Debating The Christ Myth: Radical Theology in German Public Life, c. 1900–14

In 1907, Arthur Drews’ provoked a massive controversy in Germany with the publication of The Christ Myth. In this book, Drews argued that the biblical life of Jesus was a pagan myth and that the true founder of the Christian religion was the apostle Paul. In purely intellectual terms, there was nothing particularly novel about these arguments, which had their roots in the late enlightenment and had been taken up since then by a series of oddballs, iconoclasts, and academic outsiders (Drews held a relatively unprestigious post at the Technical College of Karlsruhe). What is interesting, however, is the reaction they engendered, not only in Germany’s theological establishment, but within in a wider swath of the public. Indeed, Drews’s book is just one sign of a popularization of religious standpoints that challenged not just Protestant or Catholic orthodoxies but the core narratives of the Christian religion.

This paper will first consider the major theses of Arthur Drews’s The Christ Myth, locating his project within a broader critique of the “History of Religions School” and older traditions of Protestant liberal theology. Next, it will consider the public reaction to Drews’s book, which quickly ran into three editions and was promoted by groups like the Monist League, but which also elicited massive public protests in Berlin and elsewhere. Last, it will consider the responses of theologians and others academics, who in many cases were drawn into the controversy against their will (indeed, in some cases, only because of the public reaction). In the end, this controversy tells us much about the significance of religious debates in Wilhelmine public life, while highlighting the weakened stance of university theologians as they confronted the public’s growing fascination with (and consumption of) post-Christian religious ideas.