The comprehensive labours of Baur were followed up by Zeller's able work
on the "Acts of the Apostles," in which that book was shown to have been
partly founded upon documents written by Luke, or some other companion
of Paul, and expanded and modified by a much later writer with the
purpose of covering up the traces of the early schism between the
Pauline and the Petrine sections of the Church. Along with this,
Schwegler's work on the "Post-Apostolic Times" deserves mention as
clearing up many obscure points relating to the early development
of dogma. Finally, the "New Life of Jesus," by Strauss, adopting and
utilizing the principal discoveries of Baur and his followers, and
combining all into one grand historical picture, worthily completes the
task which the earlier work of the same author had inaugurated.
The reader will have noticed that, with the exception of Spinoza, every
one of the names above cited in connection with the literary analysis
and criticism of the New Testament is the name of a German. Until
within the last decade, Germany has indeed possessed almost an absolute
monopoly of the science of Biblical criticism; other countries having
remained not only unfamiliar with its methods, but even grossly ignorant
of its conspicuous results, save when some German treatise of more than
ordinary popularity has now and then been translated. But during
the past ten years France has entered the lists; and the writings of
Reville, Reuss, Nicolas, D'Eichthal, Scherer, and Colani testify to the
rapidity with which the German seed has fructified upon her soil. [18]
[18] But now, in annexing Alsace, Germany has "annexed" pretty
much the whole of this department of French scholarship,--a curious
incidental consequence of the late war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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