Classic Reprints and Out-of-Print
Titles Discounted  up to 60%  

Paperback - 812 pp
ISBN 0962364266
Sigler Press

Editorial Review

Few books are revolutionary in their impact, but Strauss's LIFE OF JESUS CRITICALLY EXAMINED is surely one of them.  When first published, it caused a sensation, and cost him his career as a theologian, because it seemed to make solid historical knowledge of Jesus impossible.  Consequently, in one way or other all subsequent "Lives of Jesus" area attempts, acknowledged or not, to confirm, correct, or refute Strauss's analysis of the Gospel evidence.  Because the historical figure of Jesus continues to fascinate, whoever wants to understand what is entailed in the "quest for the historical Jesus" as well the "Lives of Jesus" phenomenon, including its current forms, should read and ponder Strauss's epochal book.

The Hodgson edition makes available nor only George Elliot's translation of the fourth edition, but also provides an excellent introduction, useful notes, and translations of Strauss's prefaces to all previous German editions.  Of these, the capital preface to the still untranslated third edition, in which Strauss accommodated his views in the direction of Schleiermacher, is especially instructive.  No student of 19th or 20th century theology can ignore this book.

Leander E. Keck
Winkley Professor of Biblical Theology
Yale Divinity School

The two-volume LIFE OF JESUS by David Freidrich Strauss in 1835 is one of the landmark treatments in Leben-Jesu research.  It is good to have it back in print in the translation of Mary Ann Evans (novelist George Eliot) and  with the detailed introduction  by Peter Hodgeson, providing setting in the lifetime of Strauss and analysis of his subsequent editions. Older assessments saw in Strauss roots for later eschatological concerns, form and redaction criticism.  We can now note that he paid considerable attention to narrative, deconstructed many a pericope, and sought the idea behind the imageries.  So caught up in his critical, negative analysis did Strauss become that he provided only in a "Concluding Dissertation" his attempt to "reestablish dogmatically what had been destroyed."  It is a book that cost Strauss his career in a Swabian tragedy, but it sent studies of Jesus in new directions, with impact even till today. 

John Reuman
Professor of New Testament Studies
Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia