Albert Schweitzer

William Wrede and the Fame that Came Too Late

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In this blog post, I would like to show how my recent AGNTS 2026 translation of Hans Rollmann and Werner Zager’s wonderful edition of the “Unpublished Letters of William Wrede on the Problematization of the Messianic Self-Understanding of Jesus” can contribute to our understanding and transmission of the personal and scholarly legacy of William Wrede, in a way that also has the potential to enrich our own scholarship and personal lives. I will do so in three points: 1) Teaching students about the Messianic Secret, 2) Adding Wrede’s “messianic reconsideration” to the general knowledge of what is known about Wrede, 3) Gaining a deeper understanding of Wrede as a person and scholar.

1) Teaching Students about the Messianic Secret

Many undergraduate and graduate students will be introduced to Wrede’s classic work The Messianic Secret (Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien). While there are many excellent summaries and analyses of this work, I think that there is much to be said for having students begin with Wrede’s own attempt to present what he has attempted to do in his most famous book, namely by reading his “Self-Review of the Messianic Secret.” This can be found in Document 10 of his “Unpublished Letters” (AGNTS 2 [2026], pp. 32-33; ZNThG/JHMTh 8 [2001], 303-305) or as an separate article (AGNTS 1 [2025], pp. 1-2). For graduate students, it might also prove be attractive to assign some of Wrede’s other letters that discuss his book, such as Document 6, where Wrede works very hard to convince his publisher that his new book will be a hit (AGNTS 2 [2026], 20-24)!

2) Adding Wrede’s “Messianic Reconsideration” to the General Knowledge of What is Known about Wrede

While many students and scholars are aware that Wrede raised serious questions about whether Jesus regarded himself as the Messiah in his landmark work The Messianic Secret (GV 1901, 4th 1969; ET 1971), it is less widely known that Wrede subsequently reconsidered the viewpoint that he had expressed there in a letter to Adolf von Harnack (1905), where he wrote: “I am more inclined than earlier to believe that Jesus regarded himself as designated to be the Messiah.” / “Ich bin geneigter als früher zu glauben, daß Jesus selbst sich als zum Messias ausersehen betrachtet hat.” (AGNTS 1 [2025], 3-6, here 4; AGNTS 2 [2026], 46-47, here 47; ZNThG/JHMTh 8 [2001], 315-317, here 317). Against this background, I hope that my translation of Wrede’s letter to Harnack will help to make Wrede’s “messianic reconsideration” (my preferred designation) part of the general information that students and scholars learn and know about Wrede. At the same time, reaching beyond this general goal, I am also hopeful that many students and scholars will also be motivated to examine this striking statement of Wrede within the rhetorical context of his full letter to Harnack. Moreover, I hope that readers will also take note of Rollmann and Zager’s perceptive discussion of this statement, which includes the important observation that the viewpoint Wrede expresses in this letter does not represent something entirely new but rather a return to a position that he had advocated at an earlier point in time (see AGNTS 2 [2026], 7; ZNThG/JHMTh 8 [2001], 279-280).

3) Gaining a Deeper Understanding of Wrede as a Person and Scholar

For me personally, the process of reading and translating Rollmann and Zager’s excellent edition of Wrede’s unpublished letters gave me a much greater appreciation for William Wrede as a person and scholar.

For example, his correspondence with Martin Rade (See AGNTS 2 [2026], 10-24) showed how two old friends could continue to relate to each other with integrity and sensitivity, even after their thinking had moved in different directions in important respects.

One of his letters to Harnack, in turn, revealed that Wrede sometimes experienced periods of great depression followed by periods of heighted productivity (AGNTS 2, 27):

“Long explanations of why letters have not been written are usually just as little edifying for the recipient as for the writer. In this case, however, I must at least say a word. Your mailings encountered me in a time of great depression. When it then departed in the previous autumn, there came a time of restless work in which I pushed aside everything that did not imperiously demand to be completed, and this time is actually only just now coming to an end. This is no excuse. And the fact that I am a rather sluggish fellow is certainly not either. But I ask you to at least believe me that I wanted to thank you time and again and to grant me mitigating circumstances because of this.”

Finally, a heartfelt card from his wife Elisabeth to Albert Schweitzer suggested that Wrede’s fame and recognition had largely come too late for him to enjoy it, which is why it was all the more important to her that Schweitzer had honored him during his lifetime (AGNTS 2, 52):

“I am sending you the words that our friend K[arl] Müller spoke at the coffin of my husband. From this you will get to know him as a person as he really was. I very much wish that you would then appreciate my husband not only as a scholar but also come to hold him dear as a human being. For while with him both were one, the human being was nevertheless still infinitely more. – Your book and your letters brought my husband very much joy in this last year. He was truly not spoiled with recognition, and it is often now very bitter for me to see that it is now given to him in such full measure where he can no longer enjoy it. He has courageously gone his own straight way, but he felt the loneliness that was always connected with it. Thus, I am thankful with all my heart for the few who showed him what they thought of him during his lifetime.”

In addition to strengthening and deepening the very positive impression that I had gained of Wrede from reading his unpublished letters, this card reminded me of the importance of encouraging and appreciating one another in our work. Even if the vast majority of us are neither as gifted nor as accomplished as Wrede or Schweitzer, it is good that we pursue our work in the ways and forms that we are able, and it is also good that we have friends and colleagues who accompany us in the work and encourage us along the way.

For my other blog posts on William Wrede, see here.

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The Root of Wrede and Schweitzer’s Error: Hengel/Schwemer on the Messianic Claim of Jesus

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For my one hundredth blog post, I have selected two excerpts from the most recent volume in the BMSEC series, Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer‘s book Jesus and Judaism (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2019; cf. here and here). As usual, I will alternate between the English Translation and German Version for the benefit of readers who are using this blog to develop their German language skills:

Excerpt 1 (ET = p. xix; GV = p. v):

ET: A special emphasis is placed on the still largely misjudged problem of the messianic claim of Jesus, without which the accounts of the Gospels cannot be understood. The ever so popular “unmessianic Jesus” never existed. This is shown by the comparison of Jesus with John the Baptist, his proclamation in authority, his deeds of power, the passion story with its accusation that he is “king of the Jews,” and the emergence of the earliest Christology, which has its ultimate foundation in Jesus’ activity and way.

GV: Ein besonderer Schwerpunkt bildet das bis heute weithin verkannte Problem des messianischen Anspruchs Jesu, ohne den wir die Berichte der Evangelien nicht verstehen können. Den immer noch so beliebten “unmessianischen Jesus” hat es nie gegeben. Das zeigen der Vergleich Jesu mit Johannes dem Täufer, seine Verkündigung in “Vollmacht”, seine Krafttaten, die Leidensgeschichte mit ihrer Anklage, er sein “der König der Juden”, und die Entstehung der frühesten Christologie, die ihren letzten Grund in Jesu Wirken und Weg besitzt.

Excerpt 2 (ET = pp. 547-48; GV = pp. 517-18):

ET: The Theories of Wrede and Schweitzer are diametrically different, and yet their error has the same root. Both believed that they could solve the controversial question of the messianic consciousness of Jesus through one comprehensive theory drawn from the Gospel of Mark. One thought that he had justified it, the other that he had refuted it. In reality neither the one nor the other is possible.

GV: Die Theorien von Wrede und Schweitzer sind diametral verschieden, und doch hat ihr Irrtum dieselbe Wurzel. Beide glaubten, die umstrittene Frage nach dem Messiasbewußtsein Jesu durch eine umfassende, aus dem Markusevangelium geschöpfte Theorie. Der eine meinte, dasselbe begründet, der andere, es widerlegt zu haben. In Wirklichkeit ist weder das eine noch das andere möglich.

ET: The only possible approach to the historical reality lies in the interplay of numerous, rather different texts, from Mark and the sayings tradition, with the inclusion of four complexes: (a) the witnesses to the variety of Jewish messianic expectations, which have been significantly expanded by the Qumran texts; (b) the relationship of Jesus, presented above, to his “forerunner,” the Baptist; (c) the accusation against Jesus and its Jerusalem prehistory since his entrance into the city; and (d) the question of the emergence of the earliest Christology and its development in the post-Easter circle of disciples, in which Jesus’ word and deed were still directly vivid.

GV: Die einzig mögliche Annäherungsweise liegt im Zusammenspiel zahlreicher, recht verschiedener Texte, aus Markus und der Logientradition, unter Einbeziehung von vier Komplexen: (a) die durch die Qumrantexte wesentlich erweiterten Zeugnisse für die Vielfalt der jüdischen Messiaserwartung, (b) das oben dargestellte Verhältnis Jesu zu seinem “Vorläufer,” dem Täufer, (c) die Angklage gegen Jesus und ihre Jerusalemer Vorgeschichte seit dem Einzug und (d) die Frage nach der Entstehung der frühesten Christologie und ihrer Ausbildung im nachösterlichen Jüngerkreis, in dem Jesu Wort und Tat noch unmittelbar lebendig waren.

ET: All four points were neglected by Wrede, and this is all the more true for his successors, i.e., for Rudolf Bultmann and the majority of his students. We must give great credit to Wrede that he himself, in contrast, to his epigones, placed only a powerful question mark here and did not—as happened later in a historically less conscientious way—deny it with a categorical quod non but rather continued to reflect upon it, and, at the end, cautiously called his opinion into question again, as shown by his letter to Harnack.

GV: Alle vier Punkte hat Wrede vernachlässigt, und dasselbe gilt erst recht von seinen Nachfolgern, das heißt Rudolf Bultmann und der Mehrzahl seiner Schüler. Man muß es Wrede hoch anrechnen, daß er selbst, im Gegensatz zu seinen Epigonen, hier nur ein kräftiges Fragezeichen gesetzt, die Frage aber nicht – wie es dann später, historisch weniger gewissenhaft, geschah – mit einem kategorischen quod non abgelehnt hat, sondern weiter darüber nachgedacht hat, um am Ende, wie der Brief an Harnack zeigt, seine Meinung vorsichtig wieder in Frage zu stellen.

In addition to the enjoyable Zusammenarbeit with Anna Maria Schwemer, working on this project brought back good memories of working with Martin Hengel in the context of my first published translation and even better memories of my many friends and teachers in Tübingen (and Nürnberg), without whom I would never have become a translator or New Testament scholar at all. Against this background, I am especially glad that this volume is appearing only a year after Daniel P. Bailey’s excellent translation of my teacher Peter Stuhlmacher’s Biblical Theology of the New Testament. And I am also moved to remember my teacher and first academic employer Friedrich Avemarie, to whom I owe so much.

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German Mondays: Thank you for making it to the end of this blog post! I hope to be able to write at least one Monday blog post each month. Best, Wayne

 

 

 

 

Bibliographies of Neutestamentler/innen in the German Language Sphere

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For the most up-to-date version of BNGLS, see here.

As a new feature for this blog, I have spent the last two weeks compiling Bibliographies of Neutestamentler/innen in the German Language Sphere (BNGLS). This task has greatly expanded my own understanding of what is going on in the German-speaking world, and I hope it will also prove beneficial for others who are seeking to engage with the ‘German’ tradition. A distinctive feature of this new resource is that I have provided a separate bibliography of the English publications of each German-language-sphere scholar as well as a link to their full bibliographies, webpages, academia.edu pages etc. For the bibliographies themselves see the BNGLS tab of my blog or click here.