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His criticism of the New Testament was highly destructive.
I'm not sure what this is intended to mean. The New Testament was not destroyed by his criticism, though perhaps some people's belief in it was.
Perhaps what was intended was deconstructive -- ie following a deconstructionist methodology, which may apply here (I'm no expert on Bauer). For the moment, I've changed "destructive" to "deconstructive". Please correct if you know better. -Anthropos 18:45, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)
This article is appropriated essentially verbatim from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Public ___domain, but still, isn't there anyone out there who can write a contemporary article? "His criticism of the New Testament was highly destructive" is accurate enough, since he demonstrated rather convincingly that it is not a work of accurate historical content but an invention written a century after the events purported to take place. We look above all to Bruno Bauer to apprise us that the historical Jesus was a total fiction. See Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 1905. --David Westling, 28 Sept 2005
- David Westling is quite right in his statement on Bruno Bauer’s views. The paragraphs dealing with Otto Pfleiderer and Albert Schweitzer’s reviews of Bruno Bauer convey the idea that they had different interpretations of Bruno Bauer, this is in fact not correct. I have read the 11th chapter on Bruno Bauer in Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical and it does not deny but actually confirms Otto Pfleiderer’s standpoint that Bauer Bauer considered the new testament to be a work of fiction. I will merge and modify those paragraphs to reflect this if there are no objections. I have already added a link to that chapter in the external links section of the article and anyone can read it if they doubt what I have said. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.226.49.141 (talk) 23:42, 18 January 2006
- Certainly 'deconstructive', in the sense of analytic breakdown, is better than 'destructive'. Bauer was an analyst of the highest order within historical criticism and textual analysis. However, I must disagree with the authorities that are cited here -- I'm a published author (2002) on the topic of Bruno Bauer and my assessment is that Bauer did not go over to atheism, as most scholars, including Moggach (2004) have maintained consistently throughout the 20th century. A new wave of Bauer studies is emerging from the Hegel Society of America. Bauer's keyword is 'Self-consciousness' and that word comes from Hegel's description of God. It is a radical theology, surely, but it isn't atheism. Neither Hegel nor Bauer were atheists, by my reading, rather, they were critics of ordinary Christianity and reformers in the high sense. The old Jesus Seminar of America was very much in the spirit of Bruno Bauer. Bauer was simply 150 years ahead of his time, as was Hegel. Petrejo 15:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)