Lessing's Nathan the Wise and the Parable of the Rings

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a dramatist and critic and close friend of Moses Mendelssohn, made religious toleration the subject of a play. In the 1770s he published fragments by the late scholar Hermann Samuel Reimarus questioning the Bible's historical reliability, sparking a fierce controversy with the Lutheran pastor Johann Melchior Goeze. When the Duke of Brunswick forbade him from publishing further on religion in 1778, Lessing turned to the stage.

Nathan the Wise (1779), set in Jerusalem during the Crusades, brings together a wise Jewish merchant, the Muslim sultan Saladin and a Christian Templar knight. Asked which religion is true, Nathan tells the parable of three identical rings handed down by a father: no one can prove which is the original, so each heir should prove its worth through good conduct. The play was performed in Berlin in 1783, after Lessing's death.

It remains a classic statement of toleration, though some critics note it treats religions as interchangeable in ways many believers would reject.