A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Strauss, enthusiastic for Hegel’s symbolic approach to Christianity, wanted to apply his analytical skills to the New Testament as well. In 1835 he published the result, usually known by its shortened German title Leben Jesu, or in the English translation made by the freethinking novelist Marian Evans or ‘George Eliot’, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined. The Jesus Strauss portrayed was a great Jewish teacher whose followers had retold the story of his life in the best way they knew by borrowing themes from Old Testament stories and fitting their hero’s life into them. No conscious deception was involved, but the New Testament narratives were works of theological symbolism rather than historic fact.