Fragments from Reimarus

people believed his messengers, they would look for a worldly king and would attach themselves to him with the conviction that he was this king. Because, unless they received further and better instruction, they could have no other conception of the kingdom of Heaven, the kingdom of God, the joyful message, or faith in the same, than that which they had learned according to the popular meaning of the words and the prevailing impression of them. Ought not Jesus, then, before all things, to have endeavored, through his apostles as heavenly messengers, to help the ignorant out of their coarse illusion, and thus to have directed their faith, repentance, and conversion towards the right object? For if the people only repented and were converted for the sake of enjoying happiness and glory in the kingdom of the Messiah—according to their delusion—their repentance, conversion, and faith were not of the right sort. But Jesus did not convey to them any better idea of himself. We know this—first, because it is nowhere asserted that he did so; and secondly, because he chose for his messengers men who were themselves under the common impression, which impression had not been removed for a better one.

Jesus then must have been well aware that by such a plain announcement of the kingdom of Heaven, he would only awaken the Jews to the hope of a worldly Messiah; consequently, this must have been his object in so awakening them. As