Arthur Drews

“ In this Zimmern appeals to Wundt and to Hermann Schneider, who says in his Kultur und Denken der Babylonier und Juden that we must retain the historicity of Jesus for reasons drawn from the history of the evolution of religion. But what Schneider leaves intact of the personality and story of Jesus is so meagre, and so devoid of solid foundation, that it cannot claim any historical significance. One can see for oneself. ”

“ But that this nucleus is an historical personality, and not Isaiah's “servant of God,” the “just” of Wisdom, and the sufferer of the twenty-second psalm, is merely to beg the question; and this is the less justified since all the really important features of the gospel life of Jesus owe their origin partly to the myth, partly to the expansion and application of certain passages in the prophets.
Theologians triumphantly point to the fact that even scholars who are not influenced by theology have not doubted the historical existence of Jesus. ”

“ When we look closely into the matter, however, we find that these scholars have not given any critical consideration to the question, that in this matter they have spoken as laymen, not as experts, and that they adhere to the historicity of the man Jesus, not on personal scientific grounds, but out of conventional feeling. ”