Supposing that only a half--nay, only a third--of the critical arguments which are common to Wrede and the "Sketch of the Life of Jesus" [by Schweitzer] are sound, then the modern historical view of the history is wholly ruined. The reader of Wrede's book cannot help feeling that here no quarter is given; and any one who goes carefully through the present writer's "Sketch" must come to see that between the modern historical and the eschatological life of Jesus no compromise is possible. [215] Let us see, then, to what the eschatological theory amounts, considered as a residual historical explanation. CHAPTER XX THE GROUND CLEARED FOR THE MYTH THEORY The issue as between Schweitzer and Wrede comes to this. Wrede sees that the Messiahship is a creation following upon the belief in the resurrection, and only uncritically deducible from the documents. For him, Jesus is a Teacher who was made into a Messiah by his followers after his death, the Gospels being manipulated to conceal the fact that he made no Messianic claims. Schweitzer sees that the Teaching Jesus is a documentary construction; and that, unless the Crucified One had some Messianic idea, the Gospel story as a whole crumbles to nothing. And he asks:-- But how did the appearance of the risen Jesus suddenly become for them [the disciples] a proof of His Messiahship and the basis of their eschatology? That Wrede fails to explain, and so makes this "event" an "historical" miracle which in reality is harder to believe than the supernatural event. [216]