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Letters between Bruno Bauer and Edgar Bauer

1839-11-30. Bruno to Edgar, from Bonn

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Author: Bruno Bauer  Year: 1843 

15 Apologetics has already made a little motion. Recently the list went round in which one enters the lectures for the next half-year. I had entered among others: Critique of the Fourth Gospel, and for the Latin catalogue: evang. Joannis critica ratione interpretabitur. Immediately I received a letter from the Herr Dean, in which he expressed the wish that I "alter the German expression of my lecture on the Gospel of John." "Everyone knows," he added, "that you understand by critique not textual criticism, but critique of the narrative and history; alone, since theology takes that by which and with which that narrative is to be criticised not from the synoptic Gospels alone, not from philosophy alone, nor from anywhere else alone (he does not suspect that I criticise the fourth Gospel from itself alone) but at the same time (?) from the 4 Gospels themselves with (!), it seems to me that the theological treatment of the subject is rather denied than announced if you promise a critique of the fourth Gospel. I therefore advise that you, as in the Latin announcement, put the critique into the adjectival or conditional." "How do you like this evasion into the 'adjectival'?" The gentlemen feel that something is going on, but they do not yet know what it actually is. Only so much is certain, that a proper, decisive substantive is very inconvenient to them.....
16 Bonn, 30th November 1839. Bruno
⬅ 1839-11-05. Edgar to Bruno, from Berlin 1839-12-29. Edgar to Bruno, from Berlin ➡