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 this process it becomes clearly apparent that the connexion of events can only be carried through at the decisive passages by violent treatment, or even by rejection of the Marcan text in the interests of the Marcan hypothesis.

These merits do not belong in the same measure to the other modern Lives of Jesus, which follow more or less the same lines. They are short sketches, in some cases based on lectures, and their brevity makes them perhaps more lively and convincing than Holtzmann's work; but they take for granted just what he felt it necessary to prove. P. W. Schmidt's Geschichte Jesu (1899), which as a work of literary art has few rivals among theological works of recent years, confines itself to pure narrative. The volume of prolegomena which appeared in 1904, and is intended to exhibit the foundations of the narrative, treats of the sources, of the Kingdom of God, of the Son of Man, and of the Law. It makes the most of the weakening of the eschatological standpoint which is manifested in the second edition of Johannes Weiss's "Preaching of Jesus," but it does not give sufficient prominence to the difficulties of reconstructing the public ministry of Jesus.

Neither Otto Schmiedel's "The Principal Problems of the Study of the Life of Jesus," nor von Soden's "Vacation Lectures" on "The Principal Questions in the Life of Jesus" fulfils the promise of its title. They both aim rather at solving new problems proposed by themselves than at restating the old ones and adding new. They hope to meet the views of Jonnes Weiss by strongly emphasising the eschatology, and think they can escape the critical scepticism of writers like Volkmar and Brandt by assuming an "Ur-Markus." Their view is, therefore, that with a few modifications dictated by the eschatological and sceptical school, the traditional conception of the Life of Jesus is still tenable, whereas it is just the a priori presuppositions of this conception, hitherto held to be self-evident, which constitute the main problems.