Bruno Bauer

Background

Bauer was born on the 6th of September 1809; the son of a painter in a porcelain factory, at Eisenberg in Saxe-Altenburg (now Thuringia), Germany.

Education

Bauer studied at Berlin, where he attached himself to the "Right" of the Hegelian school under P. Marheineke.

Career

In 1834 Bauer began to teach in Berlin as a licentiate of theology, and in 1839 was transferred to Bonn. In 1838 he published his Kritische Darstellung der Religion des Alien Testaments (2 vols. ), which shows that at that date he was still faithful to the Hegelian Right. Soon afterwards his opinions underwent a change, and in two works, one on the Fourth Gospel, Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes (1840), and the other on the Synoptics, Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (1841), as well as in his Herr Hengstenberg, kritische Briefe uber den Gegensatz des Gesetzes und des Evangeliums, he announced his complete rejection of his earlier orthodoxy. In 1842 the government revoked his license and he retired for the rest of his life to Rixdorf, near Berlin. Henceforward he took a deep interest in modern history and politics, as well as in theology, and published Geschichte der Politik, Kultur und Aufklarung des 18ten Jahrhunderts (4 vols. 1843 - 1845), Geschichte der franzosischen Revolution (3 vols. 1847), and Disraelis romantischer und Bismarcks socialistischerlmperialismus (1882). Other critical works are: a criticism of the gospels and a history of their origin, Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs (1850 - 1852), a book on the Acts of the Apostles, Apostelgeschichte (1850), and a criticism of the Pauline epistles; Kritik der paulinischen Briefe (1850 - 1852).

He died at Rixdorf on the 13th of April 1882.

Achievements

• Bauer investigated the sources of the New Testament and, beginning with Hegel's Hellenophile orientation, concluded that early Christianity owed more to ancient Greek philosophy (Stoicism) than to Judaism. Starting in 1840, he began a series of works arguing that Jesus was a 2nd-century fusion of Jewish, Greek, and Roman theology.

Works

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  • The Trumpet of the Last Judgement Against Hegel the Atheist and Antichrist: An Ultimatum (Studies in German Thought and History) (English and German Edition)

    (This translated work is an example of the type of writing...)

  • Freimaurer, Jesuiten Und Illuminaten in Ihrem Geschichtlichen Zusammenhang (German Edition)

    (Freimaurer, Jesuiten und Illuminaten in ihrem geschichtli...)

  • Kritik der paulinischen Briefe: Mit einem Nachwort von Hermann Detering (Kommentierte Kindle-Klassiker der Radikalkritik 3) (German Edition)

    (In seiner "Kritik der paulinischen Briefe" bestreitet Bru...)

  • Der christliche Staat und unsere Zeit (Klassiker der Philosophie) (Volume 23) (German Edition)

    (Bruno Bauer (1809 -1882) war ein deutscher Theologe, Bibe...)

  • Theologische Schamlosigkeiten (Klassiker der Philosophie) (Volume 24) (German Edition)

    (Bruno Bauer (1809-1882) war ein deutscher Theologe, Bibel...)

  • Christ and the Caesars: The Origin of Christianity from the Mythology of Rome and Greece

    (Nearly thirty years after Bruno Bauer published his 1877 ...)

  • Disraelis Romantischer und Bismarcks Sozialistischer Imperialismus

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Russland Und England - Primary Source Edition (German Edition)

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Christus Und Die Caesaren

Views

Bauer was a radical Rationalist in philosophy, politics and Biblical criticism. His criticism of the New Testament was of a highly destructive type. David Strauss in his Life of Jesus had accounted for the Gospel narratives as half-conscious products of the mythic instinct in the early Christian communities. Bauer ridiculed Strauss's notion that a community could produce a connected narrative. His own contention, embodying a theory of C. G. Wilke (Der Urevangelist, 1838), was that the original narrative was the Gospel of Mark; that this was composed in the reign of Hadrian; and that after this the other narratives were modelled by other writers. He, however, "regarded Mark not only as the first narrator, but even as the creator of the gospel history, thus making the latter a fiction and Christianity the invention of a single original evangelist " (Pfleiderer). On the same principle the four principal Pauline epistles were regarded as forgeries of the 2nd century. He argued further for the preponderance of the Graeco-Roman element, as opposed to the Jewish, in the Christian writings. The writer of Mark's gospel was "an Italian, at home both in Rome and Alexandria"; that of Matthew's gospel "a Roman, nourished by the spirit of Seneca"; the Pauline epistles were written in the West in antagonism to the Paul of the Acts, and so on. Christianity is essentially "Stoicism triumphant in a Jewish garb. " This line of criticism has found few supporters, mostly in the Netherlands. It certainly had its value in emphasizing the importance of studying the influence of environment in the formation of the Christian Scriptures.

Quotations: "Thus in Christianity the alienation had become total, and it was this total alienation that was the biggest obstacle to the progress of self-consciousness. "

"We save the honor of Jesus when we restore His Person to life from the state of inanity to which the apologists have reduced it, and give it once more a living relation to history, which it certainly possessed. "

"His very chains helped to deceive him about the harshness of his service. "

"The pure Christian State is a State in which theological law prevails. This law attains to real power or, to be more exact, absolute power, when through its results which are identical with those of opium, it puts all parts of humanity to sleep. If some occasionally awake they carry out crimes that horrify humanity which has not yet become Christian in the full sense of the word or has already abandoned the Christian framework. "

"There is no longer any religion when there is no longer any privileged religion. Take from religion its exclusive power and it will no longer exist. "

Personality

Bauer was a man of restless, impetuous activity and independent, if ill-balanced, judgment, one who, as he himself perceived, was more in place as a free-lance of criticism than as an official teacher. He came in the end to be regarded kindly even by opponents, and he was not afraid of taking a line displeasing to his liberal friends on the Jewish question (Die Judenfrage, 1843). His attitude towards the Jews is dealt with in the article in the Jewish Encyclopedia.

References

• The Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer (Modern European Philosophy)
• Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx: The Influence of Bruno Bauer on Marx’s Thought (Studies in Social History)
• The Holy Family or Critique of Critical criticism: against Bruno Bauer and company
• Bruno Bauer
• Bruno Bauers Übergang von der Hegelschen Rechten zum Radikalismus; Inaugural-Dissertation (German Edition)