ABSTRACT
Challenging poetics of the subject by the likes of Schiller, Hölderlin, and Goethe coupled with the limitless possibilities of a Christ without form added to the growing changes in nineteenth century theological poetics surrounding the figuring of Jesus. As this chapter will discuss, the act of writing and reading which had, prior to Higher Criticism, grounded a Christian subject’s identity upon the “word of God” as historically and epistemologically indisputable, thereby providing a centre point and focus for answers to build an identity upon, were now called into question. Key to this shift was the questioning of historicity in relation to biblical narratives by Strauss and other Hegelians which destabilised the once essential relationship that was presupposed between “history” and “truth”. As noted by Douglas Templeton in The New Testament as True Fiction, these shifts affected not only the genre of biblical criticism, but also fiction:
