Note 3 — Chapter XX · THE GROUND CLEARED FOR THE MYTH THEORY
Reading edition
“In the name of the Prophet, figs!” Dr. Schweitzer has, he believes, saved the character of “the mob of Jerusalem” at last; and by what a device! By assuming that to claim to be the Messiah was to blaspheme, which it certainly was not;3 and by assuming that the mob who had (on Schweitzer’s view) acclaimed an Elias would be struck dumb with horror on being told that Elias claimed to be the Messiah. The secret of this psychosis is in Dr. Schweitzer’s sole possession, as is the explanation of the total absence of his statement from all the literature produced by the generation which, on his assumption, knew all about the case. And this is what is left after a survey of the German exegesis “from Reimarus to Wrede.”