His Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet of 1835–6 (trs. as The Life of Jesus Critically Examined by George Eliot, 1846) created an enormous storm by viewing the historicity of the New Testament through new and sceptical historical spectacles. Strauss himself preserved a mythological interpretation of the value of Christianity, seeing it in Hegelian mode as a phase in the existence of humanity rather than part of the biography of God, but in later years he became a more forthright atheist.