Bruno Bauer, the German theologian and historian, studied theology under P. H. Marheineke in Berlin, at the height of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's influence there. When Bauer became a docent at the University of Berlin in 1834, he joined Marheineke on the Hegelian right wing. When he transferred to the University of Bonn in 1839, however, he was already reacting theologically against right-wing Hegelianism. D. F. Strauss's Life of Jesus (1835–1836) rocked the theological world, but it seemed to Bauer not sufficiently critical, and helped to spur him on to his own investigations of the Gospels.

Bauer began with literary criticism of the Gospel texts themselves, without making any assumptions about the historical life of Jesus or the early church. The fourth Gospel was simply a work of reflective Christian art dominated by Philo's logos concept, impressive as such, but without historical basis (Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte...