The time since the appearance of the second edition was too short for any material alterations to be undertaken in the third edition now appearing. However, the phraseology here and there has been improved and many things put more strongly. Above all, the famous passage in Tacitus and the passage 1 Cor. ii. 23 et seq. has been so handled that its lack of significance as regards the existence of an historical Jesus should now appear more clearly than hitherto. That Paul in reality is not a witness for an historical Jesus and is wrongly considered as the "foundation" of the faith in such a figure, should be already established for every unprejudiced person as the result of the discussion so far on the "Christ Myth." The Protestantenblatt finds itself now compelled to the admission that the historical image of the person of Jesus as a matter of fact "can no longer be clearly recognised" (No. 6, 1910). How then does it fare with the new "bases" of Schmiedel? To no refutation of the assertions which I represent has greater significance been hitherto ascribed on the theological side than to those supposed supports of a "really scientific life of Jesus" (in the discussions of "the Christ Myth" this has again received the strongest expression). And yet these bases were advanced by their originator obviously with a view to a conception quite different from mine, and, as I have now shown, do not affect, generally speaking, the view represented by me regarding the rise of the supposed historical picture of Jesus. When, above all, the "historical references to Jesus" are supposed to be contained in them, and these, according to the Protestantenblatt, lie "like blocks of granite" in my path--then this is a pure illusion of the theologians.