608 NEW TESTAMENT 



necessity from the recognition of the problem of the New Testament 

 as essentially historical. 



The division of the field into that of New Testament theology 

 and New Testament history, the latter dealing specially with the 

 life of Christ and the life of Paul, while doubtless possessing some 

 practical advantages, is open to serious objection, if it be considered 

 as anything more than a division of convenience, and even thus can 

 scarcely escape separating things that are intimately related. That 

 is really the more scientific method of treatment which is adopted in 

 such works as Weizsacker's Das apostolische Zeitalter and Pfleiderer's 

 Urchristentum, but which has been less commonly and less thoroughly 

 applied in the case of the life and teaching of Jesus. For, in fact, 

 neither Jesus nor Paul nor any of the founders of Christianity were 

 philosophers of the closet, who, dwelling in isolation, wrestled in 

 solitude with the problems of ultimate being, but men of action whose 

 doing and thinking were inseparably knit together; and neither can 

 the teaching of Jesus be adequately understood in separation from the 

 life, nor the doctrine of Paul in isolation from his whole experience. 



Nor can the division of the field be justified from the point of view 

 of the end sought. While New Testament thought, whether that of 

 Jesus, Paul, Peter, John, or Jude, was viewed as normative, New 

 Testament theology was naturally enough distinct from New Testa- 

 ment biography and history, and scarcely distinguishable in theory 

 from Christian theology. The adoption of the historic point of view 

 has compelled the recognition of the necessity for distinguishing the 

 teachings of the various New Testament teachers and writers; it 

 must in the end lead to the recognition of the essential unity of the 

 historical problem, and bring all phases of it under the one category 

 of the history of the rise of Christianity. If, as is doubtless the case, 

 divisions of the field must be recognized for the sake of practical 

 convenience, the lines of division will be drawn, not between deeds 

 and words, but between the lives of individuals or between successive 

 periods. The chief line of division will then necessarily fall between 

 the life of Jesus and the apostolic age. 



The life of Jesus. If we assume that New Testament introduc- 

 tion has already determined for us the sources of the life of Jesus, 

 and that interpretation has given to us in detail the meaning of 

 those sources, the problem of the life of Jesus is to reproduce as 

 fully as those sources make possible the historic person, Jesus, in a 

 true historic setting and with a true representation of his character, 

 deeds, and teachings. Of the many specific problems which are 

 involved in the one, it must suffice to name a very few of the most 

 important questions which confront the New Testament historian 

 to-day. 



And first of all let there be named one which enters as an element 



