author
Arthur Drews
1865–1935
A provocative German philosopher and writer, he became one of the best-known early advocates of the Christ myth theory. His work mixed religion, philosophy, and cultural criticism in ways that stirred intense debate in the early 20th century.
1 Audiobook
The Christ Myth
by Arthur Drews
About the author
Born in Uetersen, Holstein, in 1865, Arthur Drews was a German philosopher, writer, and historian of religion. He taught at the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe, where he became known as an important voice in German monist thought and as a scholar deeply interested in the relationship between philosophy and religion.
Drews is remembered above all for The Christ Myth (1909), the book that made him internationally controversial. In it, he argued that Jesus was not a historical person but a mythical figure shaped by religious traditions and philosophical ideas. Whether readers agreed with him or not, the book placed him at the center of one of the fiercest religious and intellectual debates of his time.
Beyond that controversy, he wrote widely on philosophy, mythology, and the history of religion, and he was influenced by the ideas of Eduard von Hartmann. He died in 1935, but his name still appears whenever scholars and general readers revisit the history of radical biblical criticism and modern debates about the origins of Christianity.