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historical Jesus.7 Schweitzer claimed that the German Deist scholar Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) was the founder of a scholarly tradition focused on investigation of the historical background of Jesus’ life as a means to dis- entangle the real message of his religious mission from the theological inter- pretation of later generations of Christians. “Before Reimarus”, Schweitzer claimed, “no one had attempted to form a historical conception of the life of Jesus.”8 Schweitzer’s historiographical assessment did much to establish a field of research that he thoroughly described in his text: starting with 18th-century Reimarus and navigating through the whole of the 19th century, Schweitzer analysed in details the debate that the research on the historical Jesus had kindled among scholars and in the wider public. Among the authors who had helped shape this field of research, he listed Reimarus and rationalists and then Friedrich Schleiermacher, David Strauss, Bruno Bauer, Ernest Renan, and a few other liberal authors who had examined the question of the eschatological Je- sus proposed by Johannes Weiss in 18929; he added a chapter on biblical schol- ars singled out for their knowledge of Jewish sources. While Schweitzer paid tribute to innumerable scholars, he dealt extensively with German writings, the context in which he believed the debate about the historical Jesus was carried out. Although his interpretation did not go unchallenged,10 it proved influential and established a whole genre that tackled the phases of the “quests” devoted to the historical Jesus.11 Although this article adopts a different method, I too will start with Reimarus, following Schweitzer, to briefly introduce the theme. The Fragments on which Samuel Reimarus’ reputation rested were published posthumously by Gottfried Ephraim Lessing between 1774 and 1777, with no mention of their author.12 Lessing selected seven fragments: (1) The toleration of the Deists; (2) The decrying of reason in the pulpit; (3) The impossibility of a Revelation, which all men should believe; (4) The passing of the Israelites through the Red Sea; (5) Showing that the books of the Old Testament were not written to reveal a religion; 7 The first German edition of this work was published in 1906 and then reprinted, augmented, in 1913. The first English translation appeared in 1910/11; I use here the reprint of 2005. There is also an English edition (2001) of the second German edition of 1913. Schweitzer 2005; on Reimarus see Mulsow 2011 and Groetsch 2015; Parente 1977. 8 Schweitzer 2005, 13. 9 Weiss 1892. 10 Similar historiographical essays appeared at the same time and subsequently as an attempt to chal- lenge this interpretation. See Labanca 1903; Salvatorelli 1929. 11 For recent criticism of this approach see Bermejo Rubio 2009, 211–253. 12 Theissen/Merz 1998. 72 | Cristiana Facchini www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1