The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined / Translated from the Fourth German Edition / In Three Volumes. Vol. I.

Strauss, Dr. David Friedrich (TRANSLATED BY MARY ANN EVANS / GEORGE ELIOT)

Published by Chapman Brothers, London, 1846

About this Item

Volume One only of the three-volume edition, generally credited as the first edition in English (though that honor may actually belong to the four-volume Taylor-Hetherington edition of 1842-44, from the German third edition, translator not known.) This Chapman edition of 1846 translated (though the translator is not credited in the text) by Mary Ann Evans, and thus the first published work of the author who would later write as "George Eliot." Rebound in generic gray boards with title and author stamped to spine, with new endpapers. Thumbnail-sized stain to top page edges, possibly blood. Aside from an unobtrusive Dewey decimal in pencil to blank verso of title page, the only remaining library marking is a "Hotchkiss School Library" blindstamp to title page, overstamped in red "Withdrawn." 423 pp., followed by a 16-page catalog of other works from the publisher. Two small holes have been torn in the last leaf of this catalog, with the loss of perhaps 20 words of catalog text. Strauss applied historical methods to determine that much found in the gospels cannot be literally true, for example the report by two of the evangelists that Joseph and Mary, residents of Nazareth, were required to travel to obscure and far-away Bethlehem in answer to the summons of a Roman census that all men go to the city where their family originated in order to be counted. Such a logistically absurd undertaking would have been foreign to Roman practice, and that's before we even consider that there is no ancient evidence that any such census was ordered or taken in Judea or Galilee at or near that time. The need, of course, was to explain how Jesus -- who everyone knew was from Nazareth -- might have come to be born in little Bethlehem, as supposedly required by certain earlier messianic prophesies. This copy now reduced from $370 to $57. Seller Inventory # 003186

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined / ...

Publisher: Chapman Brothers, London

Publication Date: 1846

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

Edition: 1st Edition