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 Keim. Nothing deeper or more beautiful has since been written about the development of Jesus.

Less critical in character is Hase's "History of Jesus," which superseded in 1876 the various editions of the Handbook on the Life of Jesus which had first appeared in 1829.

The question of the use of John's Gospel side by side with the Synoptics he leaves in suspense, and speaks his last word on the subject in the form of a parable. "If I may be allowed to use an avowedly parabolic form of speech, the relation of Jesus to the two streams of Gospel tradition may be illustrated as follows. Once there appeared upon earth a heavenly Being. According to His first three biographers He goes about more or less incognito, in the long garment of a Rabbi, a forceful popular figure, somewhat Judaic in speech, only occasionally, almost unmarked by His biographers, pointing with a smile beyond this brief interlude to His home. In the description left by His favourite disciple, He has thrown off the talar of the Rabbi, and stands before us in His native character, but in bitter and angry strife with those who took offence at His magnificent simplicity, and then later-it must be confessed, more attractively-in deep emotion at parting with those whom, during His pilgrimage on earth, He had made His friends, though they did not rightly understand His strange, unearthly speech."

This is Hase's way, always to avoid a final decision. The fifty years of critical study of the subject which he had witnessed and taken part in had made him circumspect, sometimes almost sceptical. But his notes of interrogation do not represent a covert supernaturahsni like those in the Life of Jesus of 1829. Hase had been penetrated by the influence of Strauss and had adopted from him the belief that the true life of Jesus lies beyond the reach of criticism. "It is not my business," he says to his students in an introductory lecture, "to recoil in horror from this or that thought, or to express it with embarrassment as being dangerous; I would not forbid even the enthusiasm of doubt and detruction which makes Strauss so strong and Renan so seductive."

It is left uncertain whether Jesus' consciousness of His Messiahship reaches back to the days of His childhood, or whether it arose in the ethical development of His ripening manhood. The concealment of His Messianic claims is ascribed,