David Friedrich Strauss

Background

David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874) was a German theologian and critic whose Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet (1835; English translation by George Eliot, 1846) is the single most consequential book in the modern historical study of Jesus. Trained at Tübingen and shaped by Hegelian philosophy, Strauss published the Leben Jesu in his twenties; the scandal it provoked ended his academic career. Albert Schweitzer made him the hinge of the whole discipline: the critical study of the life of Jesus "falls, immediately, into two periods, that before Strauss and that after Strauss" (Schweitzer 1906, ch. I).

Strauss' signature move is the category of mythus: Gospel narratives read neither as historical report nor as conscious fraud, but as narratives generated by the messianic imagination of the early community. Crucially, the theory is constitutively anti-mythicist — one of the mythus' two generative sources is "that particular impression which was left by the personal character, actions, and fate of Jesus" (Strauss 1835, §15) — myth requires a historical recipient.

Positions held in this wiki

• The Resurrection of Jesus — Historicity — the mythic theory of the resurrection narratives, anchored in the dilemma "either Jesus was not really dead, or he did not really rise again" (Strauss §140).
• The Empty Tomb: Arguments and Critiques — resurrection faith formed in Galilee, "where no body lay in the grave to contradict bold suppositions" (Strauss §140); tomb narratives, angels, and guard are back-formed legend (§§135–137).
• The Pre-Pauline Creed in 1 Cor 15:3-8 — concedes the creed's genuineness and earliness, then reads 1 Cor 15:5-8 (bib) as "the key to the comprehension" of all the appearances: Paul's own visionary Christophany stands in one undifferentiated series with the rest (Strauss §140, p.740).
• Jesus Mythicism Assessed — the middle position mythicism is most often confused with: extensive Gospel myth wrapped around a real historical Jesus.
• Isaiah 53: Christian vs Jewish Readings — the classic negative case against predictive-messianic use of Isa 53 (bib) (§§112–113).

Key works in our corpus

• The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835; ET 1846) — in corpus, full body text. Load-bearing sections for this wiki: §§14–15 (theory of the evangelical mythus), §§112–113 (prophecy), §§135–140 (burial, guard, resurrection).
• The Old Faith and the New (1872) — his late materialist confession; not in corpus (noted by Harnack 1900 in his survey of the critical tradition).

Principal critics

• J. Gresham Machen — presses the chronological squeeze: the early creed and living witnesses (1 Cor 15:6 (bib)) do not allow the incubation legendary development requires (Machen 1921, p.76-77).
• Bruno Bauer — attacked from the radical side: the category of myth is "much too vague" for the Gospels' deliberate literary architecture (Schweitzer 1906, ch. XI).
• Adolf von Harnack — "The historical criticism of two generations has succeeded in restoring that credibility in its main outlines" (Harnack 1900, Lecture II, p.20).

See also

• Ernest Renan — the French naturalistic counterpart, sentimental where Strauss is dialectical.
• Albert Schweitzer — historian and periodizer of the debate Strauss inaugurated.
• Rudolf Bultmann — twentieth-century heir via demythologization; not in corpus.