Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

The most controversial of all the Germanic textual bombshells was The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, published in 1835 by David Strauss (1808–1874). Strauss was much influenced by German romanticism–he wrote a romantic tragedy that was performed, and took a great interest in magnetic and hypnotic cures. In this way he acquired an understanding of God as immanent in nature, but not as someone who would intervene in the course of history.15 Strauss thus used history against religion, arguing that its details were insufficient, by a long way, to support Christianity as it existed in the nineteenth century. So incendiary were his findings–that Jesus was not a divine figure, that the miracles never took place, that the church as we know it has little connection with Jesus–that Strauss’s appointment to a professorship in Zurich in 1839 sparked a local riot so worrying to the local authorities that he had to be ‘retired’ before he even had chance to take up his chair. His conclusions could not be retired so easily, however.