sidered. He thought that he could discover in the words of Paul himself traces of profound opposition and earnest conflicts waged with the Jewish party in the church, and even with the other apostles. Connecting herewith information gained from later sources respecting this party, its duration and its influence, he recognized in the so-called Ebionites the same Judaizing spirit with which Paul had to contend, and employed in illustrating the earlier period the pseudo-Clementine Ebionistic writings of a subsequent age. Thus, before the publication of Strauss's views, he had laid the foundations upon which he afterwards built his comprehensive historical combinations. On the same grounds he had already begun to suspect the authenticity of the Acts of the Apostles. Besides the miraculous narratives therein contained, he detected a conciliatory purpose in their unhistorical portrayal of the activity of the apostle to the gentiles, which he deemed irreconcilable with his own declarations, and designed to veil his opposition to pseudo-Christianity. At the same time, in his work on the Pastoral Epistles, and his discussion of the Epistle to the Romans, he first attempted to discriminate between what he considered the genuine and what he regarded as the unauthentic Pauline Epistles, finally recognizing as genuine only the Epistle to the Romans, the Epistles to the Corinthians, and the Epistle to the Galatians. But at the time of the publication of the "Life of Jesus," he had not extended his critical inquiries to the gospel history. In 1843 the fourth Gospel, and in 1846 the third Gospel, were examined by him; and in 1847, a corresponding discussion of the first and the second was added to a revised edition of the foregoing discussions in his "Critical Inquiries into the Canonical Gospels." At the same time, in his work on Paul, published in 1845, he brought to a close his criticism of the Pauline Epistles and of the Acts.

Several of his pupils shared in these labors of their master. Edward Zeller, in 1842, established the "Theological Annals," (Theolog. Jahrbücher) which, edited by him, either alone or in conjunction with Baur, was princiVOL. XIX. No. 73.

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pally devoted to New Testament criticism. Albert Schwegler, an accomplished adherent of the school of Baur, in his "Post-Apostolic Age" (Das Nachapostolische Zeitalter Tüb. 1846. 2 Bde.), while either anticipating his master or completing what he had left unfinished, united their views in a comprehensive and spirited historical picture of that important period. These scholars, together with Köstlin, Planck, Hilgenfeld, and Volkmar, though disagreeing with Baur in many of the results at which they individually arrive, have nevertheless pursued the historical method proposed by him.

The first demand of this school is freedom from all prejudice. Baur insists that the same laws and principles of investigation shall be applied to the study of the scriptures as apply to other writings. "Christianity," he says, "is a historical phenomenon, and as such must be historically examined." When charged by his opponents with putting Christianity in a position in which its supernatural and miraculous elements shall disappear, he replies: "Such must necessarily be the tendency of historical inquiry. Its office is to investigate events in connection with their causes and their results. A miracle, however, destroys this natural connection. It assumes a position in which, not from the want of adequate information, but from the very necessity of the case, it is impossible to consider one thing as the natural consequence of another. But how can such a position be defended? Only by historical methods. But in a historical point of view, it were a mere begging the question to assume the occurrence of an event at variance with the common analogy of historical intuition. The question of the origin of Christianity thus ceases to be a purely historical question, and becomes the purely dogmatic one: Is it an absolute demand of the religious consciousness, in opposition to all historical analogy, that certain events shall be regarded as simple miracles?'" A miracle and a purely historical method exclude each other. Strauss and Baur alike acknowledge that he who admits the existence of the foriner refuses to employ the latter.

Assuming, with Strauss, that our New Testament historical books narrate much which either did not happen, or did not happen in such a way that our account of it can be regarded as presenting a true picture of the origin and early development of Christianity, Baur seeks by another method to gain such a picture from them, when studied in connection with other books of the New Testament, and with uncanonical ecclesiastical authorities. These writings he thinks, so far as they are narrative, contain, together with much that is improbable and incredible, an important germ of historical tradition, which can be separated so soon as we can discover its determinate purpose. They may, also, without exception, though only partially applicable, and needing to be used with care, be employed as original documents in obtaining a knowledge of the time to which they owe their origin. Even the narratives of this collection are not simply historical books; they have a definite religious aim; they propose to teach, to edify, to influence the Christian community. In the epistles of the New Testament and the Apocalypse of John this design is manifest. In these writings, therefore, mirror themselves the religious position of the author and of the circle to which they belong, their relation to the parties and the practical and dogmatic questions of their time, their wishes for the future, their view of the aims to which Christianity must, with varying definiteness, be led, the circumstances of the age whence these writings sprung, and the relations of the communities which they were designed to influence. These indications Baur attempts to follow out. He would learn from the doctrinal character and tendency of the writings of the New Testament, not only what age produced them, but what was the religious character, and what were the ecclesiastical relations of that age. In the same manner would he deal with all the remaining early writings of the church, down to the end of the second century; for he regards them as occupying the same position as historical sources, and accounts for the exclusion of some of them from our canon by the fact that they were, though of equal value,

yet less in harmony with the sentiments of the subsequent age than those which find a place there. This testimony of different times and parties respecting themselves, Baur considers the safest criterion for the critical examination of the reports concerning the state of the early church, contained either in the canonical or the uncanonical books. By joining the traditions thus tested with this immediate witness, he expects, by a comprehensive combination, to restore the obscured and distorted picture of the early church - of its development and of its founder-to at least the general outlines of its original condition.

The best starting-point for this inquiry he finds in that historical fact, with the discovery of which his critical course began, and of which he subsequently became more and more firmly convinced, the opposition among the apostles and, in the apostolic age, between the Jewish and the Pauline form of Christianity. This opposition gradually diminished, until at last, after many conflicts and many concessions on either side, it ended in the second half of the second century, in the establishment of the Catholic church and the settlement of its doctrinal system. From that deeply seated opposition, says Baur, the church received an impulse which for a century controlled its development. It determined the dogmatic position of individuals and of parties. The memorials of the conflict, and of the conces sions which ended it, we have in the canonical writings of the New Testament and the uncanonical writings of the early church. Each stage of her progress is indicated by works, a part of which, rightly honored with apostolic or non-apostolic names, were finally appended to the sacred books of the Jews. This later development of the church throws the fullest light on the character of the founder of Christianity. That conception only of him can be the true one which explains the circumstances and the relations of the society which he established. The important historical question respecting the person and the doctrine of Jesus is: What was he, and how must he have appeared, in order to render possible at once the narrow views of his

Judaizing disciples and the susceptibility of endless development, the world-moving power which characterizes his work?

The adherents of the Tübingen school pay no heed to the charge that their style of criticism is irreconcilable with proper reverence for the Holy Scriptures, and utterly at variance with the views which for centuries have been entertained respecting them by the church. They simply affirm that no limits should be assigned to historical enquiry, but such as thoroughly scientific principles recognize. In like manner, they attach no value to the declarations in support of the authenticity of the scriptures made by the universal Christian consciousness. The question of the truth or the falsehood of the books of the New Testament, they contend, is not to be settled by any feeling of their harmony with our necessities, our inclinations, or our convictions, but only by adequate historical proofs. Το substitute for such external testimony or internal indications, satisfactorily tested by scientific criticism, those immediate convictions, those irresistible feelings once called the witness of the Holy Ghost, and now the evidence of inward personal experience, -is, they say, absurd and impossible.

They do, however, condescend to justify and defend a critical method which rejects the long-cherished opinions respecting the authorship of many of the books of the New Testament; transfers to the middle of the second century writings which until lately were considered apostolic; imputes to the sacred authors the invention of facts and discourses and the false assumption of the names of the apostles and their immediate disciples; admits that the church permitted the interpolation of many passages into the sacred books, and circulated and believed these falsified and corrupt productions; charges the apostles with divisions and dissensions respecting the most important topics of Christianity, and the church with the adoption of narrow Judaizing views; denies the genuineness and historical authority of John's Gospel, and recognizes in the Apocalypse