The points of distinction between the Weissian and the new interpretation are as follows:—Weisse is sceptical as regards the detail; the new Marcan hypothesis ventures to base conclusions even upon incidental remarks in the text. According to Weisse there were not distinct periods of success and failure in the ministry of Jesus; the new Marcan hypothesis confidently affirms this distinction, and goes so far as to place the sojourn of Jesus in the parts beyond Galilee under the heading “Flights and Retirements.”(132) The earlier Marcan hypothesis expressly denies that outward circumstances influenced the resolve of Jesus to die; according to the later, it was the opposition of the people, and the impossibility of carrying out His mission on other lines which forced Him to enter on the path of suffering.(133) The Jesus of Weisse’s view has completed His development at the time of His appearance; the Jesus of the new interpretation of Mark continues to develop in the course of His public ministry. There is complete agreement, however, in the rejection of eschatology. For Holtzmann, Schenkel, and Weizsäcker, as for Weisse, Jesus desires “to found an inward kingdom of repentance.”(134) It was Israel’s duty, according to Schenkel, to believe in the presence of the Kingdom which Jesus proclaimed. John the Baptist was unable to believe in it, and it was for this reason that Jesus censured him—for it is in this sense that Schenkel understands the saying about the greatest among those born of women who is nevertheless the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. “So near the light and yet shutting his eyes to its beams—is there not some blame here, an undeniable lack of spiritual and moral receptivity?” Jesus makes Messianic claims only in a spiritual sense. He does not grasp at super‐human glory; it is His purpose to bear the sin of the whole people, and He undergoes baptism “as a humble member of the national community.” His whole teaching consists, when once He Himself has attained to clear consciousness of His vocation, in a constant struggle to root out from the hearts of His disciples their theocratic hopes and to effect a transformation of their traditional Messianic ideas. When, on Simon’s hailing Him as the Messiah, He declares that flesh and blood has not revealed it to him, He means, according to Schenkel, “that Simon has at this moment overcome the false Messianic ideas, and has recognised in Him the ethical and spiritual deliverer of Israel.”