The revolution theory from Reimarus to Brandon

Abstract

Milton, in his Paradise Regained , portrays his vision of Satan trying to lure Jesus to plot with the Parthians to deliver the ten tribes and to establish his realm ‘from Egypt to Euphrates and beyond’ and to set up a kingdom that ‘Rome or Caesar not need fear’ and, then, improving on this by producing the yet more tempting prospect that Jesus should expel the monster Tiberius from the throne, ‘a victor-people free from servile yoke’ and aim ‘at no less than all the world’. Just as according to the rules of the Greeks a satyr play follows the tragedy, so a burlesque of Milton's scene may perhaps be found in Schiller's Die Räuber , where Spiegelberg playfully suggests the idea of setting up as a descendant of Herod and calling forth all those who do not eat pork, pretending ‘das Königreich wieder aufs Tapet zu bringen’. In this way the idea of political messianism, both in conjunction with Jesus and apart from him, attracted the imagination of the poets. On the plane of research, however, it was due to the work done by H. S. Reimarus that the problem came into focus. His essay on Jesus's and his disciples' goal is, as has been maintained, the first landmark of research on the life of Jesus. It is startling that the question of a political involvement of Jesus already plays a role in this first analysis. Jesus was not just a teacher of virtues; rather he was or became the herald of the ‘kingdom’.

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