1. The Modern Quest for the Historical Jesus
Throughout church history, there has always been an interest in expressing the story of Jesus in terms of a historical survey of his life, frequently in a more-or-less chronological manner. Many differing stances have motivated such enterprises. For example, a desire to combine the four Gospel accounts into a single narrative has always been popular. Other writers have concentrated on limited aspects of his life, such as his birth, preaching, death, or resurrection. Many such attempts have sought to be faithful to the New Testament record, believing it to be fully accurate in all it recorded.
Other approaches to the life of Jesus have not shared the conviction that the Gospels were totally accurate. Some scholars think that the Gospels are poor records, dominated not by historical concerns, but written as religious propaganda for the purpose of communicating a particular message. Many such critical surveys have sought to reinterpret the story of Jesus in manners that emphasize non-traditional roles, viewing him as a political revolutionary, or as a Jewish prophet, or even as a magician.
But of course there are far more than just two general approaches that view the Gospels either as historical or as less than reliable. There is a myriad of possible “resting places” along the conservative-liberal spectrum. There are also attempts to address the life of Jesus in other than strictly historical terms, preferring fictional settings that often imagine Jesus’ life during the years over which the Gospels say almost nothing — from his birth to the beginning of his public ministry.
In brief, there has been no shortage of different approaches to what is often called the most influential life ever lived. A brief overview of some of the more dominant trends during the last two centuries may be a helpful backdrop for the remainder of this volume.
The Fictitious Lives of Jesus
From the late eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries, both before and during the heyday of Protestant Liberalism, there were numerous attempts to formulate what Albert Schweitzer called the “fictitious lives of Jesus.” In his view, these volumes were chiefly characterized as the words of “a few imperfectly equipped free-lances.” Yet, in spite of the preponderance of fictional elements, Schweitzer considers them the first of the modern lives of Jesus.
Such works often attempted to invent Jesus’ internal motivations and speculate on other aspects of his life, even in areas where the Gospels are silent. The typical approach was to postulate the existence of a secret organization or association. Often this was the Essenes, who were portrayed as being leading, but secret, members of society, and hence were able to manipulate events and circumstances in Jesus’ life. But Schweitzer refers to these plot theses as “rather a sorry makeshift.”
Karl Bahrdt wrote one of the earliest attempts, a multi-volumed effort, from 1784–1792. For Bahrdt, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were Essenes who sought to keep secret their identity. At an early age, Jesus got involved with this clandestine order and later was viewed as a valued member. Through the efforts of this secret group, Jesus staged his “miracles.” Luke was particularly responsible for the healings. The Essenes also plotted Jesus’ death, and Luke administered drugs, causing Jesus to survive crucifixion. Afterwards, Jesus was nursed back to health, which allowed him to make several visits to his followers.
Perhaps the best known and most imitated of the fictitious lives of Jesus was written by Karl Venturini from 1800–1802. From his youth, Jesus was protected and trained by the Essenes. The “miracles” he performed during his public ministry were not really supernatural. His healings, for example, were effected by medicines. Venturini did not invent a plot surrounding Jesus’ death, and Jesus actually expected to die. But Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus noticed signs that Jesus might still be alive while they were preparing his body for burial. They signaled the Essenes, who later removed his body. After having recovered somewhat, Jesus was periodically seen by his disciples.
Later, fictitious lives by writers such as Gfrörer (written between 1831 and 1838), Hennell (1838) and Salvator (1838) all postulated that the Essenes were involved in many aspects of Jesus’ ministry. All three authors likewise asserted that Jesus was nursed back to health by the Essenes after his crucifixion so that he could visit his followers.
Each of these writers conjectured that Jesus did not die by crucifixion, but was nursed back to health by the members of a secret group, and recovered sufficiently enough to visit with his disciples.
The Classical Period
The nineteenth century was the classical period of Protestant Liberalism. Often dated from the publication of Schleiermacher’s On Religion
However, Jesus was not depicted as he was portrayed in the Gospels. The emphasis in the majority of these studies was on Jesus as a great example for living, with the implication that we should pattern our lives after his. But at least two key elements in the Gospels were usually either denied or ignored. Supernatural aspects such as Jesus’ miracles were treated as nonhistorical. Further, dogmatic theology was eschewed, especially the doctrine of Jesus’ deity. It was assumed that, while Jesus was an outstanding moral pattern, he was only a man.
An example may serve to illustrate the liberal methodology. In the early phase of the movement, the predominant approach to Jesus’ miracles was to rationalize them, most often by explaining how something that the Gospel writers considered to be supernatural could really be understood better as the normal operation of nature. This was a carryover from the deistic thinking of the previous century.
David Strauss’ Life of Jesus, published just a few years later in 1835, presented a serious and influential challenge to Paulus’ classic approach. Strauss supplanted the rationalistic replacement method with a mythical strategy that questioned many reports about the historical Jesus. He held that the Gospels were chiefly mythological documents that utilized normal description in order to depict transcendental ideas in seemingly historical garb. The overall purpose of the New Testament language was to express essentially inexpressible truths in a manner that allowed them to be more readily applied to life.
Most obviously, the mythical approach popularized by Strauss and others denied the basic historicity of the Gospels, thereby challenging the orthodox position. Not as evident, however, is how this method even undermined the earlier rationalistic strategies of those such as Paulus, inasmuch as they, too, relied on a certain amount of factual reliability in the Gospel accounts of Jesus.
These two methodologies serve not only to typify the major Liberal treatments of miracles, but provide models for the entire subject of the life of Jesus. As such, they present two distinct methods of approaching the Gospel data.
Still, Classical Liberalism as a whole fell on hard times earlier this century. It espoused an overly optimistic outlook, holding an evolutionary anthropology that involved humans reaching higher levels of consciousness. But such a view was overwhelmed by the realities of World War I and the recognition of intrinsic weaknesses within human nature. Those scholars who could not abandon their idealistic beliefs in the goodness of man, who still clung tenaciously to their convictions, struggled past the greatest slaughter of human lives in history, only to be confronted by the carnage of World War II. Liberalism was unable to maintain its leadership in the theological realm.
Liberalism suffered setbacks for other reasons, as well. For our purposes, the major issue is not only whether there is warrant for the belief that Jesus lived and acted in history. On this subject, there was little dispute. But we are also interested if there is any basis for supernatural events in his life. This remains to be seen.
De-emphasizing the Historical Jesus
The publication of Barth’s Epistle to the Romans
Barth’s Neo-orthodoxy replaced Liberalism in the forefront of contemporary theological dialogue. However, while opposing a variety of the Liberal theological emphases, Barth and his followers were rather uninterested in the historical Jesus, preferring to divorce evidential concerns from the exercise of faith.
The work of Rudolf Bultmann was another major influence against the pursuit of the historical Jesus. His 1941 essay “New Testament and Mythology” popularized the theological methodology of demythologization, including a de-emphasis on utilizing any evidential foundations for faith.
While Barth and Bultmann were quite different in their theological agendas, to be sure, and often radically opposed to one another,
The New Quest for the Historical Jesus
For years many theologians remained under the influence of Bultmann’s existential approach. But there were also signs of some dissatisfaction. In a landmark 1953 lecture, Ernst Käsemann argued that early Christian commitment to a particular message did not require believers to be uninterested in at least some minimum amount of historical facts in the life of Jesus. Rather, belief in Jesus actually requires the presence of some historical content.
Other Bultmannian scholars soon joined Käsemann in a modest critique of skeptical approaches that attempted to eliminate any historical basis in early Christianity. At the same time, scholars like Günther Bornkamm also continued certain other Bultmannian emphases: a rejection of the Nineteenth Century quest for the historical Jesus, and the assertion that faith does not depend on historical scholarship. Nevertheless, a substantial amount could be known about the life of Jesus.
Citing the influence of Käsemann, Bornkamm, and others, James Robinson rejected the old quest, while calling for a new approach to the historical Jesus. In agreement with others that faith was not dependent on historical research, he still asserted that the Christian kerygma (the core teachings) required an historical basis:
This emphasis in the kerygma upon the historicity of Jesus is existentially indispensable, precisely because the kerygma . . . proclaims the meaningfulness of life ‘in the flesh’.
It is this concern of the kerygma for the historicity of Jesus which necessitates a new quest.
The “New Quest” for the historical Jesus scholars, as they came to be called, popularized a test for historical authenticity in the life of Jesus. Often termed the “criterion of dissimilarity,” this test dictates that we can only know that material in Jesus’ life is authentic if it is not derived either from primitive Christian teachings or from Judaism. When Gospel material originates from neither of these sources, one can be reasonably sure that the material is historical.
However, the resulting application of the criterion of dissimilarity yields significantly less material than the methodology employed by the old quest. One major criticism is that this test would allow Jesus to share neither Jewish nor Christian beliefs, which is ludicrous in that he was raised in the former milieu and is the chief inspiration for the latter. Thus this approach fails to extricate itself from the historical skepticism that it is critiquing.
Further, the question is whether additional data can be justified, and on what grounds. Other scholars went much further in their critique of those who would severely curtail the search for history in the life of Jesus, which was the dominant trend until at least the middle of this century. Sometimes conclusions seemed more sympathetic to the stance of traditional Christianity, especially in arguing for some of the supernatural elements contained in the Gospels.
Wolfhart Pannenberg headed a group of intellectuals who argued forcefully for the concept of God’s revelation in time-space history.
The Third Quest for the Historical Jesus
It is probably accurate to say that, at the present, there has been a somewhat positive assessment of attempts to understand Jesus in historical terms. Interestingly enough, this attitude often crosses liberal-conservative lines. Although there is no identifiable consensus among current scholars, current trends have led to what some have called the “Third Quest” for the historical Jesus.
More positive in its assessment of the historical Jesus than was the “New Quest,” it is also more difficult to produce certain common earmarks of the latest installment of Jesus research, due to the inclusion of such a wide spectrum of views. Perhaps the chief characteristic is the emphasis on anchoring Jesus against the backdrop of his own time, especially with regard to the Jewish setting and context for Jesus’ life and teachings. Any interpretation that does not recognize the “Jewishness” of Jesus may be judged not to fit into this category.
Accordingly, emphasis has been placed on such factors as the religious, political, economic, and social influences in the land of Palestine. Recent archaeological findings have fueled a debate concerning the amount of Hellenistic and Roman influence in the Galilee of Jesus’ day.
A few brief examples will perhaps reveal some threads that tie together this loose-knit group of studies. For Geza Vermes, himself a Jew, Jesus was a popular Jewish rabbi and Galilean holy man.
A notable exception to this fairly positive trend is the position taken by the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar. While agreeing with the need to research the historical Jesus, these scholars follow more in the tradition of Strauss and Bultmann, and favor a return to a mythical approach to the Gospels.
Summary and Conclusion
It would appear that, for at least the last two hundred years, there has usually been a keen interest in studying the life of Jesus. Although there have also been times (such as a few decades earlier this century) when this interest has waned among scholars, it seems to reassert itself periodically.
It is within such a contemporary context, then, that studies in the life of Jesus proceed. And like so many other areas, there are those scholars who will defend the biblical accounts, those who will deny their authority, and those who line up somewhere in between.
But not all interpretations of Jesus’ life attempt to pay strict attention to historical detail. Some, like the fictitious lives earlier in this chapter, have admittedly set out to construct rather imaginary portrayals of his time on the earth. But in spite of the fact that scholars deny the validity of such efforts, they have arguably played an influential role in the popular understanding of Christianity. In the last few decades, many popular lives of Jesus have appeared, and are quite similar in many respects to the fictitious works of about 150 years ago. We will discuss several in subsequent chapters.
Perhaps surprisingly to some, there is still a conclusion to be gained from all of this variety. As in so many other matters, the question is not how many scholars hold such-and-such a view, or what trends have dominated intellectual thought, or even how surveys tell us the majority of people think.
The real issue is what the data tell us about the Jesus of history. What sources do we have at our disposal? Is there any material from non-Christians? When did Jesus live? What did he do? What did he teach? How did he die? Is there any truth to the New Testament contention that Jesus was raised from the dead? It is our purpose to pursue the answers to many of these questions both by addressing critical challenges and by ascertaining what sources support a traditional understanding of Jesus.
1
The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede,
2
3
4
5
6
7
On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers,
8
Deism: An Anthology
9
Quest,
10
A New Life of Jesus,
11
Epistle to the Romans,
12
The Resurrection of the Dead
13
How I Changed My Mind
14
Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate,
15
Jesus Christ and Mythology
16
Theology of the New Testament,
(How I Changed My Mind,
17
Essays on New Testament Themes,
18
Jesus of Nazareth
19
A New Quest of the Historical Jesus,
20
21
Revelation as History,
22
Jesus — God and Man,
23
Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology,
24
The Interpretation of the New Testament: 1961–1986,
The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth
Christianity Today,
25
Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels
The Religion of Jesus the Jew
26
The Aims of Jesus
27
Jesus and Judaism
28
Jesus and the Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine
29
Jesus Within Judaism
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus,
Mentor, Message, Miracle,
30
The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus
The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography
Jesus: A New Vision: Spirit, Culture, and the Life of Discipleship
The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins