Note 100 — Chapter II
Neil Buchanan translation
Footnote 100:
(return)
We may here call attention to an interesting remark of Goethe. Among his Apophthegms (no. 537) is the following: "Apocrypha: It would be important to collect what is historically known about these books, and to shew that these very Apocryphal writings with which the communities of the first centuries of our era were flooded, were the real cause why Christianity at no moment of political or Church history could stand forth in all her beauty and purity." A historian would not express himself in this way, but yet there lies at the root of this remark a true historical insight.