STRAUSS, DAVID FRIEDRICH (1808–1874), German biblical critic, man of letters, and freethinker. Strauss is best known for his monumental book The Life of Jesus (1835). In some fifteen hundred pages, half of which are devoted to an analysis of the miracle and the death-resurrection stories in the New Testament, he argued that neither a supernaturalistic nor a rationalistic interpretation of them is credible. Rather, these narratives should be regarded as the results of a naive, primitive mentality whose natural form of expression is myth. Under the flush of religious enthusiasm, messianic fervor, and the personal influence of Jesus, the early Christians applied specifically messianic myths and legends to Jesus. In short, the "logic" of the New Testament narratives is this: "When the expected messiah comes, he will do all these miraculous things; Jesus is the messiah; therefore, Jesus must have done these things." In a concluding...