Scot:

A nice summary. If I may chime in with a German perspective, it is that the various works of Martin Hengel, starting with his work on Hellenism and Judaism, has continued the Jeremias legacy you noted. His recent work on Jesus shows some key lines of continuity in the Jesus tradition extending into the second century, as well as presenting a vigorous argument for Jesus presenting himself as a type of messainic figure. Your Doktorvater, Jimmy Dunn, also deserves mention for reintroducing with Samuel Byrskog, the importance of a kind of controlled, informal orality in the early church, not to mention the kind of state of discussion presentation his full Jesus Remembered is.

I also think the post by Gary above makes an important point. There is an important role to pursuing lines of continuity between the effort to discuss Jesus historcially and an appreciation for the church's Jesus. The impression exists that the historical scholars are marching one way with Jesus and the church marches on its merry way going another direction with him. So the outsider has the sense that the choice is between the scholars and the churches. Now I agree with you that the historical Jesus discussion is somewhat skewed by many and that "You won't find the Church's Jesus this way [in a historcial Jesus debate] because you've decided the Church's Jesus isn't allowed at the table!" Nonetheless, it is important to engage this discussion and have the church be very aware of this discussion, how it works, and even where the historical Jesus is shortsighted on its own limitations in terms of what history can show. Leaving it to these kinds of historians alone, especially those historians whose approach limits how reality can be seen at the start, is what cannot be done. Give me some historians in the mix who also contend that through the hermeneutical spirial a case can be made that in Jesus something very unusual took place, something very difficult to explain solely on natural or sociological terms.

In fact, some of the waves of scholarship you point out in the third quest say to some of those historical marchers, "Hold on a minute! The gulf you see between the "historical" and the church's Jesus may not be quite as great as claimed."

I see the dilemma about historical Jesus studies residing in a different place. Historical Jesus studies is consumed by what it thinks it can show about Jesus (vastly underestimating the representational enterprise that is historiographical portrayal, and perhaps history as science). Historical Jesus studies also tends also to break up the pursuit of any unity of portrayal about Jesus, and in doing so often misses the links that make sense of the gospel portrayals and especially how the parts of them coexist (a point Wright's approach makes so clearly). So to my mind, the way forward is to recognize the difference in appraoch that exists in the church and among historical Jesus pursuits, but to be sure the church is very aware of the direction and nature of these discussions. In other words, in terms of method in doing the church's work, the historical Jesus' "dividing" and "divisive" kind of line has little place within the church. But in the public square, where so many are impacted by variegated perceptions about Jesus that are out there, this discussion becomes very important and the church must be engaged in it, saying to the more sketical marchers, hold on a minute, that direction leads us away from Jesus and history.

Darrell Bock