Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Further reading
- Note on texts and translations
- Introduction
- Philosophical and theological writings
- 1 The Christianity of reason (c. 1753)
- 2 On the reality of things outside God (1763)
- 3 Spinoza only put Leibniz on the track of [his theory of] pre-established harmony (1763)
- 4 On the origin of revealed religion (1763 or 1764)
- 5 Leibniz on eternal punishment (1773)
- 6 [Editorial commentary on the ‘Fragments’ of Reimarus, 1777]
- 7 On the proof of the spirit and of power (1777)
- 8 The Testament of St John (1777)
- 9 A rejoinder (1778)
- 10 A parable (1778)
- 11 Axioms (1778)
- 12 New hypothesis on the evangelists as merely human historians (1778)
- 13 Necessary answer to a very unnecessary question of Herr Hauptpastor Goeze of Hamburg (1778)
- 14 The religion of Christ (1780)
- 15 That more than five senses are possible for human beings (c. 1780)
- 16 Ernst and Falk: dialogues for Freemasons (1778–80)
- 17 The education of the human race (1777–80)
- 18 [Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Recollections of conversations with Lessing in July and August 1780 (1785)]
- Index
- Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy
8 - The Testament of St John (1777)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Further reading
- Note on texts and translations
- Introduction
- Philosophical and theological writings
- 1 The Christianity of reason (c. 1753)
- 2 On the reality of things outside God (1763)
- 3 Spinoza only put Leibniz on the track of [his theory of] pre-established harmony (1763)
- 4 On the origin of revealed religion (1763 or 1764)
- 5 Leibniz on eternal punishment (1773)
- 6 [Editorial commentary on the ‘Fragments’ of Reimarus, 1777]
- 7 On the proof of the spirit and of power (1777)
- 8 The Testament of St John (1777)
- 9 A rejoinder (1778)
- 10 A parable (1778)
- 11 Axioms (1778)
- 12 New hypothesis on the evangelists as merely human historians (1778)
- 13 Necessary answer to a very unnecessary question of Herr Hauptpastor Goeze of Hamburg (1778)
- 14 The religion of Christ (1780)
- 15 That more than five senses are possible for human beings (c. 1780)
- 16 Ernst and Falk: dialogues for Freemasons (1778–80)
- 17 The education of the human race (1777–80)
- 18 [Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Recollections of conversations with Lessing in July and August 1780 (1785)]
- Index
- Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy
Summary
… who lay on the breast of the Lord and drew the stream of doctrines from the purest source.
JeromeA dialogue
Brunswick, 1777
He and I
He. You were very quick off the mark with this pamphlet; but the pamphlet shows it.
I. Really?
He. You usually write more clearly.
I. For me, the greatest clarity was always the greatest beauty.
He. But I see that you can also get carried away. You begin to think you can refer constantly to things that not one in a hundred readers knows, and that you may yourself have discovered only yesterday or the day before –
I. For example?
He. Don't be so learned.
I. For example?
He. Your riddle at the end. – Your Testament of St John. I couldn't find it either in Grabius or Fabricius.
I. Does everything have to be a book, then?
He. Isn't this Testament of St John a book? – Well, what is it, then?
I. The last will of St John, the remarkable last words of St John, which he repeated again and again as he was dying. – They can also be called a testament, can't they?
He. Of course they can. – But I'm not so curious about them any more. – All the same, what were they exactly? – I'm not very well up on Abdias, or wherever else they come from.
I. They actually come from a less suspect author. – Jerome has preserved them for us in his commentary on Paul's Epistle to the Galatians.
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- Lessing: Philosophical and Theological Writings , pp. 89 - 94Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005