David Strauss

David Friedrich Strauss (Ludwigsburg, 1808 - 1874) was a German theologian and philosopher, a disciple of Hegel and Ferdinand Christian Baur. He is a key figure in the historical study of Jesus. His work stands between late German rationalism and modern biblical criticism, which is why he still appears in any history of Gospel scholarship.

He studied at the evangelical seminary in Blaubeuren and at the Tübinger Stift, where he was drawn to Schelling, Schleiermacher and, above all, Hegel. After a spell teaching Latin, history and Hebrew, he went to Berlin, only to find that Hegel had just died. In 1835-1836 he published Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet, his major work, which brought him immediate fame and fierce controversy.

In that book he argued that the Gospels contain mythical narratives. By myth he did not mean deliberate lies, but a pre-scientific way of expressing religious ideas. Miracles, in his view, were additions made by the early community to present Jesus as the Messiah foretold by the prophets. His position differed from rationalists, who explained miracles as misunderstandings, and from supernaturalists, who took them literally. He considered John the most mythologised Gospel and no longer reliable as a historical source.

After the storm he left theology for more than twenty years and turned to biographies. He returned in 1862 with a study of Reimarus, followed by The Life of Jesus for the German People (1864) and The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History (1865), a critique of Schleiermacher's lectures. His influence was considerable: he helped establish the distinction between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith, and anticipated much later biblical criticism.