The Modern Quest for the Historical Jesus

Part 1: THE "QUEST" Begins at the end of XVIII C.E.

Early rationalist lives of Jesus

• Johann Jakob Hess (1768)
• Franz Volkmar Reinhard (1781)
• Karl Friedrich Bahrdt, Popular letters about the Bible (1782); An Explanation of the Plans and Aims of Jesus, in 11 volumes (1784–1792)
• Johann Gottfried Herder (1796, followed by a harmonization of the gospels in 1797)
• Karl Heinrich Venturini, A Non-supernatural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth, in 4 volumes (1800–1802; second ed. 1806)
• Ernst August Opitz (1812)
• Johann Adolph Jakobi (1816)
• Thomas Jefferson (1820); cf. Benjamin Franklin, whose Poor Richard's Almanac can be read as a compilation of the (self-evident) truths which Jesus taught
• Early fictitious lives of Jesus depict Jesus as connected with the Essenes

First historical conception of the life of Jesus:

Herman Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples (1778); published posthumously by his disciple, Götthold Ephraim Lessing

• Focusses on Jesus' preaching
• Jesus must be understood in a Jewish context
  • Jesus did not break with the Jewish law
  • Jesus did not intend to found a new religion
  • Claims to messiahship are not equivalent to claims to divinity; "son of God" = human being, like the Israelite kings
• the hope of the Parousia was the fundamental idea in early Christianity
• one problem with Reimarus' analysis (according to critic, Albert Schweitzer), was that he saw the eschatological tendency of Jesus as exclusively earthly and political in character ("son of David" but not "son of Man" idea to balance it)

Refutation of Reimarus by Johann Salomo Semler (1779)
Johannes Weiss, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (1892) was essentially a rehabilitation of Reimarus' eschatological emphasis

Discussion:

1. What do you think of Reimarus' assertions about Jesus?
2. Where do you agree or disagree, and why?

Part 2: XIX C.E. developments

• questions of historiography are raised (i.e., what are the rules of history)
• therefore, evaluation of sources
  • gospels viewed as more adequate sources for Jesus' life than are the epistles or Creeds
  • synoptics are preferred to John (see handout for discrepancies)
  • the fourth gospel is evaluated as a theology presented in historical guise (e.g., David Friedrich Strauss)
  • eventually, the synoptics are no longer seen as independent witnesses
    • Johann Jakob Griesbach first formulated a view of the interdependence of the synoptics:
      • Matt first
      • Then Luke
      • Then John
      • Mark was pieced together out of Matt and Luke
    • Griesbach's hypothesis is still alive today, in scholars like Farmer (author of the two-volume Anchor Bible Commentary on Matthew)
• Other lives of Jesus by:
  • August Wilhelm Neander (1837)
  • Ernest Renan (1863)
  • Daniel Schenkel (1864; 4th ed. 1873)
  • Theodor Keim, 3 vols. (1867, 1871, 1872)
  • Willibald Beyschlag (1864, re: Renan's; 1885-86, his own)
  • Hugo Delff (1889)
  • David Friedrich Strauss
• By the end of the XIXth century, the current synoptic theory was developed (see "The Growth of the Gospels"), to wit:
  • Mark is the earliest of the synoptics (dated ca. 70 or a bit earlier)
  • Mark is a source for Matt and Luke (dated ca. 80 or later, perhaps substantially later for Luke)
  • In addition, there was another source for Matt and Luke, the hypothetical "Q," dated ca. 50
  • M = material distinctive to Matt (may refer to redactional glosses/additions by the final editor of the gospel and/or one or more hypothetical document[s] as source[s] for the gospel)
  • L = material distinctive to Luke (again, may refer to redactional glosses/additions by the final editor of the gospel and/or one or more hypothetical document[s] as source[s] for the gospel)
• Exemplary of fully-developed rationalism
  • NB: rationalism, as a movement, was a rebellion against the dogmatism of the church
    • "This [Chalcedonian] dogma [of the two natures of Christ] had first to be shattered before men [sic] could once more go out in quest of the historical Jesus, before they could even grasp the thought of His existence."⁽¹⁾
    • "The historical investigation of the life of Jesus did not take its rise from a purely historical interest; it turned to the Jesus of history as an ally in the struggle against the tyranny of dogma."⁽²⁾
  • Rationalists found Jesus to be the revealer of true virtue coincident with right reason (e.g., Reinhard, Hess, Paulus, Jefferson, Franklin)
• But we find different portraits of Jesus from different scholars: "But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each individual created Him in accordance with his [sic] own character. There is no historical task which so reveals a man's [sic] true self as the writing of a Life of Jesus. No vital force comes into the figure unless a man [sic] breathes into it all the hate or all the love of which he [sic] is capable. The stronger the love, or the stronger the hate, the more life-like is the figure which is produced. For hate as well as love can write a Life of Jesus, and the greatest of them are written with hate: that of Reimarus, the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist, and that of David Friedrich Strauss. It was not so much hate of the Person of Jesus as of the supernatural nimbus with which it was so easy to surround Him, and with which in fact He had been surrounded. They were eager to picture Him as truly and purely human, to strip from Him the robes of splendour with which he had been apparelled, and clothe Him once more with the coarse garments in which He had walked in Galilee."⁽³⁾
• Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus (1828)
  • even gives a rationalist explanation of miracles
  • proposes the trance theory (Jesus did not die on the cross)
  • Judas believed Jesus was the messiah, and wanted to force him to declare himself; that is why he "betrayed" him to the Jewish authorities (cf. "Jesus of Nazareth")

   

Part 3: Early XX C.E. Developments

• Wilhelm Wrede:
  • Even the earliest gospel is impregnated with theological interpretation; it is not just historical narrative. Thus,
  • Mark is inadequate as a source for the historical Jesus
  • Even the earliest community was interested in proclaiming the kerygma, which reveals the significance of Jesus' ministry for the community, not the "facts" of Jesus' life
• Recovery of the eschatological element of the Gospel tradition (e.g., the basileia, the end) by Schweitzer, Dodd, and Weiss; thus,
  • There is a gulf between the historical Jesus and the modern world
• Emergence of Form Criticism (Schmidt, Dibelius, Bultmann)
  • During the first generation of Jesus' followers, there was oral tradition
  • There was no continuous narrative, but single isolated stories which were passed on
  • The Passion narrative was the first to acquire consecutive form
  • Stories were repeated in response to various needs of the communities: preaching, teaching, controversy, ethical guidance
  • Thus, stories as told tended to fall into stereotyped patterns, or forms, characteristic of oral tradition
  • Therefore, there exists the possibility of profound modification via oral tradition, and also invention of some material over the process
• This led to the form critics' radical skepticism regarding establishing the historicity of Jesus material, e.g.,
  • Rudolph Bultmann
  • John Lightfoot
  • even the RC, Albert Loisy
• Three basic responses to the Form Critics' skeptical challenge:
  1. The synoptics represent eyewitness tradition (very few; e.g., Gary Habermas, T. W. Manson)
  2. T he Christian community exercised careful control over oral transmission, similar to that found in rabbinic Judaism, thus radical modification or free invention was not possible (popular among Scandinavian scholars, e.g., Gerghardsson)
  3. Accept contention of anonymous oral tradition, but disagree as to extent to which this undermines factual accuracy of the incidents and conversations, e.g.,
     • Günther Bornkamm, moderate, sees oral tradition as inaccurate re: bare facts, but accurate in reflecting the central significance of a person (cf. James H. Charlesworth)
• Distinctively RC solution:
  • Church as a community gave rise to the gospels
  • God inspired the communities which authored them (e.g., Raymond Brown)
  • This does not mean accuracy of historical facts
  • It does maintain the inerrancy of the Bible re: faith and morality, which the Church now has the authority to interpret
  • Still must answer the Form Critics' challenge re: historicity, but it takes the pressure off since the doctrinal tradition (and, therefore, contemporary belief) is distinguished from the historical question
  • Essentially, in other words, this is a rejection of the Rationalist agenda of repudiating the authority of dogma to embrace the authority of "pure reason"

Discussion:

1. Which do you think is the best response to the Form Critics' skeptical challenge? Why?
2. What do you see as the benefits and drawbacks of the Rationalist approach?

1. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, tr. W. Montgomery from the first German Edition, Von Reimarus zu Wrede, 1906 (A. & C. Black, 1910; New York: Macmillan, 1959), 3.
2. Ibid, 4.
3. Ibid.