Die Leugnung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (English: The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present) was a 1926 book in German by Arthur Drews on Christ myth theory.
The book is a historical review of some 35 major deniers of Jesus historicity (radicals, mythicists) covering the period 1780 – 1926, and was meant to be Drews’s response to Albert Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus of 1906. Drews’s book was in fact presented in the guise of "Quest of the non-Historicity of Jesus", with its own historical review of the key Jesus deniers.
As Schweitzer erected himself as the champion of "historicists", Drews stood up in opposition as the champion of "radicals" and "Jesus historicity deniers". They were later labelled "mythicists" by the media, a name never used by Drews, but popularized in the early 1940s by the British writers A.D. Howell Smith, in his book Jesus Not A Myth (1942) and Archibald Robertson in his book Jesus: Myth or History? (1946). This new label was convenient in opposing "mythicists" versus "historicists".
David Strauss and Bruno Bauer
Drews gives the most prominent place to David Strauss, who reduced all the supernatural events of the New Testament stories to the role of myths; and to Bruno Bauer, the first professional scholar who denied the historicity of Jesus, argued the priority of Mark as inventor of the Gospel story and the fiction of Jesus's existence, rejected all of Paul's epistles as non genuine, and emphasized the input of Greco-Roman ideas (especially the Stoicism of Seneca) in the New Testament documents. Both Strauss and Bauer were forced to abandon University life at a young age.
The five major Jesus Deniers who influenced Drews's Christ Myth
Among those Jesus deniers, Arthur Drews was especially influenced by the following thinkers: The German Bruno Bauer (1809–1882), the original pioneer of the denial of Jesus Historicity. See whole Ch. XI "The First Skeptical Life of Jesus" dedicated to Bruno Bauer, in Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906). The German Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906): - Die Entstehung des Christentums – Neue Beiträge zum Christusproblem, (1904), transl. The Rise of Christianity (1907); - Was wissen wir von Jesus? Eine Abrechnung mit Wilhelm Bousset (1904) [What do We Know of Jesus? A Settlement with Wilhelm Bousset]; - Modernes Christentum (1906) [Modern Christendom]. The American William Benjamin Smith (1850–1934), fluent in English and German, and close to Kalthoff: - The Pre-Christian Jesus, Studies of Origins of Primitive Christianity (1906/1911); - Ecce Deus: Studies Of Primitive Christianity, Introd. Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel (1912). The Scot J. M. Robertson (1856–1933): - Christianity and Mythology (1900–10); - A Short History of Christianity (1902); - Pagan Christs – Studies in Comparative Hierology (1903–1911). The Englishman Thomas Whittaker (1856–1935): The Origins of Christianity (1904), declaring Jesus a myth.
School of comparative history of religions
Space is dedicated to the major advocates of the School of (Comparative) History of Religions, flourishing in Germany (Die Religionsgeschichtliche Schule) and the United Kingdom. German orientalist Peter Jensen, an expert on Semitic Languages and Babylonian literature, in Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der Weltliteratur, (Part I, 1906 & Part II, 1928) [The Epic of Gilgamesh in World Literature], had analyzed the Epic of Gilgamesh, and found parallels in all later ANE myths, including the Hebrew Tanakh, Moses and Isaiah, thus impacting on the authenticity of the Christian Gospels and destroyed the unique character of the Jesus story. Alfred Jeremias (1864–1935), another expert in ANE languages and mythology, had published The Epic of Gilgamesh (1891) and advocated panbabylonism, the thesis that sees the Ancient Hebrew stories directly derived from Babylonian mythology. The English summary (by Klaus Schilling) of The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus describes Jeremias's views: [Jeremias] only admitted Chaldean origin of early Judaism, but couldn't deny that there was some sort of impact from old Babylon in the New Testament. The Babylonian-Chaldean worldview is about the most astralmythical and astrological worldview found in history of cultures; the terms 'astrological' and 'Chaldean' were used synonymously by many authors since Hellenic times. In this sense Jeremias continued the works of Volney and Dupuis... The Christian calendar tells the story of the astral redeemer king, the 12 apostles are akin to the zodiac, and the 4 Gospels are akin to the cardinal points of the world.