David Friedrich Strauss (or Strauß) (January 27, 1808, Ludwigsburg

Ludwigsburg

Ludwigsburg is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, about north of Stuttgart city centre, near the river Neckar. It is the largest and primary city of the Ludwigsburg urban district with about 87,000 inhabitants...

 – February 8, 1874, Ludwigsburg) was a German theologian

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

 and writer. He scandalized Christian

Christendom

Christendom, or the Christian world, has several meanings. In a cultural sense it refers to the worldwide community of Christians, adherents of Christianity...

 Europe with his portrayal of the "historical Jesus

Historical Jesus

The term historical Jesus refers to scholarly reconstructions of the 1st-century figure Jesus of Nazareth. These reconstructions are based upon historical methods including critical analysis of gospel texts as the primary source for his biography, along with consideration of the historical and...

," whose divine nature he denied. His work was connected to the Tübingen School, which revolutionized study of the New Testament, early Christianity, and ancient religions. Strauss was a pioneer in the historical investigation of Jesus

Quest for the Historical Jesus

The quest for the historical Jesus is the attempt to use historical rather than religious methods to construct a verifiable biography of Jesus. As originally defined by Albert Schweitzer, the quest began in the 18th century with Hermann Samuel Reimarus, up to William Wrede in the 19th century...

.

Biography

Strauss was born at Ludwigsburg

Ludwigsburg

Ludwigsburg is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, about north of Stuttgart city centre, near the river Neckar. It is the largest and primary city of the Ludwigsburg urban district with about 87,000 inhabitants...

, near Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

. At twelve he was sent to the Protestant (evangelische Gr.)seminary at Blaubeuren, near Ulm

Ulm

Ulm is a city in the federal German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at 120,000 , forms an urban district of its own and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau district. Ulm, founded around 850, is rich in history and...

, to be prepared for the study of theology. Amongst the principal masters in the school were Professors Friedrich Heinrich Kern (1790–1842) and Ferdinand Christian Baur

Ferdinand Christian Baur

Ferdinand Christian Baur was a German theologian and leader of the Tübingen school of theology...

 (1792–1860), who taught their pupils a deep love of the ancient classics and the principles of textual criticism, which could be applied to texts in the sacred tradition as well as to classical ones. In 1825 Strauss entered the University of Tübingen. The professors of philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 there failed to interest him, but he was strongly attracted by the writings of Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was a German theologian and philosopher known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional Protestant orthodoxy. He also became influential in the evolution of Higher Criticism, and his work forms part of the foundation of...

 (1768–1834). In 1830 he became assistant to a country clergyman, and nine months later accepted the post of professor in the Evangelical Seminaries of Maulbronn and Blaubeuren

Evangelical Seminaries of Maulbronn and Blaubeuren

The Protestant Seminaries of Maulbronn and Blaubeuren in Baden-Württemberg, Germany are two Gymnasiums and Protestant boarding schools in the Württemberg tradition....

, where he would teach Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, history and Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

.

In October 1831 Strauss resigned his office in order to study under Schleiermacher and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...

 (1770–1831) in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. Hegel died just as he arrived, and, though Strauss regularly attended Schleiermacher's lectures, it was only those on the life of Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 that exercised a powerful influence upon him. Strauss tried to find kindred spirits amongst the followers of Hegel, but was not successful. While under the influence of Hegel's distinction between Vorstellung and Begriff, Strauss had already conceived the ideas found in his two principal theological works: Das Leben Jesu (Life of Jesus) and Christliche Dogmatik (Christian Dogma). Hegelians generally would not accept his conclusions. In 1832 Strauss returned to Tübingen, lecturing on logic

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

, Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

, the history of philosophy and ethics

Ethics

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

 with great success. However, in the autumn of 1833 he resigned this position in order to devote all his time to the completion of his Das Leben Jesu, published when he was 27 years old. The full original title of this work is Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet (Tübingen: 1835-1836), and it was translated from the fourth German edition into English by George Eliot (Marian Evans) (1819–1880) and published under the title The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (3 vols., London, 1846).

Since the Hegelians in general rejected his Life of Jesus, Strauss defended his work in a booklet titled Streitschriften zur Verteidigung meiner Schrift uber das Leben Jesu und zur Charakteristik der gegenwartigen Theologie (Tübingen: E. F. Osiander, 1837), which was finally translated into English by Marilyn Chapin Massey and published under the title In Defense of My 'Life of Jesus' Against the Hegelians (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1983). The famous scholar Bruno Bauer

Bruno Bauer

Bruno Bauer was a German philosopher and historian. As a student of GWF Hegel, Bauer was a radical Rationalist in philosophy, politics and Biblical criticism...

 (1809–1882) led the attack of the Hegelians on Strauss, and Bauer continued to attack Strauss in academic journals for years. When young Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ( 1844–1900 ) began to write criticisms of Strauss, Bauer gave Nietzsche every support he could afford. In the third edition (1839) of Das Leben Jesu, and in Zwei friedliche Blatter (Two Peaceful Letters), Strauss made important concessions to his critics, some of which he withdrew, however, in the fourth edition (1840) of Das Leben Jesu.

Das Leben Jesu

Strauss's Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet (The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined) was a sensation. Carl August von Eschenmayer wrote a review in 1835 called "The Iscariotism of our days" (a review which Strauss characterised as 'the offspring of the legitimate marriage between theological ignorance and religious intolerance, blessed by a sleep-walking philosophy'). The Earl of Shaftesbury

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury KG , styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was an English politician and philanthropist, one of the best-known of the Victorian era and one of the main proponents of Christian Zionism.-Youth:He was born in London and known informally as Lord Ashley...

 called the 1846 translation by Marian Evans

George Eliot

Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...

 "the most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell." When Strauss was elected to a chair of theology in the University of Zürich

University of Zurich

The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 25,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new faculty of philosophy....

, the appointment provoked such a storm of controversy that the authorities decided to pension him before he began his duties.

What made Das Leben Jesu so controversial was Strauss's characterization of the miraculous elements in the gospels as being "mythical" in character. Strauss's Das Leben Jesu closed a period in which scholars wrestled with the miraculous nature of the New Testament in the rational views of the Enlightenment. One group consisted of "rationalists", who found logical, rational explanations for the apparently miraculous occurrences; the other group, the "supernaturalists", defended not only the historical accuracy of the biblical accounts, but also the element of direct divine intervention. Strauss dispels the actuality of the stories as "happenings" and reads them solely on a mythic level. Moving from miracle to miracle, he understood all as the product of the early church's use of Jewish ideas about what the Messiah would be like, in order to express the conviction that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. With time the book created a new epoch in the textual and historical treatment of the rise of Christianity.

In 1840 and the following year Strauss published his On Christian Doctrine (Christliche Glaubenslehre) in two volumes. The main principle of this new work was that the history of Christian doctrines has basically been the history of their disintegration.

Interlude (1841–1860)

With the publication of his Christliche Glaubenslehre, Strauss took leave of theology for over twenty years. In August 1841, he married Agnese Schebest (1813–1869), a cultivated and beautiful mezzo soprano of high repute as an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 singer. Five years afterwards, after two children had been born, they agreed to separate.

Strauss resumed his literary activity by the 1847 publication in Mannheim

Mannheim

Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....

 of Der Romantiker auf dem Thron der Cäsaren ("A Romantic on the Throne of the Caesars"), in which he drew a satirical parallel between Julian the Apostate

Julian the Apostate

Julian "the Apostate" , commonly known as Julian, or also Julian the Philosopher, was Roman Emperor from 361 to 363 and a noted philosopher and Greek writer....

 and Frederick William IV of Prussia

Frederick William IV of Prussia

|align=right|Upon his accession, he toned down the reactionary policies enacted by his father, easing press censorship and promising to enact a constitution at some point, but he refused to enact a popular legislative assembly, preferring to work with the aristocracy through "united committees" of...

. The ancient Roman Emperor who tried to reverse the advance of Christianity was presented as "an unworldly dreamer, a man who turned nostalgia for the ancients into a way of life and whose eyes were closed to the pressing needs of the present" - a thinly veiled reference to the contemporary Prussian King's well-known romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 dreams of restoring the supposed glories of feudal Medieval society.

In 1848 he was nominated a member of the Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 Parliament, but was defeated by Christoph Hoffmann

Christoph Hoffmann

Gottlob Christoph Jonathan Hoffmann was born in Leonberg in the Kingdom of Württemberg, Germany. His parents were Beate Baumann and Gottieb Wilhelm Hoffmann , chairman of the Unitas Fratrum congregation in Korntal.Christoph Hoffmann had a Pietist-Christian background and enjoyed a Christian...

 (1815–1885). He was elected for the Württemberg

Württemberg

Württemberg , formerly known as Wirtemberg or Wurtemberg, is an area and a former state in southwestern Germany, including parts of the regions Swabia and Franconia....

 chamber, but his actions were so conservative that his constituents requested him to resign his seat. He forgot his political disappointments in the production of a series of biographical works, which secured him a permanent place in German literature (Schubarts Leben, 2 vols., 1849; Christian Morklin, 1851; Nikodemus Frischlin, 1855; Ulrich von Hutten, 3 vols., 1858–1860, 6th ed. 1895)

Later works

In 1862, with a biography of H.S. Reimarus

Hermann Samuel Reimarus

Hermann Samuel Reimarus , was a German philosopher and writer of the Enlightenment who is remembered for his Deism, the doctrine that human reason can arrive at a knowledge of God and ethics from a study of nature and our own internal reality, thus eliminating the need for religions based on...

, he returned to theology, and two years afterward (1864) published his Life of Jesus for the German People (Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk) (13th ed., 1904). It failed to produce an effect comparable with that of the first Life, but the replies to it were many, and Strauss answered them in his pamphlet Die Halben und die Ganzen (1865), directed specially against Daniel Schenkel

Daniel Schenkel

Daniel Schenkel , Swiss Protestant theologian, was born at Dagerlen in the canton of Zürich....

 ( 1813–1885 ) and Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

Ernst Wilhelm Theodor Herrmann Hengstenberg , was a German Lutheran churchman and neo-Lutheran theologian.He was born at Frondenberg, a Westphalian village, and was educated by his father, who was a minister of the Reformed Church and head of the Frondenberg convent of canonesses...

 ( 1802–1869 ).

His The Christ of Belief and the Jesus of History (Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der Geschichte) (1865) is a severe criticism of Schleiermacher's lectures on the life of Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

, which were then first published. From 1865 to 1872 Strauss lived in Darmstadt

Darmstadt

Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...

, and in 1870 he published his lectures on Voltaire

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

. His last work, Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872; English translation by M Blind, 1873), produced almost as great a sensation as his Life of Jesus, and not least amongst Strauss's own friends, who wondered at his one-sided view of Christianity and his professed abandonment of spiritual philosophy for the materialism

Materialism

In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

 of modern science. To the fourth edition of the book he added an Afterword as Foreword (Nachwort als Vorwort) (1873). The same year symptoms of a fatal malady appeared, and death followed on the 8th of February 1874.

Critique

F. C. Baur once complained that Strauss's critique of the history in the gospels was not based on a thorough examination of the manuscript traditions of the documents themselves.

As Albert Schweitzer

Albert Schweitzer

Albert Schweitzer OM was a German theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, at that time part of the German Empire...

 wrote in The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906; ET 1910), Strauss's arguments "filled in the death-certificates of a whole series of explanations which, at first sight, have all the air of being alive, but are not really so." He adds that there are two broad periods of academic research in the quest for the historical Jesus, namely, "the period before David Strauss and the period after David Strauss." Marcus Borg

Marcus Borg

Marcus J. Borg is an American Biblical scholar and author. He is a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, holds a DPhil degree from Oxford University and is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture, an endowed chair, at Oregon State University, from which he retired in 2007...

 has suggested that "the details of Strauss's argument, his use of Hegelian philosophy, and even his definition of myth, have not had a lasting impact. Yet his basic claims—that many of the gospel narratives are mythical in character, and that 'myth' is not simply to be equated with 'falsehood'—have become part of mainstream scholarship. What was wildly controversial in Strauss's time has now become one of the standard tools of biblical scholars."

One of the more controversial interpretations that Strauss introduced to the understanding of the historical Jesus, is his interpretation of Virgin Birth

Virgin Birth

The virgin birth of Jesus is a tenet of Christianity and Islam which holds that Mary miraculously conceived Jesus while remaining a virgin. The term "virgin birth" is commonly used, rather than "virgin conception", due to the tradition that Joseph "knew her not till she brought forth her firstborn...

. In the Demythologization, Strauss's response was reminiscent of the German Rationalist movement in Protestant theology. According to Strauss, Jesus' Virgin Birth was added to the biography of Jesus, as a legend in order to honor him in the way that Gentiles most often honored their greatest historical figures. However, Strauss believed that greater honour would be given to Christ if the Virgin Birth were not present and Joseph recognised as the legitimate father of Christ.

Works

Strauss's works, without Christliche Dogmatik, were published in a collected edition in 12 volumes by Eduard Zeller

Eduard Zeller

Eduard Gottlob Zeller , was a German philosopher and theologian of the Tübingen School of theology.- Life :Eduard Zeller was born at Kleinbottwar in Württemberg, and educated at the University of Tübingen and under the influence of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel...

. Strauss's Ausgewählte Briefe appeared in 1895.

External links

• The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, Sigler Press, Single Volume edition
• The life of Jesus critically examined Volume 1 (1860)
• The life of Jesus critically examined Volume 2 (1860) [translation of the 4th German edition]
• Raw files of the first American edition of the Life of Jesus, 1860
• Marcus Borg, "D.F.S., miracle and myth"
• Theodore Parker's review (1840) of Das Leben Jesu