55 h 36 minAudiobook5 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the Gospel stories are neither straightforward history nor deliberate invention?
In The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, David Friedrich Strauss places the four Gospels side by side. From the birth of Jesus to the ascension, he compares their accounts, traces disagreements, and weighs scholarly explanations. His question is direct: how should readers understand stories that do not agree?
Strauss proposes that many Gospel stories grow from Jewish hopes and scripture within the early Christian community. He calls them myths, without meaning lies or deliberate inventions. His inquiry reaches from the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke to miracles, John's Gospel, and the passion and resurrection, asking what this reading leaves for Christian belief.
What you’ll discover
- The Gospels side by side Follow Strauss as he compares accounts and makes their differences central to his inquiry.
- Myth without deliberate invention Explore his argument that shared hopes and scripture shape stories within a believing community.
- Birth stories under scrutiny Examine how Strauss connects the differing accounts in Matthew and Luke with prophecy.
- Miracles and older models Consider his reading of Gospel miracles alongside the earlier stories he sees behind them.
- What remains for belief Encounter Strauss's argument that central Christian ideas can survive his critical reading of the narratives.
Who will love it
For readers curious about how modern Bible criticism began, and for anyone who wants to understand why the Gospels are read as they are today.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A young scholar loses his post
- Both old ways of reading fail
- Myth is the key idea
- Contradiction and impossibility as tests
- The birth stories grow from prophecy
- The miracles of the ministry have older models
- John's Gospel is a poorer witness
- The passion and resurrection are the gravest test
- What remains, and how the book has lasted
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Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet
by David Friedrich Strauss · 1835
Strauss sets Gospel accounts side by side to explore how scripture and a community's hopes shape stories of Jesus.
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In short
Can the Gospel stories be read as accurate history, and if not, what are they? That plain question drives David Friedrich Strauss in The Life of Jesus Critically Examined.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A young scholar loses his post
David Friedrich Strauss is born in 1808 and trains at Tübingen, then studies in Berlin, where he absorbs the philosophy of Hegel. By his late twenties he teaches at Tübingen and believes the Gospels need a new kind of reading.
His book is learned and calm, and that calm upsets readers, because it treats the most sacred stories like any ancient text. Strauss loses his post at Tübingen. In 1839 Zurich offers him a chair, but protest cancels the appointment before he begins.
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What is The Life of Jesus Critically Examined about?
It is a study of the four Gospels that goes through the life of Jesus episode by episode. Strauss asks which stories are reliable history and argues that many grew as myths within the early Christian community.
What does Strauss mean by myth in the Gospels?
He does not mean a lie. Myth is a story that expresses a community's faith and hopes in narrative form, often drawn from the Old Testament, which grows without a plan and becomes fixed in writing.
Why was the book so controversial?
It treated the miracles, the birth stories, and the resurrection as products of early Christian belief, not as plain history. Many churchmen saw this as an attack on faith, and Strauss lost his university post.
The author
David Friedrich Strauss
1808–1874 · German theologian
David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874) was a German theologian and writer. He was born in Ludwigsburg and died there. He studied theology at Tübingen and later taught there. His works include The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, published in 1835–1836, and The Old Faith and the New, published in 1872.
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