Historical Jesus

As McGrath writes in his Christian Theology, the Enlightenment projected the capabilities of human reason and the laws of nature over those formerly used to determine the sciences, philosophy, and religion.  In regards to religion, and corresponding to the 18^th-20^th centuries, many scholars have attempted to redefine Jesus historically, breach the gilded image that traditional Christianity had molded onto Christ, and find what Christ truly said and what Christ truly did.

There were three main waves of Historical Jesus research.

However this research definitely became a problematic scenario for traditional Christian believers, for it was analyzing, and in some cases, diminishing their God’s prestige, holiness, and wonder.

Enlightenment thinkers ventured to bolster science by displacing medieval thought as well as redefining religion.

For enlightenment thinkers, they believed the omnicompetence of human reason warranted Christian religious criticism.  Did so in three stages (McGrath readings):

1.       Christian beliefs were rational and thus capable of standing up to criticism

2.       Basic ideas of Christianity, being rational, could be derived from reason itself

3.       The ability to reason to judge revelation was affirmed

Basically, enlightenment thinkers were trying to take everything irrational, miraculous, revelatory, and superstitious out of Christianity, and judge them accordingly.

Thinkers like Thomas Jefferson cut and pasted particular selections of the New Testament that demonstrated the morally uplifting messages of Jesus that were historically plausible and left out the miraculous.

Historians began looking at the bible source critically as well as Jesus the man historically.  Thus, Jesus was considered more of a philosopher or sage rather than a divine being.  

Albert Schiwiezter, a devote apocalyptic Christian, wrote a book that analyzed the writings on the historical Jesus and found them suspect because each of the writings conformed to the theology of each particular writer and what they believed concerning theology and Christology.   So, this slowed historical Jesus research for awhile (example of the malcontent for historical Jesus research by traditional Christians).

Yet again in the second wave, Jesus was approached as a historical figure to the like of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great.

Certain methods and developments arose in biblical scholarship that again challenged traditional Christianity and created a re-emergence of the historical Jesus research.

1.       Form criticism- studied a specific form of the gospels (ex: parables…to see what might have been added by early church leaders or disciples).

2.       Redaction (reduction?) criticism- study of how Gospel writers worked edited materials and used certain sources.

Basically, the goal was to strip away the extra added or sugar-coated to find exactly what Jesus said and who he actually was, so the research would enable the churches to reform themselves back to the true meaning.

So the idea of the historical Jesus research was to get away from what the early churches attributed to Jesus and get back to who Jesus actually was and what Jesus actually said.

                Ex: a particular passage in the New Testament in Greek says, “Blessed oh ye poor,” and the early church changed it to “blessed oh ye poor in spirit.”  Thus the rich could also be blessed.  So they attempted to find the actual truth rather than the formulated.

However, historical Jesus research also included his ethnic characteristics which included debates that even defined Jesus as being either a Jew or Gentile.  Halvor Moxnes articulated this research and how certain religious milieus adapted Jesus, historically, to fit their paradigm of belief.

Christian scholars like David F. Strauss and Renan wrote biographies about Jesus as a Jew being racially different.  They wrote that even though Jesus may have been Jewish religiously, Jews from Galilee were different and better from the Jews of Jerusalem.  It enabled protestant Germany to identify with Jesus.  This possibly could have been a result of anti-Semitism.

Later H.S. Chamberlin removed Jesus from being Jewish at all.  He wrote that Galilee was a diverse milieu of different ethnicities, so Jesus could have been Greek, Asian, or even Aryan.  Thus religiously one may convert, but ethnically, one cannot change their ethnicity (an idea the Nazis used).

Initially Jewish scholars (Klausner) wrote that Jesus was in fact Jewish, of Pharisaic Judaism, and was not influenced by non-Jews in Galilee because Jesus followed Jewish law.   Yet Jesus was still implemented, by these scholars, as having been in conflict with Judaism for his individualism instead of a community or nation.  This was to complement the growing sentiments of nationalism and a Jewish state.  Klausner believed the Pharisees and scribes were the earliest nationalists and Jesus destroyed this (Mark 12:17-Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s).  Jesus was thus a breach of the political power as Moxnes articulates.

However, later both Christians and Jews decided that it was wrong to remove Jesus from his context.  Martin Buber wrote that Jesus was the typical example of absolute trust in God in his Book, My Brother Jesus.   Jews like Ben-Chorin articulate Jesus’ suffering like the sufferings of the Jews.  Thus, Jews identified with Jesus.  Christians developed more inclusive studies of Judaism, so that they may learn more about Jesus.  So, there was a mutual acceptance created.

Recently, there has been a third wave of historical Jesus research, which I am currently studying (more to come).

Historians and organizations like:

1.       Crossan

2.       Jesus Seminar