Lessing as Editor of Reimarus

Abstract

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s publication of Fragments of an Unknown Wolfenbüttel Author in the 1770s unleashed a storm of debate and controversy, which ended with censor stepping in and forbidding further contributions. The Fragmentenstreit, the ‘Battle of the Fragments’, as it came to be known, was a critical point in the development of German theology. For Schweitzer, as is made clear by the full title of his survey of historical Jesus studies ( The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede), the publication of the fragment ‘On the purpose of Jesus and his disciples’ marks the true beginnings of an historical engagement with the Gospel stories about Jesus. For Lessing, Reimarus’ text certainly raised questions about the interpretative methods and categories which are most properly applied to the Gospels; it also raised issues about the relationship between reason and revelation, the place of the Bible, the canon, in the development of Christian faith, and indeed of the very nature of faith itself. We will look briefly at some of these questions. There is, too, a much wider and more demanding question: what influence did this debate have on the subsequent history of German theology which, in the 150 years which followed, saw the rise of both liberal and more confessionally oriented theologies, the prominence of figures like Schleiermacher, Hegel, Ritschl, Barth, and Bultmann? We can offer no more than a few pointers to the beginnings of such developments.