I would almost have to reprint the whole book here, in order to give due attention to all the features, both tender and tempestuous, which comprise Christ's characterization in the Gospels, and to point out anew the integrity of this portrayal. In general terms, we can say that, in the whole of Jewish literature apart from this, in the whole of Greek and Indian literature, there is not a single example even remotely similar in its means of depicting human character. Furthermore, nothing in the modern psychological novel approaches this portrayal; one could wish that the novelists would bring into being a man such as this once in a while. Why do Drews and Lublinski not take a few ideal passages of our literature and conjure up and fabricate a figure like this with such features of bronze, such vitality, and with similar impact on the history of mankind? The older critics, including David Friedrich Strauss, might help them—but it would take us too far, and in any case it would be superfluous, if we were to discuss him in detail. Strauss is only Strauss; as an exponent of historical criticism he suffers, like the other critics, from ignorance of the times and ignorance of Christ. In the end we are left with Christ against Strauss; this tiny trickle of water thinks it can extinguish the blaze which encompasses the world! Furthermore (and this is a most remote demonstration) every one of Shakespeare's characters—leaving aside one small detail, i.e., that no character of his has ever had a comparable influence on world history, and concentrating for the moment on psychological realities—every one of Shakespeare's characters is put into the shade by this character who is supposed to have been invented in passing by these plebeians. What is Hamlet compared with Christ! The depths attained by these most consummate of peasant poets are utterly unfathomable. A great genius, even, may give us a lifelong portrayal of himself, in books, letters and conversations—but who will say that Goethe, of whose life we know a great deal, is presented to us as tangibly and vividly as Christ, of whose life we know practically nothing? (And everyone has a picture of Christ, whereas a very few educated people have one of Goethe!) How many people, indeed, how many poets there must have been among the Jews at that time, more highly gifted with imagination, psychology and language than our Goethe—so the critics surmise—that they were able to describe a fictitious person so much more perfectly than Goethe was able to describe himself! And, moreover, it was not their intention really to give such a description anyway! No image of a human being arises before us with such rounded fullness of life as the image of this most remarkable of all men, the Christ of the Evangelists. And what sly foxes these Evangelists were! With their stupendous erudition, they pretended to be such blockheads that they did not even understand the words, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees" and replied, "It is because we took no bread" (Mt. 16:7); when their Master was sorrowful unto death, they slept, and when he was in mortal danger, they ran away. Thus they give themselves the comic roles in their novel, they play the part of the unwitting comic fool, pretending that they do not understand a word of Christ's spoken wisdom, of these truths which open up the depths of heaven and earth—truths which were taught by no one but themselves, which they put into the mouth of their fictional hero! Such rogues, pulling the wool over our eyes like this? Nor can they have been motivated by praiseworthy modesty, for on the other hand they exhibit the most shameless self-consciousness of genius. But it would be wrong to hold them responsible, for they must have been quite mad; not only were these great writers a million times more stupid than what they wrote, in the end they even believed in it themselves, as if it were real. They became so entangled in the net of their own delusion that they let themselves be killed for the sake of their fictional hero. They must have been really out of their minds, really demented geniuses; that explains why, whenever they seem to be blockheads, they are in fact hiding their own genius—or else they were insane blockheads simulating genius. Now, however, Herr Arthur Drews and Herr Samuel Lublinski have got behind it all, whatever it may be; so far they have not told us what they have got behind.
No. It Is all too much. At this point religion is after all better than free criticism, not subordinated to reason.
