I recount this in such detail here because it enables us to glimpse the limits of liberal exegesis, which in its day was viewed as the ne plus ultra of scientific rigor and reliable historiography and was regarded even by Catholic exegetes with envy and admiration. We have already seen in connection with the Sermon on the Mount that the type of interpretation that makes Jesus a moralist, a teacher of an enlightened and individualistic morality, for all of its significant historical insights, remains theologically impoverished, and does not even come close to the real figure of Jesus.
