Fragments from Reimarus

CHAPTER II.

Second part of Fragment on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples.

SECTION I.

We will now, however, step nearer and more directly to the subject in question, and examine both systems according to the sayings and doings of Jesus himself, so far as they are handed down to us. It is evident that with regard to the old system, all depends upon whether the evangelists, in their history of Jesus, left—unintentionally and through sheer carelessness—a few remaining traces of the reasons which influenced them at first in attributing to their master the object of becoming a worldly deliverer of Israel. Whereas, with regard to the new system of a spiritual deliverer of mankind, all depends—as the apostles themselves distinctly own—upon whether Jesus really arose after his death and ascended into Heaven, which latter event the disciples declare that they themselves witnessed, asserting that they saw him, touched him, and spoke with him.* In this chapter we will consider the first, and in the following one, the second

• The apostles do not declare this themselves.—EDITOR.