Arbitrary as these suggestions are, there is nevertheless something impressive in the attempt to explain the remarkable inconsistencies which are found within the Gospel tradition by considerations relating to its origin and development. Despite all his far‐fetched ideas, Noack really stands higher than some of his contemporaries who showed more prudence in their theological enterprises, and about that time were earning the applause of the faculty, and quieting the minds of the laity, by performing once more the old conjuring trick—assisted by some new feats of legerdemain—of harmonising John with the Synoptists in such a way as to produce a Life of Jesus which could be turned to the service of ecclesiastical theology. The outline of the public Life of Jesus, as reconstructed by Noack, is as follows. It lasted from early in the year 35 to the 14th Nisan of the year 37, and began in the moment when Jesus revealed His consciousness of what He was. We do not know how long previously He had cherished it in secret. It is certain that the Baptist helped to bring about this revelation. This is the only part which he plays in the Gospel of John. He was neither a preacher of repentance, nor an Elias, nor the forerunner of Jesus, nor a mere signpost pointing to the Messiah, such as the secondary tradition makes him out to be. Similarly everything that is Messianic in the consciousness of Jesus is secondary. The lines of His thought were guided by the Greek ideas about sons of God, for the soil of northern Galilee was saturated with these ideas. Other sources which contributed something were the personification of the Divine Wisdom in the “Wisdom Literature” and some of Philo’s doctrines. Jesus became the son of God in an ecstatic trance! Had not Philo recognised ecstasy as the last and highest means of rising to union with the Divine? Jesus’ temperament, according to Noack, was pre‐disposed to ecstasy, since He was born out of wedlock. One who had this burden upon His spirit may well have early taken refuge in His own thoughts, above the clouds, in the presence of the God of His fathers. Assailed in a thousand ways by the cruelty of the world, it would seem to Him as though His Heavenly Father, though unseen, was stretching out to Him the arms of consolation. Imagination, which ever mercifully lightens for men the yoke of misery, charmed the fatherless child out of His earthly sufferings and put into His hand a coloured glass through which He saw the world and life in a false light. Ecstatic enthusiasm had carried Him up to the dizzy height of spiritual union with the Father in Heaven. A hundred times He was cast down out of His dreams into the hard world of reality, to experience once more His earthly distresses, but ever anew He won His way by fasting, vigil, and prayer to the starry heaven of ecstasy.