Who Do They Say He Is?

A Consideration of the Quest for the Historical Jesus

by

Michael Bittle SID 8943314

New Testament Literature and History NT 1A03 Professor: Dr. Cynthia Westfall February 27, 2012

Introduction Biblical scholars rarely seem able to agree. While critical research and writing on the 'Historical Jesus' has flourished over the past two centuries, schools of thought have emerged taking seemingly different approaches to their efforts. At times the results of this work have culminated in conflicting and contradictory conclusions, leaving the theological student wondering whether progress has in fact been made towards discerning new truths about Jesus. The purpose of this essay is to briefly review the genealogy of research in the Quest for the Historical Jesus1, to ascertain whether indeed two centuries of scholarly work has been sufficient to produce a definable contribution to our understanding of the Christ, and to determine whether those efforts can now be considered complete. The Pre-Quest (before 1778) Until the Age of the Enlightenment, it has been said, scholarly research focused on the unhistorical Jesus rather than a Jesus of history.2 Publications on the life of Christ were primarily devotional in nature, intended to produce a sense of harmony to reconcile the differing natures of the Synoptic Gospels and John.3 It was assumed that everything written about Jesus in the New Testament was historically accurate and that the four Gospels had been intentionally written differently from each other, with certain overlaps, in order to emphasize the many facets of Christs ministry. The authority of the Church was supreme in all matters of interpretation. The Old Quest (17781906) During the Age of Enlightenment in the 1700s, scholars emerged, primarily from Germany, who began to consider the Bible much like any other historical document. They were

1 2

Tatums titles for the various Quests are used here and augmented. Tatum Quest, 3853. Brown, Unhistorical Jesus, 885. 3 See, for example, Calvin, Harmony.

skeptical of the magical stories told about Jesus and began to provide rationalist explanations for the miracles attributed to Him. Reason replaced authority and an emerging discipline termed historical source criticism was applied to the New Testament in an attempt to identify the sources which might lay behind the Gospels. The beginning of the first, or Old Quest, is usually dated at 1778 with the posthumous publication of Reimarus Concerning the Intention of Jesus and his Teachings.4 This became the opening salvo in what would be called a source-critical some might say anti-Church approach to scholarly Biblical research in the 18th to 19th centuries. Reimarus was a proponent of 'natural religion', and dismissed the accounts of miracles attributed to Jesus. He viewed Jesus as a political activist who failed to achieve the messianic expectations of the Jewish people for an earthly kingdom, and he concluded that the dogmatic Jesus proclaimed by the Church was a historical fabrication. This new approach of applying higher criticism to Biblical sources using what was then a modern scientific method reflected the rise of a liberal theology which denied many of the traditional beliefs of the Church. The emergent scholarly opinion held that Judaism was a 'positive religion' pertinent only within its own historical and cultural context and not relevant to a modern Christian worship of Jesus. Indeed, keeping with the prevailing philosophical tide of the Age of Reason, mainstream opinion held that Jesus represented a 'natural religion' which was derived from reason and held to a liberal theology of ethical monotheism. Thus they represented a Jesus who was radically divorced from his Jewish roots; they focused on the inner life of Jesus and discarded any of the supernatural elements of his ministry that could not be supported by scientific proof.

Reimarus, Fragments, 59269.

Writers such as Strauss, Holtzmann, Ritschl and Harnack reconstructed traditional theology, arriving at significantly different conclusions and thereby fuelling the fires of ongoing research. For example, Strauss asserted that the Gospels could not be viewed to any degree as historical documents but were instead simply myths or outright fabrications; Holtzmann disagreed and was an early proponent of Mark having priority over Matthew; Ritschl professed a theology of divine revelation available to Christian communities while rejecting the Christ miracles; Harnack completely rejected the Gospel of John and all the miracles of Jesus except for the acts of healing.5 In 1896, Khler issued a wholesale condemnation of the entire quest citing the lack of reliable historical sources for any biography of Jesus.6 He repudiated the questers as searching for an imaginative reconstruction of Christ which only served to distance Jesus from the Christ of faith worshipped by the believer in the pews. This was followed in 1901 by two profoundly variant publications which heralded the pending demise of this first Quest for the Historical Jesus. Schweitzers The Mystery of the Kingdom of God7 argued that Jesus' messianic mission was essentially eschatological in nature, that his actions were designed to bring about the end of the world and the emergence of a new spiritual kingdom. Wredes The Messianic Secret8 denied any messianic theme in Jesus ministry until after the resurrection, and he asserted it was even then a subsequent invention put forward by the early Christians to explain the nature of Christs mission. Schweitzer could not accept Wredes conclusion, which spurred his research even further.

Strauss, Life of Jesus; Holtzmann, Evangelien; Ritschl, Retrospect; and Harnack, Christianity. Khler, So-Called Jesus, 4648. 7 Sweitzer, Mystery. 8 Wrede, Secret.
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The No Quest (19061953) In 1906, Schweitzer published The Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede. He thoroughly reviewed the work of the 'questers' and castigated them for having utterly failed in their efforts to define a historical Jesus who could adequately replace the Christ of traditional faith. His conclusion that both Wredes work on 'thorough skepticism' and his own work on 'thorough eschatology' were so complete, that the study of the historical Jesus was brought almost to a standstill.10 If Khlers condemnation, Wredes skepticism, and Schweitzers critique had a chilling effect on research in this area, Bultmanns work on the emerging discipline of historical form criticism and his existentialist approach sounded the death knell for the Original Quest.11 Form criticism was ostensibly intended to help scholars identify the original oral tradition of the Gospels and the Sitz im Leben of those narratives. It was applied by Bultmann to strip away what he considered to be mythical additions by the later Gospel writers, concluding that the Gospels had nominal if any real historical value. He minimized the value of a historical Jesus', emphasized a study of the early Christian community and, through his demythologization of the Gospels, shifted their study from the realm of history to that of cultural anthropology. At the same time, theologians such as Barth were closing the door on liberalism and a new 'dialectic' theology emerged, stressing the importance of the 'kerygma' (the original oral gospel of Christ as preached by the apostles) and minimizing the theological value of any 'historical Jesus'.12 The quest for the historical Jesus lay dormant for the next several decades.13
Schweitzer, Quest. Schweitzer, Quest, 330331. 11 Bultmann, Synoptic Tradition. 12 Barth, Romans. 13 Some take issue with this generally-held conclusion; e.g. Porter sees a declining German scholarly interest but elsewhere an ongoing international continuum of research; Porter, HSHJ, 1: 697698.
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The New Quest (19531985) At a reunion of Bultmanns students in 1953, Ksemann confirmed Bultmanns conclusion that writings on the historical Jesus lacked value, while at the same time he argued the legitimacy of the continuity of relationship between the historical Jesus and the then-current interpretation of kerygma.14 He proposed that both the Christ of Faith and the Kerygmatic Christ offered equal value for both scholars and believers and that neither perspective be viewed as greater or lesser than the other. The New, or second, Quest had begun. The response from the academic community was immediate. In 1956, Bornkamm published Jesus of Nazareth15 which was characteristic of the 'new questers' in that it was not styled as a 'life' or 'biography' of Jesus but argued that the authenticity of the message conveyed by the earthly Christ through the Gospels represented an expression which remained faithful to both scholarly research and popular appeal. Robinson16 believed this new quest should focus on the message of Jesus and the theological intentions of the subsequent writers who redacted his words. He also suggested that the early Christian kerygmatic expression must have been grounded in some type of authentic experience which therefore validated a study of the historical Jesus. The 'new questers' generally agreed that the historical value of the Gospels was limited but through the use of a new discipline, historical redaction criticism, they were convinced that the various textual layers which existed in the final form of the Gospels could be identified and that aspects of an original source version, called Q, might emerge. A major drawback to this New Quest was the continued use of a (predominantly German) existentialist philosophy which emphasized a Jesus who was radically divorced from his Judaic
14 15

Ksemann, The Problem of the Historical Jesus, in Essays, 1447. Bornkamm, Nazareth, 911. 16 Robinson, New Quest. See also, The Gospel of Jesus.

culture. Due to Germanys atrocious crimes against Jews in the Second World War, this was often perceived to be anti-Semitic and thereby hobbled the success of the New Quest. After the initial flourish of interest in the 1950s, scholarly work on the New Quest subsequently subsided. The Post Quest (19852000) By the 1980s, as academic interest in existentialist philosophy and kerygmatic theology had significantly wound down, a number of scholars found a renewed interest in a Post (third) Quest, distinct from the previous two.17 These 'new questers' emphasized the application of rigorous narrative and social-scientific criticism examining the deeds and the sayings of Jesus to identify literary authenticity in the Gospels. 'Criteria of authenticity' were developed to be used in this effort for establishing authenticity, such as the criterion of coherence, the criterion of dissimilarity, the criterion of multiple attestation, and the criterion of language and environment.18 The renewal of Christs Jewishness within his original cultural roots, considering the meaning which might have been intended for His direct audience, and the study of Jesus simply as a historical figure, were characteristic of this academic revival of interest. Notwithstanding these efforts to guide academic work in this field, one consequence of this revival was a plethora of scholarly and non-scholarly research and writing about a multiplicity of historical and modern 'Jesuses' with no common methodology or results, reflecting the international diversity of the academic community embracing differences in race, religion, sexual orientation, and culture.19 Another has been the formation of the Jesus Seminar

See, in particular, Neill and Wright, New Testament, 379403. See Porter, Criteria of Authenticity, 62103. 19 The past 20 years has seen the emergence of a sort of 'Jesus for All Seasons'; e.g. Brinkman, Non-Western Jesus; Corley, Women and the Historical Jesus; Prothero, American Jesus.
18

17

which, in what Wright called a Renewed New Quest characterized by a Wrede-like skepticism of the gospels, views Jesus as something of a cynic-sage.20 As early as 2002, Baasland concluded the Third Quest had reached an impasse and a new approach was required; his suggestion for a Fourth Quest was to examine the intentions of Jesus.21 In 1778, Reimarus suggested the historical Jesus could be discovered by examining his intentions. In two hundred and fifty years, we seem to have come full circle. Conclusions Notwithstanding a considerable amount of academic effort, the Third Quest appears to have floundered, as evidenced by a steady succession of texts intended to provide overviews and guidance.22 This is perhaps an indictment of the entire history of the Quest itself. Khler had proclaimed in 1896 that 'the emperor wore no clothes': we simply lack any reliable and adequate sources about the Gospel which a historian can accept and from which a 'Historical Jesus' can be discerned. Since each of the three Quests has relied upon a variation of the historical-critical method, it is not surprising that they have each been unable to reach any consensus. The Quest has not been a failure; it has just not been a success. To move beyond this stalemate, scholars must accept the limitations of the historicalcritical method and embrace academic disciplines far removed from theology.23 If the Gospels and, indeed, Christianity itself, are to be seen as relevant to the modern world, we must be able to demonstrate that the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are in fact the same person. To do this, we need to use all the tools at our disposal.

20 21

Funk, Five Gospels. Baasland, HSHJ, 1: 31. 22 For example, Holmn, Jesus from Judaism to Christianity; Holmn and Porter, HSHJ; Bock, Guide; Charlesworth, Essential Guide; Dunn, Historical Jesus; McKnight, Jesus Christ Today; Levine, Historical Jesus; Kuck, After Jesus; Evans, Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus. 23 See, for example, Theissen, First Followers.

The Quests Qualifier Tatum Period 1 Pre-Quest (pre-1778) Period 2 Old Quest (1778-1906) Period 3 No Quest (1906-1953) Period 4 New Quest (19531985) New Quest (19501980) Period 5 Post Quest (19852000) Period 6 Period 7

Theissen

Critical Logos Quest (17741830)

Liberal, optimistic Jesus research (18301901)

Crisis of the life of Jesus research (1901-1950)

Wright

Third Quest (1980-?)

Renewed New Quest Fourth Quest?

Research Approach Philosophy

Scripture as authoritative Church Dogma

Historical Source Criticism Liberal Theology

Form Criticism Bultmanns Existentialism

Redaction Criticism

SocialNarrative Scientific Criticism Criticism Post-Bultmannian emphasis on the language of Jesus

Selected Bibliography Arnal, William E. and Desjardins, M.R. Whose Historical Jesus? Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997. Barth, Karl. "Ritschl," in Protestant Theology from Rousseau to Ritschl. Ch. XI, 390398. New York: Harper, 1959. __________ and Hoskyns, Sir E.C. The Epistle to the Romans. London, Oxford University Press, 1933. Bock, Darrell C. Studying the historical Jesus: a guide to sources and methods. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002. Bornkamm, Gnther. Jesus of Nazareth. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1960. Boyd, G.A. Cynic Sage or Son of God. Wheaton, IL: Bridgepoint, 1995. Brinkman, Martien E. The non-Western Jesus: Jesus a badhisattva, avatar, guru, prophet, ancestor, or healer. Oakville, CT: Equinox, 2009. Brown, Colin. The Quest of the Unhistorical Jesus and the Quest of the Historical Jesus. In Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, edited by Tom Holmn and Stanley E. Porter, vol.2, 855-886. Boston: Brill, 2011. Bultmann, Rudolf Karl. A history of the synoptic tradition. Translated by John Marsh. New York: Harper and Row, 1968. Calvin, John, et al. A harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994. Corley, Kathleen. Women and the Historical Jesus: feminist myths of Christian origin. Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2002. Charlesworth, James H. The Historical Jesus: an Essential Guide. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2008. Chilton, B. and Evans, C. Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research. NTTS (19). Leiden: Brill, 1994. Dunn, James D.F. The Historical Jesus in recent research. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005. __________. A new perspective on Jesus: what the quest for the historical Jesus missed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005. Evans, Craig A. Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus. New York: Routledge, 2008.

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Funk, Robert Walter. The five Gospels : the search for the authentic words of Jesus : new translation and commentary. San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1997. Harnack, Adolf. What is Christianity? New York: Harper, 1957. Holmn, T. Jesus from Judaism to Christianity: continuum approaches to the Historical Jesus. London : T & T Clark, 2007. __________ and Porter, S.E. Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus. 4 vols. Boston: Brill, 2011. Holtzmann, Heinrich Julius. Die synoptischen Evangelien. Ihr Ursprung und geschichtlicher Charakter. (The Synoptic Gospels. Their Origin and Historical Character.) Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1863. Jodock, Darrell H. Ritschl in Retrospective. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995. Johnson, L.T. The real Jesus: the misguided quest for the historical Jesus and the truth of the traditional Gospels. San Francisco: Harper, 1996. Khler, Martin. The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ. Translated by Carl E. Braaten. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964. Karnack, Adolf. What is Christianity? Translated by D. Bailey Sanders, 1900. San Diego: The Book Tree, 2006. Ksemann, E. Essays on New Testament Themes (SBT 41). London: SCM, 1964. Kuck, David W. Review of After Jesus vol 3. In Finding the Historical Christ. Currents in Theology and Missions. 38(2) (2011) 154. Levine, Amy-Jill, et al. The Historical Jesus in Context. Princeton: University Press, 2006. McKnight, Edgar V. Jesus Christ today: the historical shaping of Jesus for the twenty-first century. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009. __________. The Jesus well never know. Christianity Today 54(4) (2010). 22-28. Meyer, B.F. The Aims of Jesus. London: SCM, 1979. Neill S. and Wright, N.T. The Interpretation of the New Testament: 18611986. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Nodet, Etienne. The historical Jesus?: necessity and limits of an enquiry. New York: T & T Clark, 2008.

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Perrin, N. The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus. London: SCM, 1963. Porter, Stanley E. The Criteria for Authenticity in historical-Jesus research: previous discussion and new proposals. Sheffield: Academic Press, 2000. _________. Reading the Gospels Today. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004. Prothero, Stephen R. American Jesus : how the Son of God became a national icon. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003. Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, et al. Fragments From Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks On the Object of Jesus and His Disciples As Seen in the New Testament. London: Williams and Norgate, 1879. Ritschl, Otto, et al. Otto Ritschl, 1885-1976 : Retrospektive = retrospective. Wiesbaden: Museum Wiesbaden, 1997. Robins, Christopher A. "Teaching about the historical Jesus: Scholarship, Context and Balance." Religious Education. 106 (3) (2011) 181-197. Robinson, J. A New Quest of the Historical Jesus. SBT, First Series 25. London: SCM, 1959. Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede. Translated by W. Montgomery. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1906. _________. The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus' Messiahship and Passion. New York: Macmillan, 1950. Strauss, David Friedrich. The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined. London: SCM Press, 1973. Tatum, W. Barnes. In Quest of Jesus: A Guidebook. Revised and Enlarged Edition. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999. Theissen, Gerd. The First Followers of Jesus: A Sociological Analysis of the Earliest Christians. London : S.C.M. Press, 1978. Witherington, B. The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth. Downer's Grove: IVP, 1995. Wrede, William. The Messianic Secret. Cambridge: J. Clarke, 1971. Wright, N.T. "Quest for the Historical Jesus," part of "Jesus Christ," in The Anchor Bible Dictionary 3, Yale University Press, 1992. 796-802.