Hermann Samuel Reimarus

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (22 December 1694, Hamburg – 1 March 1768, Hamburg), was a German philosopher and writer of the Enlightenment who is remembered for his Deism, the doctrine that human reason can arrive at a knowledge of God and ethics from a study of nature and our own internal reality, thus eliminating the need for religions based on revelation.

His house was the center of the highest culture of Hamburg; and a monument of his influence in that city still remains in the Haus der patriotischen Gesellschaft, where the learned and artistic societies partly founded by him still meet.

[3] Reimarus' reputation as a scholar rests on the valuable edition of Dio Cassius (1750–52) which he prepared from the materials collected by Johann Andreas Fabricius.

He published a work on logic (Vernunftlehre als Anweisung zum richtigen Gebrauche der Vernunft, 1756, 5th ed., 1790), and two popular books on the religious questions of the day.

[3] But Reimarus' main contribution to theological science was his analysis of the historical Jesus, Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes ("An apology for, or some words in defense of, reasoning worshippers of God" – read by only a few intimate friends during his lifetime), which he left unpublished.

After Reimarus' death, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing published parts of this work as "Fragments by an Anonymous Writer" in his Zur Geschichte und Literatur in 1774–1778, giving rise to what is known as the Fragmentenstreit.

It abounds in error as to matters of fact, contradicts human experience, reason and morals, and is one tissue of folly, deceit, enthusiasm, selfishness and crime.

[3] According to Reimarus, the Old Testament says little of the worship of God, and that little is worthless, while its writers are unacquainted with the second fundamental truth of religion, the immortality of the soul (see sheol).

The design of the writers of the New Testament, as well as that of Jesus, was not to teach true rational religion, but to serve their own selfish ambitions, thereby exhibiting an amazing combination of conscious fraud and enthusiasm.

But of all doctrines that of eternal punishment is most contrary, Reimarus thinks, to true ideas of God; and it was this point which first caused him to stumble.

While calling the views expressed in the Fragments mistaken in some respects and one-sided, Schweitzer describes the essay on "The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples" as not only "one of the greatest events in the history of criticism" but also "a masterpiece of general literature".