The Person and Work of Jesus Christ 99 Old Testament scholars and Semitists—as Gunkel, Meyer, Meinhold, Gressmann, Winckier, Simmern, Jensen—followed the traces of Babylonian influences down through the period of later Judaism to New Testament times; New Testament scholars—as Schurer, Baldensperger, Bousset, Pfldderer, Schmiedel, Holtzman, Weinel, Wernle, Wrede—s tudied Greek and Jewish thought in its influence upon the early Christian writings. They deemed it necessary to eliminate first the whole of Johannine theology as a foreign substance; then they threw overboard the Apostle Paul as the great perverter of the simple teachings of Christ; next they cleared the Synoptical Gospels of all Babylonian, Egyptian, Phrygian, Jewish, Greek and other foreign matter. They have just about finished this arduous work of purifying and simpli- fying the Gospels by this double process of “religions- geschichtliche” analysis and comparison, in order to discover the real, historical Christ; they meet at the feet of this Christ, to see Him as He really is ; but behold, He is no more! Not a trace of Him is left. Trait after trait, feature after feature, has been analyzed and compared, until neither man- ger nor cross nor grave, not even His garments, are left. A few years ago we had, by the grace of the most advanced scholarship, at least a plain Galilean peasant with*a very good heart. Even if His mind was rather too simple, we were al- lowed to believe in a kind-hearted carpenter’s son, who went about doing good, and to whom at least eight rather inof- fensive sayings could be historically traced; as, for example, the saying, It is more blessed to give than to receive;” but even this peasant has evaporated, or rather, the great Baby- lonian flood which the mighty Bel caused to drown all man- kind has completely swallowed up the little that was left of Jesus of Nazareth. I beg pardon for this tone of levity. The whole matter would be very serious if it were not so utterly absurd. But the fact is that German theology is just now confronted with
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