Strauss, David Friedrich

(1808–74)

   Theologian.

   Strauss was born in Ludwigsburg, Germany. He was a student of F.C. baur in Blaubeuren and he also studied in Tübingen and Berlin. He is primarily remembered for his Leben Jesu, in which he argued that the supernatural elements in the Gospels were created myths, designed to fulfil the prophecies of the Old Testament. Its publication led to the termination of his career as a teacher of theology. None the less he persisted and produced a sequel, Die Christliche Glaubenslehre, in which he maintained that Christian teaching should be replaced by Hegelian philosophy. Later he turned to biography and he also attacked schleiermacher for his attempt to reconcile the Christ of dogma with the Jesus of history. Strauss’s ideas proved to be very in- fluential on later nineteenth-century theologians.

   H. Harris, David Friedrich Strauss and his Theology (1973);

   E. Lawler, David Friedrich Strauss and his Critics (1986);

   A. Schweitzer, Quest for the Historical Jesus (1910).