STRAUSS, DAVID FRIEDRICH. - Protestant theologian, loyal to the principles and presuppositions of the "rational-mythic" school ("mythisch-rationale Schule"). Born on 27 January 1808 in Ludwigsburg (Württemberg), where after a turbulent life he died on 18 February 1873.
In the "minor seminary" of Blaubeuren (1821-25), his teachers included especially Kern and F. C. Baur, who later became his professor when Strauss pursued his theological studies at the Wilhelmsstift (1826-30) in Tübingen (v.). Beyond his lectures, he was fascinated by the Protestant "mystic" Jacob Böhme (1575-1624), Schleiermacher (v.), Schelling (v.), the visionary pietist Justinus Kerner, whose spiritualist séances he attended during vacations, but above all by Hegel (v.). After completing his studies, he became a vicar of the teachers at the small seminary of Maulbronn. In the winter of 1831-32, he went to Berlin. Disgusted by Schleiermacher’s lectures, he associated with the left-wing Hegelians ("Linkshegelianer") and attended the lectures of W. Vatke (1806-82); the following year he returned to Tübingen as a "repetitor" of theology at the Wilhelmsstift, which entitled him to give philosophy lectures at the university. As the first interpreter of Hegel in Tübingen, his lectures, imbued with enthusiasm for his master, were immensely successful. However, the philosophy professors immediately reacted by contesting his right to teach that subject. He resigned himself, gave up, and devoted himself to studying nearly all the exegesis of his time.
At that time, there were three schools of Protestant exegesis: a) the "supernatural" school (later also called "positive"), which still continued Lutheran and Calvinist orthodoxy but was increasingly forced to make greater concessions under the pressure of rampant rationalism; b) the "rational" school, led by H. E. G. Paulus (1761-1851), then highly fashionable, which devised ingenious expedients, such as the theory of intermediate causes not mentioned in the sacred text, to eliminate the supernatural and miraculous elements of the Bible; c) the "rational-mythic" school (already existing for about 50 years), which aimed to offer a more effective apology for the Bible in the face of prevailing impiety by explaining it as a complex of myths deemed necessary for the immature state of humanity.
The mythic school, first in the exegesis of ancient classics and then of biblical books, is largely due to C. G. Heyne (1729-1812), a renowned professor at Göttingen, who systematized it into an hermeneutics that he applied only to Hesiod (v.), Homer, and other ancient authors. According to him, there exists, due to a psychogenetic necessity of the human race, a universal and necessary mythic age, under which primitive man, with rudimentary intelligence but vivid sensory impressions, does not perceive the true causes of things, does not reflect or meditate, and uses a language incredibly poor in concepts but highly expressive. Faced with unusual and wondrous facts, this rude man of the mythic age does not perceive their true causal connections and believes himself to be in the presence of a supreme being who acts directly in the affairs of that world; in every event, he sees God at work, and for him the course of daily life is a continuous series of miracles. He also perceives historical facts, e.g., that A is the cause of B; but for him, this simple fact necessarily transforms into a brilliant, passionate story in which A falls in love with a companion, and through the various vicissitudes of that love, B is born as A’s beloved son. In his own way, he perceives the opposition between concepts, but translates that perception into beautiful mythic language, as a story of a fierce struggle between two personified primordial powers, creating a series of theogonic or cosmogonic deeds. This theory was bound to captivate the Romantic period (v. ROMANTICISMO), which placed so much emphasis on the irrational, making those mythic tales the mysterious and profound origin of all poetry, as well as of historiography, philosophy, and the science of religion. Even "popular tradition" has a supremely irrational origin: the rude mythic man increasingly amplifies the "miraculous" in his folk tales, shaping the simple original reality. Such traditions would be found in all the sources of the most ancient ages: in Livy and Herodotus, in China, India, and even in the Bible. From such traditions everything proceeds, and they express in their own way the deepest truths of the human soul: thus one arrives at a "pantheism," enthusiastically supported, of which later pan-Babylonianism would be but an application. The "mythic movement," which enjoyed immense popularity, no less irrational than the others, exalted ancient and even modern myths, which, like art and especially poetry, in their own way express the deepest things of human existence.
When doubts arose, the human intellect often explained the myth as an allegory of some other reality, or undertook the work of "demythologization," for which C. G. Heyne had already devised an appropriate hermeneutics to unravel the threads of a narrative and restore them to their original aspect. This resulted in the division of myths (v. MITO E MITOLOGIA). Historical myths must not be taken as true history but only as "apparent" history (v. SPIRITUS PARACLITUS) endowed with relative or economic truth, which must be reduced to the original, honest fact. Philosophical (and religious) myths, according to this school, are not based on any historical fact and one must trace the internal fact of the mind that lies at the root of the "myth-making" imagination.
Heyne’s disciples applied his "rational-mythic hermeneutics" to biblical texts, believing that through mythic irrationalism the waning faith of the rationalist age could be rekindled (v.). They argued that these biblical myths, like those of Greece, Rome, and the Vedanta, were not to be despised but contained ancient facts and profound human truths, even if not literally true, and taught many truths, such as the existence and Providence of God, in a far more poetic and attractive manner. It is no wonder that some of these exegetes, such as J. G. Eichhorn (1752-1827) and J. Ph. Gabler (1753-1826), saw in rational-mythic interpretation the only hope for the salvation of Christian faith. G. L. Bauer published in 1799 in Leipzig a manual of rational-mythic method for the study of the Bible, followed by a veritable encyclopedia of "Sacred Mythology" of the Old and New Testaments (Leipzig 1902, 2 vols.).
The mythic-exegetical school also fascinated the great philosophers of German idealism (v.). Schelling devoted his early works to clarifying its philosophical foundations; the most influential figure in the school became the Kantian philosopher J. F. Fries (v.), who elevated myth to the status of "the category of the religious," making it anthropological, i.e., universal for every generation of men, and considering myth inevitable and necessary for all human thought. With Hegel, the matter is somewhat different: myth belongs to "Anschauung" rather than to "concept," the highest category of Hegel’s thought, an idea exploited by Strauss. In applying the ideas of German idealism to the Bible, Strauss had as his predecessor Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (1780-1840), who provided a rational-mythic explanation of the Old Testament. From the days of Eichhorn onward, attempts had been made to explain certain pericopes of the New Testament mythically, and G. L. Bauer had collected all the relevant materials.
S. applied that hermeneutic on a grand scale to the New Testament, that is, to the Life of Jesus (q.v.), and did so more radically: he admitted no historical myths, only philosophical ones, so that all the Gospels say is that there is a divine element in the humanity of Christ, understood not as concrete and singular, but rather as a general idea. Such is the sense of *Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet*, which appeared in Tübingen in 1835 and made S. the most celebrated theologian in Germany, though it forever barred him from holding a theological chair. Well-constructed, in a remarkable style, the book expounded individual pericopes: a) the “supernatural” explanation, drawing on a deep and extensive knowledge of the very “positive” authors; b) the rational-mythic explanation, drawing especially on the works of N. Paulus, both set forth with such skill that they destroyed one another, and finally c) the rational-mythic explanation, which triumphed by eliminating all historicity and all truth beyond the general idea of the divine in humanity; there was little that was positive in a study so supremely destructive and subversive. In the book, the collapse of Christian theology was seen, and the scandal was immense. Countless refutations poured in. S. appeared disconcerted in *Streitschriften* (Tübingen 1837), and not for noble motives: with his terrible pen he attacked lesser authors, neglected the greatest, and raged against the teacher who had denounced him to the government. Indeed, he was punished by being transferred to the gymnasium of his native city, but by 1836 he left state service to become a free writer.
Radical friends (unbelievers) secured for him a chair of theology in Zurich, which he accepted. It seems that the criticisms had shaken him somewhat, and in the 3rd edition of *Leben Jesu* he moderated his doubts about the Gospel of St. John, though he still maintained only the “possible” genuineness of it, and wrote *Zwei friedliche Blätter* (Tübingen 1839). But as soon as the news spread in Zurich, the believing population of the entire Canton rose up in violent rebellion; the cantonal government had to dismiss him before he began teaching, granting him a lifetime pension. Yet even this expedient did not save the “radical” government, which six months later was overthrown in the *Züriputsch*. S. reacted, and in the preface to the 4th edition of *Leben Jesu* he declared that the concessions of the 3rd edition were due to weakness of spirit; he published *Die kirchliche Glaubenslehre in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung und im Kampfe mit der modernen Wissenschaft dargestellt*, 2 vols. (Tübingen 1840–41), in which he treated the history of dogma according to the same rationalistic method and proclaimed the failure of all theological history, always inclined to oppress reason and freedom. Though better documented and more carefully executed than *Leben Jesu* in its attack on Christian positions, this new work of S. did not provoke as much scandal and went through only one edition.
After the revolution of 1848, S. tried politics; the believing populace thwarted his candidacy for the Frankfurt Parliament, but he was elected deputy to the Württemberg diet. He failed even as a politician; though elected by the revolutionaries, he defended aristocratic and conservative interests, and when called to order he did not apologize but resigned his mandate. Resuming his literary activity, he wrote biographies, especially of anticlericals, such as Renan (*Leipzig* 1861, 2nd ed. 1862), Ulrich von Hutten (3 vols., ibid. 1858–60, 6th ed. 1865), and later Voltaire (*Mannheim* 1870, 2nd ed. 1907). Yet he was no master of the biographical art; all his characters live and think à la S., as happens with poets, which S. himself proves in vol. XII of *Gesammelte Schriften*. In 1862, the success in France of E. Renan’s new *Life of Jesus* (q.v.) induced S. to attempt a similar life of Jesus for the German people: *Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet* (Leipzig 1864; 12th ed. 1902), more moderate and more positive than the “great” life, yet no less dangerous. He resumed his polemic against theologians, condemning the “semi-rationalists” or *Vermittlungstheologen* more harshly than even the orthodox, as in *Die Halben und die Ganzen* (1865); he expressed a harsh judgment on Schleiermacher’s posthumous book in *Der Christus des Glaubens und der Jesus der Geschichte* (Berlin 1865). The war of 1870 stirred his patriotic sentiments, as it did those of E. Renan, and so both authors, subversive writers of “Lives of Jesus,” wrote open letters on the responsibility for that war and the fate of Alsace and Lorraine. Once the war was over, S. produced another book that marked the sad epilogue of his theological evolution: “materialism and Darwinism, enthusiasm and culture” typical of the bourgeoisie of that era: *Der alte u. der neue Glaube* (Leipzig 1872). The book, however, is pervaded by much sincerity; it poses the pressing question: are we still Christians? And answers decisively no: we, who have abandoned Christian faith and seek another, more scientific one; we, who consign the most sacred documents of Christianity to the museums of myth—we are no longer Christians. The book had many refutations but also many editions (16th, 1904); with it, the antisocialist S. helped spread materialism even among the proletariat.
Much of his supremely negative theology still lives on; within Protestant neo-orthodoxy, mythicism begins to resurface, not only because of the “demythologizing” promoted by R. Bultmann, who follows more or less S.’s path though basing himself not on an anthropological mythicism of a “Friesian” nature but on an existentialism (q.v.) according to the ideas of M. Heidegger, but also because of the ideas of Karl Barth, prince of the Reformed neo-orthodox. In his little book on S., K. Barth asserts that he agrees with S. on no fewer than five points concerning fundamental principles: 1) if Christian faith is conceived as an immanent and historical relation, this is equivalent to removing faith; 2) the documents of the New Testament cannot be sources for a pragmatic life of the man Jesus Christ: they are mere testimonies of some superhuman being according to the prophecies of the Old Testament and beyond all historical reconstruction; 3) one can reach a “historical Jesus” behind those sources, but only by sacrificing the most essential predicates of Jesus (messianic consciousness, consciousness of being Son of God, preaching of the Kingdom, hope of the parousia, resurrection from the dead), and such a “historical Jesus” would be of “sentimental characterology” that would have nothing to do with the faith of the Apostles; 4) yet the person of Jesus, as he appears in the Gospels, is strictly bound to such predicates: a historian who wished to write a life of Jesus would therefore have to either
Rationalism or the "mythic movement," which has reached the highest peaks of non-Catholic theology from Heyne to Bultmann and Barth, has pervaded it with skepticism and pessimism regarding primitive human psychology, in conformity with the ideology of Luther and Calvin, without proving this with either natural or supernatural arguments. Certainly, man has a poetic and even "mythic" inclination, but he also possesses intellectual faculties capable of controlling II. The enslavement to myths is explainable by admitting that men of all ages have more or less equal intellectual and sensory capacities, without however denying differences in traditions and temperament. Many myths can be explained phenomenologically without entailing the fatalism attributed to them by pan-mythicism; even pan-abolonism failed as knowledge of Babylonian civilization developed. It is especially erroneous to consider the Jewish people as primitive and subject to the enslavement of myths. The same, even more so, must be said of the primitive Christian community. Yet rational arguments alone will never convince the pan-mythicists, who are swept along by sentimental tendencies that are anything but intellectual; one must bear witness to them of faith in the living God, in the absolute truth of Sacred Scripture, excluding all doubt even about the intellectual light of which all peoples, even those less evolved than modern ones, have been and are capable.
Other works by S.: *Gesammelte Schriften*, ed. E. Zeller (12 vols., Bonn 1876–78), though this collection is quite incomplete. Collections of letters are also available: *Ausgewählte Briefe*, ed. E. Zeller (Bonn 1895, 5 vols.); A. Rapp, *Briefwechsel zwischen S. und Vischer*, 2 vols. (Stuttgart 1952–53). In Italian, G. Oddo translated the "great" *Life of Jesus* or critical examination of its history by Dr. D.F.S., Milan 1863–65; the text of that version, based on the fourth German edition [Tübingen 1840, unmitigated], served for a vile forgery (Rome 1886) which, on the title page, strove to make it appear that it was the *Life of Jesus* by S. "rejected and completed" by Fr. C. M. Curci (q.v.), already reconciled with the Church. The *Life of Jesus* by S., translated by S. Gatti (Turin 1865) and incomplete, seems to be based on the 2nd ed. of the "small" *Life of Jesus* by S. or *Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet*. From S.O.E. is translated the last book by S., together with the *Nachricht* (1873): D. F. Strauss, *The Old Faith and the New* (Milan 1876).