in the evangelical representation. Von Soden even goes so far as to base his chief proof for the historical existence of Jesus on this individuality that cannot be invented. [459] As if there was any such thing as what cannot be invented for men with imagination! And as if all the significant details of Jesus' life were not invented on the lines of the so-called Messianic passages in the Old Testament, in heathen mythology, and in the imported conceptions of the Messiah! The part that is professedly "uninventable" shrinks continuously the more assiduously criticism busies itself with the Gospels; and the word can at present apply only to side-issues and matters of no importance. We are indeed faced with the strange fact, that all the essential part of the Gospels, everything which is of importance for religious faith, such as especially the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is demonstrably invented and mythical; but such parts as can at best only be historical because of their supposed "uninventable" nature are of no importance for the character of the Gospel representation! Now, it has been shown that the Gospel picture of Jesus is not without deficiencies. We may see a proof [460] of the historical nature of the events referred to in small traits, as, for example, in Jesus' temporary inability to perform miracles, [461] the circumstance that he is not represented as omniscient, [462] the attitude of his relatives to him. [463] So the theologian Schmiedel set up first five and then nine passages as "clearly credible," and pronounced these to be the basis of a really scientific knowledge of Jesus. The passages are Mark x. 17 sqq. (Why callest thou me good?), Matt. xii. 31 sqq. (The sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven), Mark iii. 21 (He is beside himself), Mark xiii. 32 (But the day and the hour is known to no man), Mark xv. 24 (My God, why has thou forsaken me?), Mark vi. 5 (And he could there do no mighty work), Mark viii. 12 (There shall no sign be given unto this generation), Mark viii. 14-21 (Reproaching the disciples on the occasion of the lack of bread), Matt. xi. 5 (The blind see, the lame walk). All these "bases" evidently have a firm support only on the supposition that the Gospels are meant to paint a stainless ideal, a God, that they are at most but a conception, such, perhaps, as has been set up by Bruno Bauer. But they are useless from the point of view intended, as portraying a man. If, however, the Evangelists' intention was to paint the celestial Christ of the Apostle Paul, the God-man, the abstract spirit-being, as a completely real man for the eyes of the faithful, to place him on the ground of historical reality, and so to treat seriously Paul's "idea" of humanity, they were obliged to give him also human characteristics. And these could be either invented afresh or taken from the actual life of honoured teachers, in which the fact is acknowledged that, even for the noblest and best