Karl Ludig Schmidt (1891-1956) was one of the most distinguished twentieth-century scholars to undertake the literary criticism of the gospels. His landmark study Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu: Literatarkritische Untersuchungen zur altesten Jesusuberlieferung (1918) and the essay translated here have long been recommended reading not only for students in biblical studies but also for divinity schools.



Byron R. McCane is an associate professor of religion and chair of the Department of Religion at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. His interest in the gospels includes archaeology of Galilee, and he is director of the Field School of the Sepphoris Acropolis Excavations. McCane lives in Spartanburg.



John Riches is professor of divinity and biblical criticism at the University of Glasgow. He was one of the translators of the Rudolf Bultmann’s Gospel of John: A Commentary and is the author of A Century of New Testament Study. His most recent book is Conflicting Mythologies: Identity Formation in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew.