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111 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA sSb~°b"z'a' transs London, 1846) was written at this period, in . the short apace of one year. The impression of profound theological scholar ship which the " Life of Jesus " makes on the reader is the more remarkable in view of the " Life of fact that it was the work of a young Jesus." man of twenty-seven. There were at that time three parties to the contro versy on the problem of the life of Jesus: auper naturalists, who accepted the New-Testament nar ratives and miracles; rationalists, who rejected the miracles; and radical rationalists, who rejected the Gospel narratives as fabrications, though this posi tion was held practically alone by Paulus at Heidel berg. Strauss took an independent position. He began with the assumption that the Gospel narra tive must be interpreted exactly like any other his torical work. But although he rejected the mira cles, he refused to attribute intentional fabrication to the Evangelists. To reconcile these two posi tions, he advanced his "mythical" theory. This conception he derived from Hegel's philosophy of religion. Philosophical ideas are preceded by myth ical presentations which are comparatively inac curate, but are true to the intellectual state of the myth-maker. But even though au idea be promul gated with full knowledge on the part of its author of its fictitious character, it may be called " myth " if it is accepted and passed on confidently by the multitude as being in harmony with their religious feelings and ideas. A certain remoteness in time is necessary to constitute a myth. Hence the Gospel of John could not have been written by an eye witness, i.e., not by John the apostle. The synop tic Gospels do not claim to have been by eyewit nesses. Another Hegelian conception Strauss ap plied to the theory of the life and personality of Jesus. According to the supernaturalists, Jesus was a unique and perfect personality, and, as such, God's son. Strauss replies that the " idea " does not realize itself in this fashion-by pouring itself in all its completeness into one example; but rather, through a multitude of examples that mutually sup plement one another. The true God-man, hence, is not an individual, but humanity as a species. The writers of the Gospels, he asserts, had before their eyes the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, and ascribed to Jesus words and deeds that should have been his according to the prophecies; in doing so, however, they often added original ideas and breathed a new soul into the old material. Strauss' work was throughout critical. In his opinion, the time had not yet come for a constructive picture. His book caused so great a sensation that one may call the year of its appearance, 1835, a turning point in modern theology. It brought squarely be fore the Christian world the question: Results Who was Jesus, the founder of the upon his Christian religion? Strauss had to bear Career. almost alone the storm of attacks that followed. He was released from his repetentship and transferred to the lyceum at Lud wigaburg. This position he soon left and removed to Stuttgart, where he wrote his Streatachriften ztcr Verteidigung meiner Schrcft fiber das Leben Jesu and sur Characteristik der gegertwBrtigen Theologie (1837),

which is one of his most brilliant performances. His friends succeeded in getting him an appointment to the University of Zurich, but clerical opposition prevailed, and he was not permitted to enter upon his duties. He refused to resign voluntarily, but drew to the end of his days the pension of 1,000 franca that was granted him, a large portion of which he spent in charity.

His next most important work, Die christliche Glaubenalehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Enturickelung and im KamPfe mit der mode;rnen Wissensehaft (2 vole., Tubingen, 1840-41), was begun while he was preparing to go to Zurich. It is more Later negative in char`~cter than the Leben

Life and Jesu, sharply polemical, and from a Works. literary point of view superior to his first work. It bears clear traces of the author's sense of the injustice that had been done him. During the following twenty years Strauss wrote nothing on theology. His marriage to the opera-singer, Agnes Schebest, proved unhappy. For a short time he represented Ludwigsburg in the W iirttemberg Landtag. He published a volume of political speeches (1847) and biographies of Schu bart (2 vole., Berlin, 1849), Christian Marklin (1850), Nikodemus Frischlin (Frankfort; 1855), Ulrich von Hutten (3 parts, Leipsic, 1858-60), and Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1862). Strauss returned to the ology in 1860 with a translation of the conversations of Ulrich von Hutten; to which he prefixed a polemic against the Wiirttemberg prelate, Mehring. He then set to work upon a new Leben Jesu fur das deutsche Volk (1864). While the work was still in manuscript, though nearly completed, Renan's brilliant " Life of Jesus " appeared, and Strauss for a while thought of letting his own work go unpub lished. But, on second thought, he concluded that his book might serve for the German people just as Renan's did for the French. The new work was an attempt at positive construction, but the author finally was obliged to admit that the data for such an attempt were insufficient: " It all still remains in a certain sense a tissue of hypotheses." He was unable to bridge the chasm between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history. In the winter of

1869-70 Strauss delivered some lectures from which arose the masterly little work on Voltaire (1870). The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war called forth two patriotic open letters to . Erneat Renan that met with universal applause in Germany. In 1872 he again issued a popular version of a theme he had handled long before: Der alts and der neue Gldube. Artistically it was a, masterpiece, according to Zeller on the same high plane as the work on Voltaire. It aroused, however, a storm of criticism and even of abuse for its skeptical views. To the question, " Are we still Christians?" the author answers bluntly, " No." To the question " Have we still religion? " he replies, " Yes or no," according to one's conception of religion; the old belief in a personal God and in immortality is gone; there remains the feeling of absolute dependence on the universe. The tone of the book in discussing the nature of the soul is materialistic. The author adopts the Darwinian theory end takes his stand frankly on the ground of natural science. His last