As his starting‐point he takes the complete contrast between the Johannine and Synoptic traditions, and the inherent impossibility of the former is proved in detail. The Synoptic tradition goes back to Mark alone. His Gospel is, as was also held by Bruno Bauer, and afterwards by Wrede, a sufficient basis for the whole tradition. But this Gospel is not a purely historical source, it is also, and in a very much larger degree, poetic invention. Of the real history of Jesus but little is preserved in the Gospels. Many of the so‐called sayings of the Lord are certainly to be pronounced spurious, a few are probably to be recognised as genuine. But the theory of the “poetic invention” of the earliest Evangelist is not consistently carried out, because Brandt does not take as his criterion, as Wrede did later, a definite principle on which Mark is supposed to have constructed his Gospel, but decides each case separately. Consequently the most important feature of the work lies in the examination of detail. Jesus died and was believed to have risen again: this is the only absolutely certain information that we have regarding His “Life.” And accordingly this is the crucial instance for testing the worth of the Gospel tradition. It is only on the basis of an elaborate criticism of the accounts of the suffering and resurrection of Jesus that Brandt undertakes to give a sketch of the life of Jesus as it really was. What was, then, so far as appears from His life, Jesus’ attitude towards eschatology? It was, according to Brandt, a self‐contradictory attitude. “He believed in the near approach of the Kingdom of God, and yet, as though its time were still far distant, He undertakes the training of disciples. He was a teacher and yet is said to have held Himself to be the Messiah.” The duality lies not so much in the teaching itself; it is rather a cleavage between His conviction and consciousness on the one hand, and His public attitude on the other.