Portrait of David Strauss.

David Friedrich Strauss (January 27, 1808 – February 8, 1874), was a German theologian and writer. Image File history File links David_Friedrich_Strauss. ... Image File history File links David_Friedrich_Strauss. ... January 27 is the 27th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1808 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... February 8 is the 39th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1874 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason). It can also refer to the study of other religious topics. ...

He 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. Ludwigsburg is a city in Germany, about 12 km north of Stuttgarts city center, near the river Neckar. ... Stuttgart, a city located in southern Germany, is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg with a population of approximately 590,000 as of September 2005 in the city and around 3 million in the metropolitan area. ... Ulm is a city in the German Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg (about 100 km south-east of Stuttgart). ... Ferdinand Christian Baur (June 21, 1792 - 1860), was a German theologian and leader of the Tübingen school of theology. ... 1825 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (German: Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen) is a state-supported university located on the Neckar river, in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. ... Philosophy, (Greek: Φιλοσοφία, philo-sophia, love of wisdom) // Meaning and use of Philosophy The word once included all forms of knowledge, and all methods for attaining it. ... Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (November 21, 1768 - February 12, 1834) was a theologian and philosopher. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than 6 million people, mainly in Israel, the West Bank, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. ...

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. 1831 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel The new HegelWiki Hegel by HyperText, reference archive on Marxists. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Jesus, also known as Jesus of Nazareth, is the central figure of Christianity, in which context he is known as Jesus Christ (from Greek Ιησούς Χριστός) with Christ not being a name but rather a title meaning Anointed. He is also considered a very important prophet in Islam. ...

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. 1832 was a leap year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, (but coming to mean thought or reason) is most often said to be the study of arguments, although the exact definition of logic is a matter of controversy among philosophers. ... Plato (Greek: Πλάτων Plátōn) (ca. ... Ethics (from Greek ethikos) is the branch of axiology – one of the four major branches of philosophy, alongside metaphysics, epistemology, and logic – which attempts to understand the nature of morality; to define that which is right from that which is wrong. ... 1833 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ...

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. Bruno Bauer (September 6, 1809 - April 13, 1882), was a German theologian, philosopher and historian. ...

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, the Slovenian scholar Anton Strle, Friedrich Nietzsche lost his faith around the time he was reading Leben Jesu. The University of Zurich (in German: Universität Zürich) is the largest university of Switzerland, in the city of Zurich. ... Prof. ... Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a German philosopher, whose critiques of contemporary culture, religion, and philosophy centered around a basic question regarding the foundation of values and morality. ...

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 daylight 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 Streuschriften zur Verteidigung meiner Schrift über das Leben Jesu. In the third edition of the work (1839), and in Zwei friedliche Blättler, 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. 1837 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... George Eliot Mary Ann Evans, better known by the pen name George Eliot (22 November 1819 - 22 December 1880), was an English novelist. ...

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). take you to calendar). ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Simon Le Bon lead singer of Duran Duran in concert, 2003. ... Julian solidus, ca. ... King Frederick William IV of Prussia (October 15, 1795 - January 2, 1861), the eldest son and successor of Frederick William III of Prussia, reigned as King of Prussia from 1840 to 1861. ...

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). 1848 is a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... (?) [ˈfraÅ‹kfÊŠrt] is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany. ... Christoph Hoffmann was (2 December 1815–8 December 1885) in Leonberg in the state of Württemberg, Germany. ... Württemberg (often spelled Wurttemberg in English) refers to an area and a former state in Swabia, a region in south-western Germany. ...

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 (Leben Jesu für des 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 lend die Ganzen (1865), directed specially against Schenkel and Hengstenberg. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (December 22, 1694, Hamburg - March 1, 1768, Hamburg), 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, so... Daniel Schenkel (December 21, 1813 - May 18, 1885), Swiss Protestant theologian, was born at Dagerlen in the canton of Zürich. ... Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (October 20, 1802 - May 28, 1869), was a German Lutheran churchman and theologian. ...

His The Christ of Belief and the Jesus of History (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. To the fourth edition of the book he added a Afterword as Forword (Nachwort als Vorwort) (1873). The same year symptoms of a fatal malady appeared, and death followed on the 8th of February 1874. Jesus, also known as Jesus of Nazareth, is the central figure of Christianity, in which context he is known as Jesus Christ (from Greek Ιησούς Χριστός) with Christ not being a name but rather a title meaning Anointed. He is also considered a very important prophet in Islam. ... Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland (federal state) of Hessen in Germany. ... The last of Voltaires statues by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1781). ... Materialism is the philosophical view that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. ...

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. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (December 22, 1694, Hamburg - March 1, 1768, Hamburg), 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, so... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with The Historical-Critical Method. ... Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus (born 1 September 1761, died 10 August 1851) was a German theologian and critic of the Christian bible. ...

As Albert Schweitzer wrote in The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906), 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." Image:Schweitzer. ...

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 (see Links). 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."

External links

• Raw files of the first American edition of the Life of Jesus, 1860
• Marcus Borg, "D.F.S., miracle and myth"

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); FT 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). Eduard Zeller (January 22, 1814 - March 19, 1908), was a German philosopher. ... Adolph Hausrath (January 13, 1837 - August 2, 1909), German theologian, was born at Karlsruhe. ... Friedrich Theodor Vischer (June 30, 1807 - September 14, 1887), German writer on the philosophy of art, was born at Ludwigsburg, and was the son of a clergyman. ... Rudolf von Gottschall (September 30, 1823 - March 21, 1909), was a German poet and dramatist. ...

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain. Supporters contend that the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910-1911) represents the sum of human knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century; indeed, it was advertised as such. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...