The controversy following the publication of David Friedrich Strauss's Das Leben Jesu (1835) has come to signify the beginning of a radical new phase of theological modernity. This “inspired book,” as Strauss once called it, had much influence on the Left Hegelians, and through them on Karl Marx. Yet despite its perceived novelty, the ideas it embodied were far from new; Strauss's path was prepared by many late Aufklärung biblical scholars whose critical endeavors challenged the supremacy of traditional literal and figural readings of the Bible characteristic of Protestant scholarship since the Reformation. As is well known, the Enlightenment among German intellectuals was not predominantly an antireligious or anti-Christian phenomenon. On the contrary, Aufkädrung thinkers earnestly desired to reformulate Christian doctrine and biblical hermeneutical principles to give Christianity a more secure rational basis and assure its survival in the modern world.

In eighteenth-century German theological scholarship, rational truth was held to possess such qualities as necessity, eternity, and universality. For this reason, historically mediated truth was increasingly regarded as a contradiction in terms.