Arthur Drews

“ The “Strong Personality”. When we regard all that we have seen as to the mythic, Old Testament, and Talmudic character of the actions and words of Jesus, it is difficult to maintain with good conscience the existence of an historical Jesus. Of which of his actions or words could it be said with confidence that they really go back to an historical Jesus? The situation is not that certain things in the gospels are found to be fictitious, and that this by no means robs all the rest of historical value. ”

“ The importance and power of a movement, therefore, are by no means proportionate to the importance of the personalities in whom it takes shape, and who give the first impulse to its becoming an open force. ”

“ Cicero’s brother also said: ‘It is uprooting the foundations of history to deny the truth of the Delphic oracles.’ I would ask Christians if they think they destroy the foundations of history when they reject these oracles, and whether the Roman orator would have thought that he was destroying the foundations of history if he had rejected their oracles, supposing that he had known them. Each man fights for his own chimera, not for history. ”

“ Great personalities are by no means always the initiators of a new spiritual movement. It is usually prepared in numbers of individuals, and at length the inner need reaches its height and a few clear-minded and energetic personalities take the lead, though these need not at all be the “greatest” of their age. When the harvest is ripe, the seed falls, and no superhuman force is needed. ”

“ A great error is propagated more easily than a great truth, because it is easier to believe than to reflect, and men prefer the wonders of romance to the plain facts of history. If we were to adopt that rule of criticism, we might urge against Christians that the faith of any people in the miracles and oracles of its religion proved its truth ”

“ The more advanced representatives of science have long since given up the historicity of Moses, and even those who still adhere to it are compelled to restrict his significance to such an extent that it is quite absurd to call him the “founder” of the Jewish religion. ”

“ So mighty a movement as the Renascence, which entirely changed the intellectual condition of Europe in less than two centuries and ended the Middle Ages, did not start from a single personality. The French Revolution was essentially the work of the masses, from which a few gifted, but by no means “powerful,” personalities—Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, etc.—stood out ”