Bruno Bauer

Biography

Bauer was the son of a painter on Porcelaine in Eisenberg in Saxony-Altenburg. He studied under the direction of Hegel itself until the death of this last in 1831. Hegel rewarded by a price for the University its young pupil for a philosophical test where he criticized Kant.

Bauer studied at the University Friedrich Wilhelm of Berlin, where it belonged to those which one called Hégéliens of right-hand side led by Philip Marheineke.

In 1834 it has started to teach in Berlin like bachelor in theology and in 1839 was transferred to the University from Bonn.
In 1838 it published its Kritische Darstellung der Religion of Alten Testaments (2 flights.), which shows that on this date it was still faithful to the right-hand side hégélienne.

In reaction to the Life of Jesus of David Strauss, it is plunged in the study of the Gospels to defend the honor of Jesus but with the wire of its study its opinion evolves/moves and in two work, one on the Fourth Gospel, Kritik DER evangelischen Geschichte of Johannes (1840) and another on the Synoptiques, Kritik DER evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (1841), as well as in its Herr Hengstenberg, kritische Briefe über den Gegensatz of Gesetzes und of Evangeliums , it showed a complete rejection of sound former Orthodoxie. Bauer joined the Jeunes hégéliens or “Hégéliens de Gauche”. It publishes in anonymous manner, at the end of 1841, a satirical and ironic lampoon in which Karl Marx entitled the trumpet of the last judgment would have taken part. Against Hegel, the atheist and the Antichrist. An ultimatum. In this work it shows the subjacent atheism of the hegelianism by taking the point of view of a believer who uncovers a philosophy without god who disguises himself in Christianity. In 1842 the government revoked it and it was withdrawn for the remainder of its life with Rixdorf, close to Berlin.

Its work is at that time the critical comment object of Karl Marx in the Jewish Question.

It gathered around him the club of the doctors, from now on called the freien. As from this moment, it was taken of an interest impassioned for the modern history and for the policy, as much as for theology and it published Geschichte der Politik, Kultur und Aufklärung of the 18ten Jahrhunderts (4 flights. 1843 -1845), Geschichte DER französischen Revolution (3 flights. 1847) and Disraelis romantischer und Bismarcks' socialistischer Imperialismus (1882) . Among his other critical work one can quote 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 epistles of Paul, Kritik DER paulinischen Briefe (1850-1852).

The criticism of Bauer of New Testament was extremely déconstructrice. David Strauss, in his Life of Jesus , had explained why the accounts of the Gospels were unconscious products with half of the mythical instinct in the primitive Christian communities. Bauer turned into ridiculous this design. He affirmed itself, taking again a theory of C.G. Wilke ( Der Urevangelist , 1838), that the original account was the Gospel of Marc.

This Gospel, affirmed it, had been completed under the reign of Hadrian (while its prototype, the Ur-Marcus , that a critical analysis made it possible to find in the Évangile according to Marc, had been started about the time of Flavius Josèphe and the wars between Romains and Jews). Bauer, like other partisans of this assumption marcian, was persuaded that all the other accounts evangelic had made use of the Gospel of Marc as of model in the communities where they had been written.

Albert Schweitzer, one of those which studied the work of Bruno Bauer, called of him that it had started by wanting to defend the honor of Jesus by defending his reputation against the inept parody of biography which had forged the Christian apologists . However, a thorough study of New Testament had made it arrive at this conclusion which it was about a fiction supplements and he regarded the Marc evangelist not only as the first narrator, but even as that which had invented all the history which was nothing any more but one fiction while Christianity rested on the inventions of only one person”. (Otto Pfleiderer).

Bauer published many articles in various newspapers, defending its " critique" , critical policy, then critical criticism or critical pure. Bauer the hégélien of left will influence in particular Stirner.

Although Bauer had examined the “Ur-Marcus”, these are the remarks on the current version of the Gospel of Marc which drew the attention of the public. Especially, some key topics in the Gospel of Marc appeared arts persons purely to him. Topic well-known of secrecy Messianic, in which Jesus did not cease operating miracles to say then to those which had been pilot to tell them with anybody, seemed in Bauer an example in imaginary fact. If it is the case, wrote it, then the writer who added that this topic was probably the final writer of our current version of the Gospel of Marc. In this Bauer speculation was not a isolated theologist besides.

Thus certain important theologists of the School of Tübingen regarded some of the epistles of Paul as counterfeits of the 2nd century. Bauer approved some their conclusions and added to them his to it, developing its theological analyzes. For example, it suggested that the epistles of Paul had been written in Occident to be opposed to the Paul Acts. Bauer continued while discussing on the preponderance the element gréco-Roman on the Jewish element, in the Christian Writings and it supported its theory by depicting a whole historical background.

According to Bauer, the author of the Gospel of Marc was “an Italian who felt at his place at the same time in Rome and Alexandria”; that of the Gospel of Matthieu “a Romain, nourished spirit of Sénèque”; Christianity is primarily “Stoicism triumphing in a Juif disguise. ”

It is obvious that Marc is a Roman name, not a Jewish name. It in what Bruno Bauer innovated came to him from an attentive examination of the European literature of the first century. According to him many key topics of New Testament, in particularly those which are opposed to them the Old one, can be found rather easily the literature gréco-Roman which flowered at the first century. (We must note here that the same point of view was also supported by some Juifs scientists.)

The last book of Bauer, Christ and Césars (1877) offers a penetrating analysis which shows that key words are common to the authors of the first century, like stoical Sénèque, and with the texts of New Testament. It is a thing which had already been noticed, but it was explained formerly that Sénèque had probably been secretly Christian. Bruno Bauer is perhaps the first to have wanted to show that certain authors of New Testament had made loans with Sénèque freely.

(to be followed)

Bonds

One will off consult the article on Bruno Bauer in Stanford Encyclopedia Philosophy

Simple: Bruno Bauer

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