ABSTRACT
What is the relevance or actuality, as the French like to say, of David Strauss and Bruno Bauer (and for that matter, Ludwig Feuerbach) today? In their own time they caused outrage, were sacked from university posts and denied positions. Outside Germany (Prussia) they were known as part of the corroding ‘German Pestilence’ that would ruin almost two millennia of facts about the Bible. No less a thinker than Nietzsche made a shipwreck of his faith after reading Strauss. In our own time, especially with the so-called minimalist position in biblical studies, we find a return to many of their concerns. It is as though the implications of the radical work of these nineteenth-century scholars have yet to be realized.
