12 - New hypothesis on the evangelists as merely human historians (1778)

Summary

Contents

Firstly, the hypothesis will be expounded in plain and simple language. Next, the critical evidence in support of it, and all that led up to it, will be presented.

After which its possible advantages in resolving various difficulties and providing more precise explanations of disputed passages of Scripture will be demonstrated, and finally submitted to closer examination.

Preface

These are the first outlines of a treatise on which I have been working for many years. It was certainly not my intention to lay it before the world until it was completely finished. But circumstances have intervened which compel me to offer a foretaste of it.

For I have been rudely compelled to explain my position on certain matters which are very closely connected with the present hypothesis. If I have erred in my hypothesis, or in the matters referred to, or in both, it will nevertheless be found that I did not go astray without a map, and that I have used throughout one and the same map which is decried as more inaccurate than careful checks and measurements are likely to confirm. – To find the right path is often pure good luck; to endeavour to find the right path is alone commendable.

Besides, since this discussion concerns only a hypothesis and I neither dispute nor deny the superior worth of the evangelists, this superior worth is entirely compatible with my hypothesis.