Who Do They Say He Is?

A Consideration of the Quest for the Historical Jesus

by

Michael Bittle
SID 8943314

New Testament Literature and History

NT 1A03

Professor: Dr. Cynthia Westfall

February 27, 2012
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Introduction

Biblical scholars rarely seem able to agree. While critical research and writing on the

'Historical Jesus' has flourished over the past two centuries, schools of thought have emerged

taking seemingly different approaches to their efforts. At times the results of this work have

culminated in conflicting and contradictory conclusions, leaving the theological student

wondering whether progress has in fact been made towards discerning new truths about Jesus.

The purpose of this essay is to briefly review the genealogy of research in the “Quest for

the Historical Jesus”1, to ascertain whether indeed two centuries of scholarly work has been

sufficient to produce a definable contribution to our understanding of the Christ, and to

determine whether those efforts can now be considered complete.

The Pre-Quest (before 1778)

Until the Age of the Enlightenment, it has been said, scholarly research focused on the

unhistorical Jesus rather than a Jesus of history.2 Publications on the life of Christ were primarily

devotional in nature, intended to produce a sense of harmony to reconcile the differing natures of

the Synoptic Gospels and John.3 It was assumed that everything written about Jesus in the New

Testament was historically accurate and that the four Gospels had been intentionally written

differently from each other, with certain overlaps, in order to emphasize the many facets of

Christ’s ministry. The authority of the Church was supreme in all matters of interpretation.

The Old Quest (1778‒1906)

During the Age of Enlightenment in the 1700’s, scholars emerged, primarily from

Germany, who began to consider the Bible much like any other historical document. They were

1
Tatum’s titles for the various Quests are used here and augmented. Tatum Quest, 38‒53.
2
Brown, Unhistorical Jesus, 885.
3
See, for example, Calvin, Harmony.
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skeptical of the ‘magical’ stories told about Jesus and began to provide ‘rationalist’ explanations

for the miracles attributed to Him. ‘Reason’ replaced ‘authority’ and an emerging discipline

termed historical source criticism was applied to the New Testament in an attempt to identify the

sources which might lay behind the Gospels.

The beginning of the first, or Old Quest, is usually dated at 1778 with the posthumous

publication of Reimarus’ “Concerning the Intention of Jesus and his Teachings.”4 This became

the opening salvo in what would be called a source-critical — some might say anti-Church —

approach to scholarly Biblical research in the 18th to 19th centuries. Reimarus was a proponent of

'natural religion', and dismissed the accounts of miracles attributed to Jesus. He viewed Jesus as a

political activist who failed to achieve the messianic expectations of the Jewish people for an

earthly kingdom, and he concluded that the dogmatic Jesus proclaimed by the Church was a

historical fabrication.

This new approach of applying higher criticism to Biblical sources using what was then a

modern scientific method reflected the rise of a liberal theology which denied many of the

traditional beliefs of the Church. The emergent scholarly opinion held that Judaism was a

'positive religion' pertinent only within its own historical and cultural context and not relevant to

a modern Christian worship of Jesus. Indeed, keeping with the prevailing philosophical tide of

the Age of Reason, mainstream opinion held that Jesus represented a 'natural religion' which was

derived from reason and held to a liberal theology of ethical monotheism. Thus they represented

a Jesus who was radically divorced from his Jewish roots; they focused on the ‘inner life’ of

Jesus and discarded any of the supernatural elements of his ministry that could not be supported

by scientific proof.

4
Reimarus, Fragments, 59‒269.
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Writers such as Strauss, Holtzmann, Ritschl and Harnack reconstructed traditional

theology, arriving at significantly different conclusions and thereby fuelling the fires of ongoing

research. For example, Strauss asserted that the Gospels could not be viewed to any degree as

historical documents but were instead simply myths or outright fabrications; Holtzmann

disagreed and was an early proponent of Mark having priority over Matthew; Ritschl professed a

theology of divine revelation available to Christian communities while rejecting the Christ

miracles; Harnack completely rejected the Gospel of John and all the miracles of Jesus except for

the acts of healing.5

In 1896, Kähler issued a wholesale condemnation of the entire ‘quest’ citing the lack of

reliable historical sources for any biography of Jesus.6 He repudiated the “questers” as searching

for an imaginative reconstruction of Christ which only served to distance Jesus from the Christ

of faith worshipped by the believer in the pews.

This was followed in 1901 by two profoundly variant publications which heralded the

pending demise of this first Quest for the Historical Jesus. Schweitzer’s The Mystery of the

Kingdom of God7 argued that Jesus' messianic mission was essentially eschatological in nature,

that his actions were designed to bring about the end of the world and the emergence of a new

spiritual kingdom. Wrede’s The Messianic Secret8 denied any messianic theme in Jesus’ ministry

until after the resurrection, and he asserted it was even then a subsequent invention put forward

by the early Christians to explain the nature of Christ’s mission. Schweitzer could not accept

Wrede’s conclusion, which spurred his research even further.

5
Strauss, Life of Jesus; Holtzmann, Evangelien; Ritschl, Retrospect; and Harnack, Christianity.
6
Kähler, So-Called Jesus, 46—48.
7
Sweitzer, Mystery.
8
Wrede, Secret.
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The No Quest (1906‒1953)

In 1906, Schweitzer published The Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its

Progress from Reimarus to Wrede. He thoroughly reviewed the work of the 'questers' and

castigated them for having utterly failed in their efforts to define a historical Jesus who could

adequately replace the Christ of traditional faith. His conclusion that both Wrede’s work on

'thorough skepticism' and his own work on 'thorough eschatology' were so complete, that the

study of the historical Jesus was brought almost to a standstill.10

If Kähler’s condemnation, Wrede’s skepticism, and Schweitzer’s critique had a chilling

effect on research in this area, Bultmann’s work on the emerging discipline of historical form

criticism and his existentialist approach sounded the death knell for the Original Quest.11 Form

criticism was ostensibly intended to help scholars identify the original oral tradition of the

Gospels and the Sitz im Leben of those narratives. It was applied by Bultmann to strip away what

he considered to be mythical additions by the later Gospel writers, concluding that the Gospels

had nominal — if any — real historical value. He minimized the value of a ‘historical Jesus',

emphasized a study of the early Christian community and, through his demythologization of the

Gospels, shifted their study from the realm of history to that of cultural anthropology.

At the same time, theologians such as Barth were closing the door on liberalism and a

new 'dialectic' theology emerged, stressing the importance of the 'kerygma' (the original oral

gospel of Christ as preached by the apostles) and minimizing the theological value of any

'historical Jesus'.12 The quest for the historical Jesus lay dormant for the next several decades.13
9
Schweitzer, Quest.
10
Schweitzer, Quest, 330‒331.
11
Bultmann, Synoptic Tradition.
12
Barth, Romans.
13
Some take issue with this generally-held conclusion; e.g. Porter sees a declining German scholarly interest but
elsewhere an ongoing international continuum of research; Porter, HSHJ, 1: 697‒698.
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The New Quest (1953‒1985)

At a reunion of Bultmann’s students in 1953, Käsemann confirmed Bultmann’s

conclusion that writings on the historical Jesus lacked value, while at the same time he argued

the legitimacy of the continuity of relationship between the historical Jesus and the then-current

interpretation of kerygma.14 He proposed that both the Christ of Faith and the Kerygmatic Christ

offered equal value for both scholars and believers and that neither perspective be viewed as

greater or lesser than the other. The New, or second, Quest had begun.

The response from the academic community was immediate. In 1956, Bornkamm

published Jesus of Nazareth15 which was characteristic of the 'new questers' in that it was not

styled as a 'life' or 'biography' of Jesus but argued that the authenticity of the message conveyed

by the earthly Christ through the Gospels represented an expression which remained faithful to

both scholarly research and popular appeal. Robinson16 believed this new quest should focus on

the message of Jesus and the theological intentions of the subsequent writers who redacted his

words. He also suggested that the early Christian kerygmatic expression must have been

grounded in some type of authentic experience which therefore validated a study of the historical

Jesus.

The 'new questers' generally agreed that the historical value of the Gospels was limited

but through the use of a new discipline, historical redaction criticism, they were convinced that

the various textual layers which existed in the final form of the Gospels could be identified and

that aspects of an original source version, called Q, might emerge.

A major drawback to this New Quest was the continued use of a (predominantly German)

existentialist philosophy which emphasized a Jesus who was radically divorced from his Judaic
14
Käsemann, “The Problem of the Historical Jesus”, in Essays, 14‒47.
15
Bornkamm, Nazareth, 9‒11.
16
Robinson, New Quest. See also, The Gospel of Jesus.
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culture. Due to Germany’s atrocious crimes against Jews in the Second World War, this was

often perceived to be anti-Semitic and thereby hobbled the success of the New Quest. After the

initial flourish of interest in the 1950’s, scholarly work on the New Quest subsequently subsided.

The Post Quest (1985‒2000)

By the 1980’s, as academic interest in existentialist philosophy and kerygmatic theology

had significantly wound down, a number of scholars found a renewed interest in a Post (third)

Quest, distinct from the previous two.17 These 'new questers' emphasized the application of

rigorous narrative and social-scientific criticism examining the deeds and the sayings of Jesus to

identify literary authenticity in the Gospels.

'Criteria of authenticity' were developed to be used in this effort for establishing

authenticity, such as the criterion of coherence, the criterion of dissimilarity, the criterion of

multiple attestation, and the criterion of language and environment.18 The renewal of Christ’s

Jewishness within his original cultural roots, considering the meaning which might have been

intended for His direct audience, and the study of Jesus simply as a historical figure, were

characteristic of this academic revival of interest.

Notwithstanding these efforts to guide academic work in this field, one consequence of

this revival was a plethora of scholarly and non-scholarly research and writing about a

multiplicity of historical and modern 'Jesuses' with no common methodology or results,

reflecting the international diversity of the academic community embracing differences in race,

religion, sexual orientation, and culture.19 Another has been the formation of the Jesus Seminar

17
See, in particular, Neill and Wright, New Testament, 379‒403.
18
See Porter, Criteria of Authenticity, 62‒103.
19
The past 20 years has seen the emergence of a sort of 'Jesus for All Seasons'; e.g. Brinkman, Non-Western Jesus;
Corley, Women and the Historical Jesus; Prothero, American Jesus.
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which, in what Wright called a Renewed New Quest characterized by a Wrede-like skepticism of

the gospels, views Jesus as something of a cynic-sage.20

As early as 2002, Baasland concluded the Third Quest had reached an impasse and a new

approach was required; his suggestion for a Fourth Quest was to examine the intentions of

Jesus.21 In 1778, Reimarus suggested the historical Jesus could be discovered by examining his

intentions. In two hundred and fifty years, we seem to have come full circle.

Conclusions

Notwithstanding a considerable amount of academic effort, the Third Quest appears to

have floundered, as evidenced by a steady succession of texts intended to provide overviews and

guidance.22 This is perhaps an indictment of the entire history of the Quest itself.

Kähler had proclaimed in 1896 that 'the emperor wore no clothes': we simply lack any

reliable and adequate sources about the Gospel which a historian can accept and from which a

'Historical Jesus' can be discerned. Since each of the three Quests has relied upon a variation of

the historical-critical method, it is not surprising that they have each been unable to reach any

consensus. The Quest has not been a failure; it has just not been a success.

To move beyond this stalemate, scholars must accept the limitations of the historical-

critical method and embrace academic disciplines far removed from theology.23 If the Gospels

and, indeed, Christianity itself, are to be seen as relevant to the modern world, we must be able to

demonstrate that the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are in fact the same person. To do

this, we need to use all the tools at our disposal.

20
Funk, Five Gospels.
21
Baasland, HSHJ, 1: 31.
22
For example, Holmén, Jesus from Judaism to Christianity; Holmén and Porter, HSHJ; Bock, Guide;
Charlesworth, Essential Guide; Dunn, Historical Jesus; McKnight, Jesus Christ Today; Levine, Historical Jesus;
Kuck, After Jesus; Evans, Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus.
23
See, for example, Theissen, First Followers.
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The Quests

Qualifier Period 1 Period 2 Period 3 Period 4 Period 5 Period 6 Period 7

Tatum Pre-Quest Old Quest No Quest New Post
(pre-1778) (1778-1906) (1906-1953) Quest Quest
(1953- (1985-
1985) 2000)
Theissen Critical Liberal, Crisis of the New
Logos optimistic life of Jesus Quest
Quest Jesus research (1950-
(1774- research (1901-1950) 1980)
1830) (1830-
1901)
Wright Third Renewed
Quest New
(1980-?) Quest

Fourth
Quest?
Research Scripture as Historical Source Form Redaction Social- Narrative
Approach authoritative Criticism Criticism Criticism Scientific Criticism
Criticism
Philosophy Church Liberal Theology Bultmann’s Post-Bultmannian emphasis on
Dogma Existentialism the language of Jesus
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Selected Bibliography

Arnal, William E. and Desjardins, M.R. Whose Historical Jesus? Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 1997.

Barth, Karl. "Ritschl," in Protestant Theology from Rousseau to Ritschl. Ch. XI, 390–398. New
York: Harper, 1959.

__________ and Hoskyns, Sir E.C. The Epistle to the Romans. London, Oxford University
Press, 1933.

Bock, Darrell C. Studying the historical Jesus: a guide to sources and methods. Grand Rapids,
MI: Baker Academic, 2002.

Bornkamm, Günther. Jesus of Nazareth. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1960.

Boyd, G.A. Cynic Sage or Son of God. Wheaton, IL: Bridgepoint, 1995.

Brinkman, Martien E. The non-Western Jesus: Jesus a badhisattva, avatar, guru, prophet,
ancestor, or healer. Oakville, CT: Equinox, 2009.

Brown, Colin. “The Quest of the Unhistorical Jesus and the Quest of the Historical Jesus”. In
Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, edited by Tom Holmén and Stanley E.
Porter, vol.2, 855-886. Boston: Brill, 2011.

Bultmann, Rudolf Karl. A history of the synoptic tradition. Translated by John Marsh. New
York: Harper and Row, 1968.

Calvin, John, et al. A harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke. Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1994.

Corley, Kathleen. Women and the Historical Jesus: feminist myths of Christian origin. Santa
Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2002.

Charlesworth, James H. The Historical Jesus: an Essential Guide. Nashville, TN: Abingdon
Press, 2008.

Chilton, B. and Evans, C. Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of
Current Research. NTTS (19). Leiden: Brill, 1994.

Dunn, James D.F. The Historical Jesus in recent research. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005.

__________. A new perspective on Jesus: what the quest for the historical Jesus missed. Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005.

Evans, Craig A. Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus. New York: Routledge, 2008.
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Funk, Robert Walter. The five Gospels : the search for the authentic words of Jesus : new
translation and commentary. San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1997.

Harnack, Adolf. What is Christianity? New York: Harper, 1957.

Holmén, T. Jesus from Judaism to Christianity: continuum approaches to the Historical Jesus.
London : T & T Clark, 2007.

__________ and Porter, S.E. Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus. 4 vols. Boston:
Brill, 2011.

Holtzmann, Heinrich Julius. Die synoptischen Evangelien. Ihr Ursprung und geschichtlicher
Charakter. (The Synoptic Gospels. Their Origin and Historical Character.) Leipzig:
Wilhelm Engelmann, 1863.

Jodock, Darrell H. Ritschl in Retrospective. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995.

Johnson, L.T. The real Jesus: the misguided quest for the historical Jesus and the truth of the
traditional Gospels. San Francisco: Harper, 1996.

Kähler, Martin. The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ. Translated by
Carl E. Braaten. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964.

Karnack, Adolf. What is Christianity? Translated by D. Bailey Sanders, 1900. San Diego: The
Book Tree, 2006.

Käsemann, E. Essays on New Testament Themes (SBT 41). London: SCM, 1964.

Kuck, David W. Review of After Jesus vol 3. In Finding the Historical Christ. Currents in
Theology and Missions. 38(2) (2011) 154.

Levine, Amy-Jill, et al. The Historical Jesus in Context. Princeton: University Press, 2006.

McKnight, Edgar V. Jesus Christ today: the historical shaping of Jesus for the twenty-first
century. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009.

__________. “The Jesus we’ll never know”. Christianity Today 54(4) (2010). 22-28.

Meyer, B.F. The Aims of Jesus. London: SCM, 1979.

Neill S. and Wright, N.T. The Interpretation of the New Testament: 1861—1986. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1988.

Nodet, Etienne. The historical Jesus?: necessity and limits of an enquiry. New York: T & T
Clark, 2008.
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Perrin, N. The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus. London: SCM, 1963.

Porter, Stanley E. The Criteria for Authenticity in historical-Jesus research: previous discussion
and new proposals. Sheffield: Academic Press, 2000.

_________. Reading the Gospels Today. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

Prothero, Stephen R. American Jesus : how the Son of God became a national icon. New York:
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003.

Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, et al. Fragments From Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical
Remarks On the Object of Jesus and His Disciples As Seen in the New Testament.
London: Williams and Norgate, 1879.

Ritschl, Otto, et al. Otto Ritschl, 1885-1976 : Retrospektive = retrospective. Wiesbaden:

Museum Wiesbaden, 1997.

Robins, Christopher A. "Teaching about the historical Jesus: Scholarship, Context and Balance."
Religious Education. 106 (3) (2011) 181-197.

Robinson, J. A New Quest of the Historical Jesus. SBT, First Series 25. London: SCM, 1959.

Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from
Reimarus to Wrede. Translated by W. Montgomery. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1906.

_________. The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus' Messiahship and
Passion. New York: Macmillan, 1950.

Strauss, David Friedrich. The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined. London: SCM Press, 1973.

Tatum, W. Barnes. In Quest of Jesus: A Guidebook. Revised and Enlarged Edition. Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1999.

Theissen, Gerd. The First Followers of Jesus: A Sociological Analysis of the Earliest Christians.
London : S.C.M. Press, 1978.

Witherington, B. The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth. Downer's Grove:
IVP, 1995.

Wrede, William. The Messianic Secret. Cambridge: J. Clarke, 1971.

Wright, N.T. "Quest for the Historical Jesus," part of "Jesus Christ," in The Anchor Bible
Dictionary 3, Yale University Press, 1992. 796-802.