in Hebrew at St. John's Oxford from 1893. He became Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture, June 1914. He was a contributor to Encyclopaedia Biblica (1903). In 1917 and the depths of the "War to end Wars" Burney gave the Schweich Lecture entitled “Israel's Settlement in Canaan: The Bible Tradition and its Historical Background.”

Brief Bibliography and Short-Titles Used

OCB - Metzger, B.M. and Coogan, M.D. eds. 1993. The Oxford Companion to the Bible. New York & Oxford: O.U.P.

NLJ - Strauss, D.F. 1864. A New Life of Jesus. English translation 2nd ed. 1879. London & Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate.

QHJ - Schweitzer, A. 1906. The Quest for the Historical Jesus. English translation 1910. London: A. & C. Black. 10th imp. 1948.

Anderson, B. W. 1985. Understanding the Old Testament. 4th ed. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Schurer, Emil. 1987 (1874). The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, 4 vols. Rev.ed. G. Vermes & F. Millar. Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark.

Edersheim, A. 1883. The Life and Times of Je

sus the Messiah, 2 vols. 3rd edn London: Longmans Green & Co. 1900.

Kenyon, K., 1987. The Bible and Recent Archaeology. Revised ed. Atlanta: Knox.

Collins, J. J. 1984. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity. New York: Crossroad.

Vermes, Geza 1973. Jesus the Jew. A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels. London: Collins.

Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols. 1963-1979. Cambridge U.P.

Morgan, R. and Barton, J. 1988. Biblical Interpretation. Oxford University Press.

Desmond, A. 1994. Huxley. The Devil’s Disciple. London: Michael Joseph.

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