For us to believe in Jesus as the Son of God takes faith. To want to know who Jesus was is a matter of human curiosity. For several centuries scholars have been trying to figure out who the historical Jesus was. They have studied the Gospels and other ancient writings trying to discern what they do or do not reveal about him. Did Jesus really live? Is he the Son of God? Was he any different than Jose de Jesus who claims to be Jesus Christ, man, the second manifestation, the Second Coming of Christ," (Avila, 2007, p. 1) just a man calling himself the Messiah.
In “Introducing the New Testament” we are introduced to three “quests”; the (First) Quest for the Historical Jesus, The New Quest and The Third Quest. (Achtemeier, Green, & Thompson, 2001, pgs. 55-62) In the First Quest scholars attempted to divorce the idea of the supernatural events of the New Testament from history. H. S. Reimarus is credited for being one of the first to write about the historical Jesus. “Reimarus saw in Jesus of Nazareth a Jewish messianic revolutionary whose failure led his followers to steal his body and create a new story of Jesus based on aspects of Jewish messianism. The Christian religion did not grow out of the teaching of Jesus; it is a new creation which gradually unfolded out of a series of failed expectations.” (Pearson, 1995, chap. 2) “There perhaps is one basic, broad attitude which operated during this period: a true, critical understanding of the history of Jesus’ life leads one away from the faith that had been received by the contemporary church.” Michael Burer found this statement by N. T. Wright to be “representative of the period as a whole” even though Wright was talking about Reimarus specifically. (Burer, 2004)
David Friedrich Strauss believed that the church embellished the story of Jesus to so the prophecies of the Old Testament would be shown as fulfilled. His work, like many scholars before and after him, showed “Two of the key characteristics of the Quest – namely, an unassailable confidence in reason and a consequent commitment to divorcing religion (or theology) from history.” (Achtemeier et al., p. 57)
Albert Schweitzer’s writings on the history of Jesus would precede the New Quest or period of No Quest. “The story of the "Quest of the Historical Jesus," as told by Schweitzer, includes not only rationalist attempts at discrediting traditional Christian teaching, but also attempts by Christian theologians to fend off such critiques by creating an edifice of critical theological scholarship by which a believable "real Jesus" might emerge to view. The result, often enough, was a "modernized" Jesus, one whose ethical genius and message of a "spiritual kingdom" brought him close to the liberal ideas of 19th-century German Protestantism.” (Pearson, 1995, chap. 2) Shortly after he wrote this there would be a period in which no new developments would surface.
Rudolf Bultman taught that “Authentic faith can never rest on historical research, he insisted, for then it would no longer be faith.” (Achtemeier et al., 2001, p. 59) As one of the influencers of the New Quest, Bultman believed that there was no need to know anything more about Jesus other than that he had lived. Yet it would be Bultman’s own students that would start to question his teachings. During this period Ernst Troeltsch would devise three principles for historical discovery. Those principles were doubt, analogy, and correlation. The principle of doubt requires that there be evidence to support historical statements. Troeltsch felt that things that happened when Jesus lived logically should also be happening today. Finally his principle of correlation held that all things that happen are the result of a natural cause. The criteria of multiple attestation and dissimilarity would be added to these principles. Traditions were more likely to be believed if they came from multiple independent sources or if it were expressed in multiple forms. On the other hand it was felt that Jesus was more authentic the greater the dissimilarity there was from Judaism.
By the end of the New Quest scholars were still looking at Jesus, not his Jewish heritage or the correlation between himself and the church. Nothing new had been discovered about the historical Jesus and scholars were still attempting divorce theology from history.
By the time of the Third Quest it was decided that there were multiple layers that included both history and theology. The theology and history of the Gospels should not studied separately but together. It would not be until now that Jesus was looked at from his Jewish heritage and how that affected his life and teachings. We must look at Jesus through lens of Judaism because he was Jewish. Nicholas Thomas Wright, one of the more recognized scholars of the Third Quest, “… insists that our view of the history of the Gospel traditions, like our portrait of Jesus, must make sense within the structure of early Judaism, not least because all the Gospel writers (with the possible exception of Luke) and their forebears were themselves Jews before they became followers of Jesus.” (Witherington, III, 1997)
The search for the historical Jesus continues. For some scholars Jesus did not exist as the church sees him. In “The Quest of the Historical Jesus” Schweitzer would state that “The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb.” (Schweitzer, 1906, p. 399) As far as he was concerned Jesus was just another man. Our curiosity will fuel this debate to the end of time. Jesus told Thomas and the other disciples that they believed because they had seen him, and those who had not seen but still believed were also blessed. It is a matter of faith.
References
Achtemeier, P. J., Green, J. B., & Thompson, M. M. (2001). Introducing the New Testament: Its Literature and Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Avila, J. (2007, March 6). Jesus of Suburbia -- Has He Risen Again in Houston, Texas?. ABC News Primetime, , . Retrieved September 23, 2007, from http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2925021&page=1
1 comment:
WOW! Terry, nice research and well done. Jesus is!
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