Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Hermann Samuel Reimarus

27 quotes

“We are justified in drawing an absolute distinction between the teaching of the Apostles in their writings and what Jesus Himself in His own lifetime proclaimed and taught.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fragments 1.3, as quoted (without citation) in Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, trans. W. Montgomery (1910), p. 16. Cf. Ralph S. Fraser's translation below.
“Each person has his religion and sect impressed upon him as a child, merely as a prejudice, through memorized formulas that are not understood and a drilled-in fear of damnation.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fragments (from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Werke), as quoted and translated by Christine Lehleiter in Fact and Fiction: Literary and Scientific Cultures in Germany and Britain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016…
“That which is absurd and impossible, that which in any other history would be called falsehood, deception, outrage and cruelty, cannot be made reasonable, righteous, and true by the added words: "Thus saith the Lord.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Jesus] ended his life with the words, "Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani?" "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"—a confession which can hardly be otherwise interpreted than that God had not helped him to carry out his intention and attain his object as he had hoped He would have done. It was then clearly not the intention or the object of Jesus to suffer and to die, but to build up a worldly kingdom, and to deliver the Israelites from bondage. It was in this that God had forsaken him, it was in this that his hopes had been frustrated.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The essential parts of Christianity are the articles of faith by the denial or ignorance of which we cease to be Christians. The principal of these are: the spiritual deliverance through the suffering and death of Christ; Resurrection from death in confirmation of the sufficient suffering of Christ; and, the return of Christ for reward and punishment, as the fruit and consequence of the deliverance. He who grapples with or disproves these first principles attacks the substance (or essence) of the object.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Other religions, indeed, are quite as full of miracles; the heathen boasts of many, so does the Turk; no religion is without them, and this it is which also makes the Christian miracles so doubtful, and provokes us to ask: "Did the events really happen? Were the attendant circumstances such as are stated? Did they come to pass naturally, or by craft, or by chance?"... those who would build Christianity upon miracles give it nothing firm, deep or substantial for a foundation.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The unerring signs of truth and falsehood are clear, distinct consistency and contradiction. This is also the case with revelation, in so far as that it must, in common with other truths, be free from contradiction. And just as little as miracles can prove that twice two are five or that a triangle has four angles, can a contradiction lying in the history and dogmas of Christianity be removed by any number of miracles.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In short, I may affirm that one cannot refer to a single quoted prophecy that is not false; or if you would have me speak more mildly, I will only say that they are all ambiguous and doubtful, and are not to be accepted from writers who trifle with things and words.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is clear, by their own account, and therefore requires no further proof, that the apostles and all the disciples were induced by ambitious motives, by hopes of future wealth and power, lands and worldly goods, to follow Jesus as their Messiah and king.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now as the former motives of the apostles, invariably and up to the time of the fabrication, had been aimed at worldly wealth and power, it follows with all moral certainty that the possession of worldly wealth and power was also the object of the apostles in the fabrication of their new doctrine.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jesus left us nothing in writing; everything that we know of his teaching and deeds is contained in the writings of his disciples. Especially where his teaching is concerned, not only the evangelists among his disciples, but the apostles as well undertook to present their master's teaching. However, I find great cause to separate completely what the apostles say in their own writings from that which Jesus himself actually said and taught, for the apostles were themselves teachers and consequently present their own views.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Jesus] was born a Jew and intended to remain one.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[It is] evident that Jesus in no way intended to abolish this Jewish religion and introduce a new one in its place. From this it follows inevitably that the apostles taught and acted exactly the reverse of what their master had intended, taught, and commanded...”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The apostles strayed completely from their master in their teaching and in their lives, abandoning his religion and his intention and introducing a completely new system.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My goodness! How the simple and ignorant allow themselves to be deceived by their leaders, who are themselves blind guides! And how easily great mysteries, even an entire religion, have been hammered out and for centuries have chained human reason and conscience from a few obscure words that people do not understand and whose genuine antiquity is extremely doubtful!”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I/24, p. 115; quoted in Michael J. Thate's Remembrance of Things Past? (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), p. 58; on the wording “in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19)
“[Jesus' Jewish contemporaries] are still thinking in terms of a temporal redemption and of an earthly kingdom that they had hoped from Jesus up until that time. Israel or the Jewish people was to be redeemed, but not the human race... Thus it was not a savior of the human race who would expiate the sins of the whole world through his Passion and death, but one who would redeem the people of Israel from temporal servitude.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I/30, pp. 127–128, as quoted in Jon Stewart's The Unity of Content and Form in Philosophical Writing (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), p. 69, and An Introduction to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford Un…
“It was entirely possible that Jesus' body was secretly stolen from the tomb at night and that it was buried in another place.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: II/14, p. 161; quoted in Man Kei Ho's A Critical Study on T. F. Torrance's Theology of Incarnation (Frankfurt: Peter. Lang, 2008), p. 101
“The first thing that we notice concerning the consistency of the four evangelists is that their stories diverge from each other in almost each and every point of the affair, and each one reads differently.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is that why he came from heaven, to remain incognito? Not to reveal himself as one from heaven?”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If only he had manifested himself one single time after his resurrection in the temple, before the people and the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, visibly, audibly, tangibly, then it could not fail that the entire Jewish nation would have believed in him; thus many thousands of souls plus millions of souls of their descendants would have been saved from destruction, who are now so hardened and stubborn.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Celsus, Contra Celsum 2.63. From Celsus, True Discourse, cited by Origen in Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick, Origen Contra Celsum, rev. edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 114; as quoted and repo…
“Certainly even if we had no other stumbling-block about Jesus' resurrection, this single one, that he did not allow himself to be seen publicly, would itself be enough to throw all its credibility aside, because it cannot agree in all eternity with Jesus' intention in coming into the world.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is foolish to sigh and complain about mankind's disbelief if one cannot furnish men with the persuasive evidence that the matter demands, based on a healthy reason.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus the existing history of Jesus enlightens us more and more upon the object of his conduct and teaching, which entirely correspond with the first idea entertained of him by his apostles, i.e., that he was a worldly deliverer. It enlightens us also upon the fact that they had good reason to believe in him as such so long as he lived. It also shows that the master, and how much more his disciples found themselves mistaken and deceived by the condemnation and the death, and that the new system of a suffering spiritual Saviour, which no one had ever known or thought of before, was invented after the death of Jesus, and invented only because the first hopes had failed.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By unessential things in reference to religion I mean first of all, the miracles, to which nevertheless such particular importance is attached by the Christian religion. No one can affirm that miracles of themselves establish a single article of faith. If we granted that articles of faith carried with them conviction and inherent credibility, how should we dare to require miracles in order to believe them? If we granted that the resurrection had been proved to be true by the most undoubted and unanimous witnesses, as in all fairness it ought to be, we could surely believe it without any assistant miracle. If we granted that Christ really did return in the clouds of Heaven, as according to promise he ought to have done, we should certainly want no miracles to prove it.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jesus himself could not perform miracles where the people had not faith beforehand, and when sensible men, the learned and rulers of those times, demanded of him a miracle which could be submitted to examination, he, instead of granting the request, began to upbraid them; so that no man of this stamp could believe in him. It was not until thirty to sixty years after the death of Jesus, that people began to write an account of the performance of these miracles, in a language which the Jews in Palestine did not understand. And this was at a time when the Jewish nation was in a state of the greatest disquietude and confusion, and when very few of those who had known Jesus were still alive. Nothing then was easier for them than to invent as many miracles as they pleased, without fear of their writings being readily understood or refuted. It had been impressed upon all converts from the beginning that it was both advantageous and soul-saving to believe, and to put the mind captive under the obedience of faith; and consequently there was as much credulity among them as there was "pia fraud" or "deception from good motives" among their teachers; and both of these, as is well known, prevailed in the highest degree in the early Christian church.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is always a sign that a doctrine or history possesses no depth of authenticity when one is obliged to resort to miracles in order to prove its truth. Miracles do not possess in or by themselves any principle containing a single article of faith or conclusive fact. It follows not because a prophet has performed miracles that therefore he has spoken the truth, because false prophets and magicians also performed signs and wonders, and false Christs performed miracles by which even the elect might be deceived. It follows not because Jesus restored sight to a blind man and healed a lame one, ergo God is threefold in person, ergo Jesus is a real God and man. It follows not because Jesus awakened Lazarus from death that therefore he also must have arisen from death.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a prophecy is to be called infallible, I fairly demand that it should state beforehand legibly, clearly, and distinctly that which no man could previously have known, and that the same should thereafter take place at the time appointed, but that it should not take place because it has been predicted. If, however, such a prophecy can only be verified through allegorical interpretations of words and interpretation of words and things; if it be only composed of dark and dubious words, and the expressions it contains are commonplace, vague, and uncertain; if the matter was thought probable, or was foreseen by human cunning; if it occurs because it was predicted; if the words used refer to some other matter and are only applied to the prophecy by a quibble; if it is only written down after the event has occurred; if a prophetic book or passage is given out to be older than it is; or lastly, if the thing predicted does not take place at all, then the prophecy is either doubtful or false.”
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) said by 1768 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source