BAUER, BRUNO (1809-1882)

This article appears in Volume V03, Page 538 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BAR-BEC

BAUER, BRUNO (1809-1882) , German theologianand historian, was born on the 6th of September 1809, the son of a painter in a

porcelain

PORCELAIN

factory, at

Eisenberg

EISENBERG (Isenberg)

in Saxe-Altenburg. He studied at Berlin, where he attached himself to the " Right " of the Hegelian school under P. Marheineke. In 1834 he 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 Allen Testaments (2 vols.), which shows that at that date he was still faithful to the Hegelian Right. Soon afterwards his opinions underwent a

change

CHANGE (derived through the Fr. from the Late Lat. cambium, cambiare, to barter; the ultimate derivation is probably from the root which appears in the Gr. «a urmu', to bend)

, and in two works, one on the Fourth Gospel, Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes (184o), and the other on the Synoptics, Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (1841), as well as in his Herr Hengstenberg, kritische Briefe fiber den Gegensatz des Gesetzes rand 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

INTEREST

in modern history and politics, as well as in theology, and published Geschichte der Politik, Kultur and Aufklarung des 18ten Jahrhunderts (4 vols. 1843-1845), Geschichte der franzosischen Revolution (3 vols. 1847), and Disraelis romantischer and Bismarcks socialistischerlmperialismus (1882). Other

critical

CRITICAL (in alphabetical order of authors)

works are: a criticism of the gospels and a history of their origin, Kritik der Evangelien and 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, 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

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

ORIGINAL

evangelist " (Pfleiderer). On the same principle the four principal Pauline epistles were regarded as forgeries of the and century. He argued further for the preponderance of the Graeco-Roman

element

ELEMENT (Lat. elementum)

, 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. Bauer was a man of rest-less, 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. See generally

Herzog

HERZOG, HANS (1819–1894)
HERZOG, JOHANN JAKOB (1805-1882)

-Hauck, Realencyklopadie; and cf. Otto Pfleiderer, Development of Theology, p. 226; Carl Schwarz, Zur Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, pp. 142 ff. ; and F. Lichtenberger, History of German Theology in the 19th Century (1889), PP. 374-378.

End of Article: BAUER, BRUNO (1809-1882)

If you wish, you can link directly to this article.

<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/BAR_BEC/BAUER_BRUNO_1809_1882_.html">
BAUER, BRUNO (1809-1882)
</a>

(Previous)
BAUDRY, PAUL JACQUES

(Next)
BAUERNFELD, EDUARD VON (1802-1890)

JCSM was founded in 1997 and exists to help the community and bring people into a life-changing and productive relationship with Jesus Christ. JCSM offers over 200,000 free web pages, including its weekly inspirational emails that were sent continuously for over a decade.

Jesus Christ Saves Ministries
P.O. Box 9297
San Diego, CA 92169
1-888-887-0417 or Email