Arthur Drews

“ They, however, worshipped their Christ and died for him because they considered him, not a man, but a god-man. Who is nearer to tradition, the one who makes an earthly man of Jesus, or the one who is content to say that he was from the start a mythical being, a symbol in a word, the God-man?” [3] It is precisely one of the objections raised by orthodox against liberal Christians that they are in opposition to the whole of Christian tradition! What early Christian writings are there, apart from the gospels, that show the existence of an historical Jesus? ”

“ The modern preacher, even the modern critic, at a distance of 1900 years, fills all the vessels of his discourse at this pure and inexhaustible source of the personality and life of Jesus. But the early apologists, who lived under the Antonines and before the settlement of the canon of the New Testament, know nothing of this source in their debates with kings and emperors, with philosophers and representatives of their own group. They do not draw a single drop of the water ”

“ Not a single event is mentioned, not a single proof, not a single explanation, or exhortation, or counsel not a single motive have they drawn from the incomparable life which is supposed to have fascinated the disciples and even the bloodthirsty Saul. ”

“ Lublinski rightly calls attention to the fact that “in the early centuries the blood of Christian martyrs was chiefly shed because the unyielding and angry primitive Christians regarded the cult of the emperors as the horror of horrors, since it meant adoring a man. ”