The historical Jesus debate, as we have seen, has three (or four) phases: the old quest (Reimarus to Schweitzer), the no quest of Bultmann and the new quest following Bultmann, and then what Tom Wright dubbed the "third quest" of the present day, though there are plenty of "new" questers still around. What is the 3d Quest?
First, it is concerned with a more positive appropriation of the Gospels and a less skeptical approach to them.
Second, perhaps most significantly, its driving force seems to be showing the Jewishness of Jesus and how Jesus fit into the socio-political currents of his day. A major criterion now seems to be "How does the Jewish world explain this fact about Jesus?" Some are calling this the plausibility criterion -- how plausibly does Jesus fit into a Jewish world (and this sort of consideration when making historical decisions).
Let me sketch this a bit:
The era of Bultmann and the New Quest was concerned with separating Jesus from the Church in what is usually called the Jesus of history vs. the Christ of faith. The No/New Quest was not really centrally concerned with anchoring Jesus in his Jewish context. And what Jewish context was used was rooted in Strack and Billerbeck's famous set than anything direct.
But, that era came to a halt with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the revival of interest in 1st Century Jewish sources and the 1st Century Jewish context. Suddenly study of Jesus was being shaped by these discoveries. In the middle of the hey day of Bultmann a Welsh scholar by the name of WD Davies, famous for his <em>Paul and Rabbinic Judaism</em>, was one scholar who carried the torch for a more Jewish approach. But that was not the concern of Jesus scholars until the 50s and 60s.
Third, during the Bultmann era there was one major Jesus scholar who resisted Bultmannian hegemony in Germany and his name was Joachim Jeremias. He's not often given the credit he deserves for the arrival of the Third Quest, but his famous book, <em>NT Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus</em>, was the climax of forty years of brilliant studies on Jesus.
Fourth, then came a flurry of major studies on the Jewishness of Jesus that in many ways built on and reacted to Jeremias:
G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, deserves first place.
E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism.
G.B. Caird, Jesus and the Jewish Nation and then later in NT Theology.
Two major students of Caird:
N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God.
M. Borg, Jesus: A New Vision.
Fifth, by the 90s the tide had turned. Everyone was trying to "outJewish" one another in their Jewish portraits of Jesus. I could list many other books, but these are some of the major players. Today most of us live and dwell and have our being in this Third Quest -- this Jewish Jesus approach to the historical Jesus.
Still, the portraits are historical portraits and they are shaped by the distinction of the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of history.
Now a summing up…
Above all and over everything in historical Jesus studies is an echo of something Schweitzer said long ago: When historical Jesus scholars look down into the deep well of the evidence for Jesus they tend to see a Jesus that looks alot like themselves. Liberals find a liberal Jesus; conservatives find a conservative Jesus. No one doesn't care -- don't let them fool you. Which means what? We need serious deconstruction every time we read a book about Jesus. Every time; every book; mine too. Everyone wants Jesus on their side.
And standing next to this observation is this: there was Jesus -- the real one, the one who lived and died. There is the real Jesus and there are the Gospels; the Gospels interpret Jesus and present Jesus. And there are reconstructions of Jesus based on the Gospels, based on ancient evidence, based on methods. Both the Gospels and scholars today "construe" Jesus into an image. Which do we trust?
First, let us remember that the "historical" Jesus is the "Jesus" that is constructed by scholars on the basis of historical Jesus methods. The historical Jesus might be the "real" Jesus of flesh and blood, but what we must say is that the historical Jesus is the one that scholars arrive at when they use scholarly methods.
Second, the driving force of the historical Jesus quest is the desire to wedge apart the Church's beliefs about Jesus (the Gospels, the Creeds) and what "disinterested" scholarship can recover about Jesus on the basis of historical methods.
Third, the historical Jesus is not the same as learning about the Jewish world and situating something we see in our Gospels into that Jewish world. There is lots of this today in conservative books and pulpits, but this is not the same as historical Jesus studies. It is a historical understanding or contextualizing of the Jesus of the Gospels.
Fourth, I don't think historical Jesus has any place in theological studies for the Church. To bracket off one's theological views in order to study the historical Jesus and then to do theological studies on top of that bracketed-off-study-of-Jesus is a vicious circular argument. You won't find the Church's Jesus this way because you've decided the Church's Jesus isn't allowed at the table! Historical Jesus studies is for historians.
Fifth, still, nearly every historical Jesus scholar I know -- and I know most of them -- believes in the portrait of Jesus they construct on the basis of the historical methods. John Dominic Crossan and Marc Borg and Tom Wright and Dick Horsley et al believe, so it seems to me, in the Jesus they have constructed. (We all do this, don't we?)
Sixth, historical Jesus studies have waned significantly in the last ten years. The hey day was the 80s and 90s but the creative work has been done, climaxing perhaps in Tom Wright's big book, and mostly the conversation has grown stale. What used to attract hundreds to academic sessions now attracts 30 or 40.
Seventh, very few women scholars have found their interest in the historical Jesus debates to such a degree that they write new books on the historical Jesus. I don't know why, for many have engaged the debate. Two major American scholars, both of them Jewish, who have written books on Jesus are Paula Fredriksen and Amy-Jill Levine.
Eighth, when it comes to the Jesus Seminar speaking of a "consensus": balderdash! How could one possibly have a consensus about Jesus? Ask every scholar in the world? The vast majority of those who were polled in the Jesus Seminar format are New Questers and theologically unorthodox; the results can be easily deconstructed as representing the group that knew in advance where they might end up. This is said by one who has fully engaged that scholarship, has learned from that scholarship, and who knows that there was great give-and-take within that Seminar.
Final point: postmodernity has emphasized, though not discovered, that all history writing is the work of a writer to take facts etc and string them into a meaningful narrative so that the meaning of a life is brought to the fore. This means that even the Gospels are "presentations" by authors. The question is this: What role does another "Jesus presentation" play in the life of the Church? Do we need any presentations outside those the Church has given us in the Gospels? Are these the "way the Church understands Jesus"?
Summing up the historical Jesus debate
By Scot McKnight - Posted on March 28th, 2008
Thank you for your insightful summary! A comment on your second point, "the driving force of the historical Jesus quest is the desire to wedge apart the Church's beliefs about Jesus... and what "disinterested" scholarship can recover about Jesus on the basis of historical methods."
Wouldn't several historical Jesus scholars, including NT Wright, disagree? Wouldn't they say that their driving force is to make a better connection between what the Church thinks about Christ and what scholars (at least third questers) think about Jesus?
Or maybe another way to express it is that in many third questers there is a tension between on the one hand, their desire to correct the Christ of the Church with the Jesus of history, and on the other, their desire to connect the Christ of the Church with the Jesus of history. I think it's a good tension - but a tension nonetheless.
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
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