The Life of Jesus Critically Examined

on their own time, as well as the service they render in opening new lines of thought, gives them a unique value for all future generations as admirable weapons in the great fight for truth and freedom. Indeed, if our scientists are to be believed when they say that the development of the individual is only an abbreviated repetition of the slower phases of the development of the species, it is not too much to maintain that every individual in the present and future—who resolves to make his way from the bondage of a naive trust in authority and tradition into the freedom and light of mature thought—must pass through the precise stage of thoroughgoing logical negative criticism represented by Strauss’s work.

Just as Christian ethics suggests that the formation of a pure moral character is possible only through the death of the "old Adam," the rise of true religious convictions requires a similar original: "Stirb und werde" "die and become." The imaginary lights of mythological tradition must be extinguished so that the eye can distinguish the false from the true in the twilight of our religion's Biblical origins. The ancient structures of belief, which human childish fancy constructed out of truth and poetry—original: "Wahrheit und Dichtung"—must be taken down and cleared away so that a new structure of more durable materials may be raised. To all earnest seekers of truth, Strauss’s Life of Jesus is helpful, not as a provider of ready-made truth, but as a means of stripping the bandages of prejudice from the eyes, enabling them to see clearly and seek truth rightly. For these reasons, the publication of a new edition of the English translation is clearly justified.