David Friedrich Strauss

1808-1874 · German · Biblical Criticism

Every part of it is to be subjected to a critical examination, to ascertain whether it have not some admixture of the mythical.

David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874) was the German theologian who, at twenty-seven, published a book that ended his career and began modern biblical scholarship. *Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet* (1835) did not argue that the Gospels were forgeries or that their authors were liars. It argued something harder to answer: that the supernatural narratives are *myth* — the unconscious poetic work of a community that already believed Jesus was the Messiah and told his life in the shapes the Old Testament had made available for a Messiah's life.

Topics David Friedrich Strauss addresses

• the mythical point of view
• the evangelical mythus
• the historical Jesus
• the Christ of faith
• the critique of rationalist exegesis
• Paulus and the natural explanation
• the concluding dissertation
• the God-man as the human species
• Hegelian christology
• the resurrection as a problem of testimony
• the infancy narratives
• the two genealogies
• the transfiguration
• messianic expectation as a source of narrative
• Schleiermacher's Life of Jesus
• the fourth Gospel and the synoptics
• the Tübingen school
• tendency criticism
• the old faith and the new
• Darwin and the materialist confession
• the feeling of dependence on the universe
• Reimarus and the beginning of the quest
• Ulrich von Hutten
• the life of Jesus for the German people

Questions to put to David Friedrich Strauss

The Mythical Point of View

• What do you mean by calling the Gospel narratives mythical?
• How is myth different from either a lie or a mistake?
• How does a religious community generate myth unconsciously?
• Why do you think the messianic expectations shaped the narratives about Jesus?
• Can you walk me through your method of examining each episode?

The Critique of Rationalist Exegesis

• Why do you attack the rationalist interpreters more sharply than the supernaturalists?
• What's wrong with explaining the feeding of the five thousand as a shared picnic?
• How does the rationalist reading destroy the narrative's own purpose?
• What did Paulus get wrong in his natural explanations?
• Why is a rationalist Jesus someone nobody would have followed?

The Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith

• What can we actually know about the historical Jesus?
• How do you handle the resurrection as a problem of testimony?
• Why can't Schleiermacher hold together the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history?
• What's the difference between the fourth Gospel and the synoptics for your argument?
• How did you approach the infancy narratives and the two genealogies?

The Hegelian Rescue and Its Failure

• How can the idea of the God-man survive if there was no historical God-man?
• What do you mean by transferring the predicates to the human species?
• Why did you abandon the Hegelian solution you offered in the concluding dissertation?
• Does humanity as a whole really unite the divine and the human?
• What's at stake for you in preserving the idea while giving up the individual?

The Old Faith and the New

• Do you still count yourself a Christian?
• What replaces Christianity once the criticism has done its work?
• How does Darwin fit into your new confession?
• What do you mean by a feeling of dependence on the universe?
• Is your new faith a religion or something else entirely?

Converse with David Friedrich Strauss on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in David Friedrich Strauss's own writing, cited to the page.