It would, indeed, have done no harm if he had confined himself to stating more exactly here and there the extent of the mythical element, had increased the number of possible cures, had inclined a little less to the negative side in examining the claims of reported facts to rank as historical, and had been a little more circumspect in pointing out the factors which produced the myths; the serious thing was that he now began to hesitate in his denial of the historical character of the Fourth Gospel—the very foundation of his critical view. A renewed study of it, aided by De Wette’s commentary and Neander’s Life of Jesus, had made him “doubtful about his doubts regarding the genuineness and credibility of this Gospel.” “Not that I am convinced of its genuineness,” he admits, “but I am no longer convinced that it is not genuine.” He feels bound, therefore, to state whatever makes in its favour, and to leave open a number of possibilities which formerly he had not recognised. The adhesion of the first disciples may, he now thinks, have happened essentially in the form in which it is reported in the Fourth Gospel; in transferring the cleansing of the Temple to the first period of Jesus’ ministry, John may be right as against the Synoptic tradition “which has no decisive evidence in its favour”; in regard to the question whether Jesus had been only once, or several times, in Jerusalem, his opinion now is that “on this point the superior circumstantiality of the Fourth Gospel cannot be contested.” As regards the prominence allowed to the eschatology also all is toned down and softened. Everywhere feeble compromises! But what led Strauss to place his foot upon this shelving path was the essentially just perception that the Synoptists gave him no clearly ordered plan to set against that of the Fourth Gospel; consequently he felt obliged to make some concessions to its strength in this respect. Yet he recognised almost immediately that the result was a mere patchwork. Even in the summer of 1839 he complained to Hase in conversation that he had been deafened by the clamour of his opponents, and had conceded too much to them.(79) In the fourth edition he retracted all his concessions. “The Babel of voices of opponents, critics, and supporters,” he says in his preface, “to which I had felt it my duty to listen, had confused me in regard to the idea of my work; in my diligent comparison of various views I had lost sight of the thing itself. In this way I was led to make alterations which, when I came to consider the matter calmly, surprised myself; and in making which it was obvious that I had done myself an injustice. In all these passages the earlier text has been restored, and my work has therefore consisted, it might be said, in removing from my good sword the notches which had not so much been hewn in it by the enemy as ground into it by myself.”