More people say bad things about Bultmann than who have read him (1884-1976). Bultmann was escorted into the theological world in the day of Schweitzer's famous Quest. Bultmann, a faithful church-going organist-playing son of the Lutheran church, knew that one could jettison it all or dig under and behind the historical to find the existential and demythologized true faith. Marburg University, so I've been told, could not have found lecture halls big enough for Bultmann's lectures in his glory days. If the days of Reimarus to Schweitzer were the old quest, the period of Bultmann is the "no" quest.

Instead of chucking it all, Bultmann cut the Christian faith off from the results of history. (A major influence on Bultmann was Martin Kaehler who, above all, argued that history only takes us so far; faith goes farther.) And the fundamental insights of Bultmann shaped Jesus studies for the better part of two generations.

1. The Gospels are the products of faith and express the faith of early Christians, whether or not they are historically-reliable texts.
2. Bultmann examined the Gospels according to the "forms" -- paragraph level format and intent -- that we now find in the Gospels. He argued these forms were shaped by early Church concerns and their concerns overrode any need for reporting what happened for the sake of accurate reporting.
3. In light of this, he concluded that what we really know of Jesus is minimal: "I do indeed think that we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources show no interest in either and are moreover fragmentary and often legendary" (Jesus and the Word, p. 8 ).
4. This quotation is the most-misunderstood statement in the history of Jesus studies. In fact, Bultmann thought we could know some facts about Jesus and the book he wrote after that quote proves it. What he was criticizing was the psychologically-shaped narratives that were being produced.
5. What we know are things like this: Jesus was baptized by John, was part of a messianic movement, preached the kingdom of God, and was executed under Pontius Pilate.
6. Big one and write this down: What we can figure out about Jesus through historical methods doesn't matter for faith. It is theologically perverse to base faith on historical studies since historical studies fluctuate.

Famous statement by Bultmann: "It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles" (New Testament and Mythology, 5).

Bultmann unleashed a movement of those who chased down and reframed his form-critical studies and who also fully developed the so-called "criteria of authenticity." Bultmann's famous book on form criticism, called History of the Synoptic Tradition, contained the nucleus of what later was fully worked out by Norman Perrin in his book Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus.

Bultmann unleashed a set of criteria that were used to determine if what is attributed to Jesus in the Gospels really came from him. Now once again let's remind ourselves of something: the historical Jesus quest is about discerning what the "real" Jesus was like in comparison to what the Gospels say about him. It is nearly always a deconstructive process (convering "red" letters into grey or black letters -- see below) and then a reconstructive process (picturing a Jesus on the basis of what one finds to be historically-reliable). Everything depends on the "criteria."

These criteria became sensationalized in the work of the Jesus Seminar led by Robert Funk, which led to the famous The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? where we were treated to the red/pink/grey/black letter edition of the Gospels -- red being "said by Jesus" and black being "not possibly said by Jesus."

It operates on this assumption from Norman Perrin: "The early Church absolutely and completely identified the risen Lord of her experience with the earthly Jesus of Nazareth and created for her purposes, which she conceived to be his, the literary form of the gospel, in which words and deeds ascribed in her consciousness to both the earthly Jesus and the risen Lord were set down in terms of the former" (Rediscovering, 1).

Here is a brief statement of the major criteria, and these are then applied to the Gospels to see what floats to the top as "authentic."

1. If a saying or event shows clear tension both with Judaism at the time of Jesus and with the early churches, then it neither came from Judaism nor from the early church, so therefore it came from Jesus. Jesus calling God "Abba" is typically used as an example since it is rare in Judaism and not used in Aramaic very often in the early churches. (Don't pick on examples.)
2. If a saying or event is found in more than one of the Gospel sources then it is from Jesus. This like the "more than one witness" element in law. If it is found in Mark and in Q and in "M" (stuff only in Matthew) and "L" (stuff only in Luke) and in John and in Gospel of Thomas etc it is more likely to have been said or done by Jesus. The less sources, the less provable. (Jesus practiced table fellowship with sinners.)
3. If a saying or event coheres with what we know from the above then it is probable that it comes from Jesus. Jesus preached a kingdom theology of inclusion -- or something like this.

Tomorrow we look at the Third Quest, and a summing up of where we are today.