Abstract

The conflict about the fragments of "Apologia or Defense for the Rational Reverers of God" by the Hamburg scholar Hermann Samuel Reimarus and the Counter-propositions by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing caused an uproar in the Lutheran theological world of the 18th century. Would this form of Christianity, rooted in the tradition of the Lutheran Reformation, be superseded by the Enlightenment if literary, historical and religious-philosophical criticism of the Bible were now allowed? Lessing presents his solution of the problem in Axioms, which this book places in the context of his overall thought.