De Wette reflects somewhat on the moral character of John, perhaps without intention, when he supposes him to have written late in life--a time when his faith would naturally predominate over his love of facts. Strauss couples De Wette with Vater, as having placed upon a solid foundation the mythical explication of the history of the Bible.[59] According to De Wette, the narrator may intend to write history, but he obviously does it in a poetic way. The first three evangelists betray a legendary and even a mythical character. This explains the discrepancies in their histories, and also in the discourses and doctrines of Jesus. The miracle that took place at the baptism of Christ was a pure myth; and the resurrection and reappearance of Christ have their existence more in the mind than in history. With this view of the New Testament, it is not surprising that the Old should receive even more rigorous usage. The larger part of the Pentateuch was supposed to be taken from two old documents, the Elohistic and Jehovistic, and was compiled somewhere near the close of the legal period. The five books, purporting to have been written by Moses, are the Hebrew epic, and contain no more truth than the great epic of the Greeks. As the Iliad and Odyssey are the production of the rhapsodists, so is the Pentateuch, with the exception of the Decalogue, the continuous and anonymous work of the priesthood. Abraham and Isaac are equally fabulous with Ulysses and Agamemnon. A Canaanitish Homer could have invented nothing better than the journeys of Jacob and the marriage of Rebecca. The departure from Egypt, the forty years in the wilderness, the seventy elders at the head of the tribes, and the complaints of Aaron are each an independent myth. The character of myths is varied in different books; poetic in Genesis, juridical in Exodus, priestly in Leviticus, political in Numbers, etymological, diplomatical, and genealogical, but seldom historical, in Deuteronomy. De Wette's theological novel, _Theodore, or the Doubter's Consecration_, 1822, was designed to banish the doubts of the skeptic by seeking refuge in the theology of feeling. Tholuck replied to it in his _Guido and Julius_, in which he proves that a deep appreciation and acceptance of Christ by the soul is the only remedy for infidelity. "We perceive in De Wette a continual conflict between the longings of his heart and the theological creed to which he attached himself. The lines written by him just before his death touchingly declare the great failure of his life: "I lived in times of doubt and strife, When child-like faith was forced to yield: I struggled to the end of life, Alas! I did not gain the field."