The Life of Jesus Critically Examined: (4th ed.)Strauss, David Friedrich
Religion
The Life of Jesus Critically Examined: (4th ed.)
Strauss, David Friedrich
Jesus Christ -- Biography; Jesus Christ -- History of doctrines
Even Eichhorn, who so extensively employed the natural explanation in
reference to the Old Testament, perceived its inadmissibility in
relation to the gospel histories. Whatever in these narratives has a
tendency to the supernatural, he remarks, [45] we ought not to attempt
to transform into a natural occurrence, because this is impossible
without violence. If once an event has acquired a miraculous colouring,
owing to the blending together of some popular notion with the
occurrence, the natural fact can be disentangled only when we possess a
second account which has not undergone the like transformation; as,
concerning the death of Herod Agrippa, we have not only the narrative
in the Acts, but also that of Josephus. [46] But since we have no such
controlling account concerning the history of Jesus, the critic who
pretends to discover the natural course of things from descriptions of
supernatural occurrences, will only weave a tissue of indemonstrable
hypotheses:—a consideration which, as Eichhorn observes, at once
annihilates many of the so-called psychological interpretations of the
Gospel histories.
It is this same difference between the natural and mythical modes of
interpretation which Krug intends to point out, referring particularly
to the histories of miracles, when he distinguishes the physical or
material, from the genetic or formal, mode of explaining them.
Following the former mode, according to him, the inquiry is: how can
the wonderful event here related have possibly taken place with all its
details by natural means and according to natural laws? Whereas,
following the latter, the question is: whence arose the narrative of
the marvellous event? The former explains the natural possibility of
the thing related (the substance of the narrative); the latter traces
the origin of the existing record (the form of the narrative). Krug
considers attempts of the former kind to be fruitless, because they
produce interpretations yet more wonderful than the fact itself; far
preferable is the other mode, since it leads to results which throw
light upon miraculous histories collectively. He gives the preference
to the exegetist, because in his explanation of the text he is not
obliged to do violence to it, but may accept it altogether literally as
the author intended, even though the thing related be impossible;
whereas the interpreter, who follows the material or physical
explanation, is driven to ingenious subtleties which make him lose
sight of the original meaning of the authors, and substitute something
quite different which they neither could nor would have said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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