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Strauss' highly controversial challenge to the historicity of the gospels pioneered the application of modern historical methods to religious texts.
David Friedrich Strauss is a central figure in 19th century intellectual history. The first major source for the loss of faith in Christianity in Germany, his work Das Leben Jesu was the most scandalous publication in Germany during his time. His book was a critique of the claims to historical truth of the New Testament, which had been the mainstay of Protestantism since the Reformation. As the father of unbelief, his critique of Christianity preceded that of Nietzsche, Marx, Feuerbach, and Schopenhauer. His views imposed a harsh fate upon him - he was persecuted for his beliefs by religious and political authorities and was denied employment in the university and government, forcing him to live as a free-lance writer. He led a wandering and isolated life as an outcast. Here, Frederick C. Beiser studies the intellectual development of Strauss and recounts his fate, which began in faith as a young man but finally ended in unbelief.
David Friedrich Strauss's Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet (1835) brought about a new dawn in Biblical criticism by applying the 'myth theory' to the life of Jesus. Strauss treated the Gospel narrative like any other historical work, and denied all supernatural elements in the Gospels. Das Leben Jesu created an overnight sensation and Strauss became embroiled in fierce controversy. This earliest English version of 1846 was translated by the novelist George Eliot, and was her first published book.
German philosopher and radical theologian David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) distinguished himself as one of Europe's most controversial biblical critics and as an intellectual martyr for freethought.
Can the Bible be called myth? In his work Das Leben Jesu (1835) David Friedrich Strauss answered this question affirmatively. The present study reviews the work on myth by German scholars before Strauss and places his work within the context of the debate. It approaches Strauss through the criticism leveled against his work in early 19th-century German journals. It identifies and examines the presuppositions of the idealistic critics and their effect on the arguments used against Strauss. While neither Strauss nor his critics freed themselves completely from idealism, Strauss's approach offered a possibility for interpreting the Bible in its historical and religious milieu.