Portrait of David Strauss.
David Friedrich Strauss (January 27, 1808 –
February 8, 1874), was a German theologian and writer. He scandalized Christian Europe with his portrayal of the "historical Jesus," 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. Despite the flaws that are now apparent in his work, he was a pioneer in the historical investigation of Jesus.
Biography
Strauss was born at Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart. At
twelve he was sent to the evangelical seminary at Blaubeuren, near Ulm, to be prepared for the study
of theology. Amongst the principal masters in the school were Professors Kern and FC
Baur, 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 there failed to interest him, but he was strongly attracted by the writings of Schleiermacher. In 1830 he became assistant to a country clergyman, and nine
months later accepted the post of professor in the high school at Maulbronn, where he would teach Latin, history and Hebrew.
In October 1831 he resigned his office in order to study under Schleiermacher and
Georg Hegel in Berlin. Hegel died just as
he arrived, and, though he regularly attended Schleiermacher's lectures, it was only those on the life of Jesus that exercised a very powerful influence upon him.
Strauss tried to find kindred spirits amongst the followers of Hegel, but was not successful. While under the leading of
Hegel's distinction between Vorstellung and Begriff, he had already conceived the ideas found in his two principal
theological works: the Leben Jesu ("Life of Jesus") and the Christliche Dogmatik ("Christian Dogma"), the Hegelians
generally would not accept his conclusions.
In 1832 he returned to Tübingen, lecturing on logic,
Plato, the history of philosophy and ethics 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 Leben Jesu. It was published in 1835, when he was 27 years old.
Since the Hegelians in general rejected his "Life of Jesus," in 1837 Strauss had to defend his work against the Hegelians in a
booklet entitled "In Defense of My LIFE OF JESUS against the Hegelians." The famous Hegelian scholar, Bruno Bauer, led that attack on Strauss. Bauer continued to attack
Strauss in academic journals for years. When a very young Friedrich Nietzsche began
to write criticisms of David Strauss, Bruno Bauer gave the young Nietzsche every support he could afford.
The Leben Jesu
The Life of Jesus Critically Examined was a sensation. One reviewer called it "the Iscariotism of our days" and another
"the most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell." When he was elected to a chair of theology in the
University of Zürich, the appointment provoked such a storm of controversy that the
authorities decided to pension him before he began his duties. According to at least one authority, for example Slovenian scholar
Anton Strle, the young Friedrich Nietzsche lost
his faith around the time he was reading Leben Jesu.
What made his book so controversial was his analysis of the miraculous elements in the gospels as being "mythical" in
character. The 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 1837, Strauss replied to his critics with the book Streitschriften zur Verteidigung meiner
Schrift über das Leben Jesu. In the third edition of the work (1839), and in Zwei friedliche Blätter ("Two Peaceful
Letters") he made important concessions to his critics, which he withdrew, however, in the fourth edition (1840). In 1846 the
book found an outstanding English translator in George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), who later
wrote Middlemarch and other great novels. It was her first published book and has recently been republished (see
Reference). 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 Glaubenslehre, Strauss took leave of theology for over twenty years. In August
1841, he married Agnes Schebest, a cultivated and beautiful
opera singer of high repute, who was not suited to becoming the
wife of a scholar and literary man like Strauss. Five years afterwards, after two children had been born, they agreed to
separate. Strauss resumed his literary activity by the publication of Der Romantiker auf dem Thron der Cäsaren, in which
he drew a satirical parallel between Julian the Apostate and Frederick William IV of Prussia (1847).
In 1848 he was nominated member of the Frankfurt parliament,
but was defeated by Christoph Hoffmann. He was elected for the Württemberg 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, 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
Schenkel and Hengstenberg.
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, which were then
first published. From 1865 to 1872 Strauss lived in Darmstadt, and in 1870 he published his
lectures on Voltaire. 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 of modern science.[citation needed] 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
Strauss's approach was analytical and critical, without philosophical penetration or historical sympathy; his work was rarely
constructive. His Life of Jesus was directed against not only the traditional orthodox view of the Gospel narratives, but
likewise the rationalistic treatment of them. He criticized the manner of Reimarus, whose book The Aim of Jesus and His Disciples (1778) is often marked as
beginning the historical study of Jesus and the Higher criticism, and that of
Paulus. Strauss applied his theories with merciless vigour, especially his mythical
theory that the Christ of the gospels, whose life was built upon the meagerest of details, was the unintentional creation of
early Christian Messianic expectations. His operations were based upon fatal defects, positive and negative. Strauss also held a
narrow theory as to the miraculous, and a still narrower one as to the relation of the divine to the human. He has been
criticized as having had no true idea of the nature of historical tradition. F. C. Baur once complained that his 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 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 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."
One of the more controversial interpretations that Strauss introduced to the understanding of the historical Jesus, is his
interpretation of Virgin Birth. 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.
External links
Authorities
Strauss's works were published in a collected edition in 12 vols., by E. Zeller
(1876-1878), without his Christliche Dogmatik. His Ausgewahle Briefe appeared in 1895. On his life and works, see
Zeller, [David Friedrich Strauss in seinem Lebes und seinen Schriften (1874); Adolph
Hausrath, D. F. Strauss und der Theologie seiner Zeit (2 vols., 1876-1878); F. T. Vischer, Kritische Gänge (1844), vol. i, and by the same writer, Altes und
Neues (1882), vol. iii; R. Gottschall, Literarische Charakterkopfe (1896),
vol. iv; S. Eck, D. F. Strauss (1899); K. Harraeus, D. F. Strauss, sein Leben und seine Schriften (1901); and T.
Ziegler, D. F. Strauss (2 vols, 1908-1909).
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
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