came in sight. He recognises that all attempts to harmonise the Synoptists with John are unavailing; a conclusion which he had avowed earlier in his "Letters referring to the Study of Theology."[1] He grasps this incompatibility, it is true, rather by the aid of poetic, than of critical insight. "Since they cannot be united," he writes in his "Life of Jesus according to John," "they must be left stand- ing independently, each evangelist with his own special merit. Man, Ox, Lion, and Eagle, they advance together, supporting the throne of glory, but they refuse to coalesce into a single form, to unite into a Diatessaron." But to him belongs the honour of being the first and the only scholar, prior to Strauss, to recognise that the life of Jesus can be construed either according to the Synoptists, or according to John, but that a Life of Jesus based on the four Gospels is a monstrosity. In view of this intuitive historical grasp, it is not surprising that the commentaries of the theologians were an abomination to him.
The fourth Gospel is, in his view, not a primitive historical source, but a protest against the narrowness of the "Palestinian Gospels." It gives free play, as the circumstances of the time demanded, to Greek ideas. "There was need, in addition to those earlier, purely historical Gospels, of a Gospel at once theological and historical, like that of John," in which Jesus should be presented, not as the Jewish Messiah, "but as the Saviour of the World."
The additions and omissions of this Gospel are alike skilfully planned. It retains only those miracles which are symbols of a continuous permanent miracle, through which the Saviour of the World works constantly, unintermittently, among men. The Johannine miracles are not there for their own sakes. The cures of demoniacs are not even represented among them. These had no interest for the Graeco-Roman world, and the Evangelist was unwilling "that this Palestinian superstition should become a permanent feature of Christianity, to be a reproach of scoffers or a belief of the foolish." His recording of the raising of Lazarus is, in spite of the silence of the Synoptists, easily explicable. The latter could not yet tell the story "without exposing a family which was still living near Jerusalem to the fury of that hatred which had sworn with an oath to put Lazarus to death." John, however, could recount it without scruple, "for by this time Jerusalem was probably in ruins, and the hospitable family of Bethany were perhaps already with their Friend in the other world." This most naive of explanations is reproduced in a whole series of Lives of Jesus.
In dealing with the Synoptists, Herder grasps the problem with
- ↑ Briefe das Stadium der Theologie betreffend, 1st ed., 1780-1781; 2nd ed., 178S- 1786; Verke, ed. Suphan, vol. x.
