Fragments from Reimarus

of these systems. We have now to deal with a matter which the evangelists have taken great pains to conceal from us (as I have recently shown), and for this reason we shall require the most careful attention. But as the evangelists did not seek to conceal that they looked upon Jesus as a worldly deliverer of Israel up to the time of his death, and as the Jews were well aware that such had been their constant belief, it could not well have been possible for them to utterly destroy and banish all traces of their former system from their history of Jesus. These traces we will now endeavor to discover.

SECTION II.

If it were true that in commanding repentance and conversion to be preached, the object of Jesus was that men should believe in him as a spiritual savior; and if it were also true that his desire was to deliver man by his death and suffering alone, he nevertheless knew that the Jews did not expect a savior of this kind. He knew they had no idea of any other than a worldly deliverer of Israel, who was to release them from bondage and build up a glorious worldly kingdom for them. Why, then, does Jesus so plainly send messengers to announce in all the towns, schools, and houses of Judea that the kingdom of Heaven is near at hand? For this signified that the kingdom of the deliverer, or of the Messiah, was about to begin. He knew that if the