Searching for Jesus NT 301: Introduction to the New Testament New Brunswick Theological Seminary Virginia Wiles

Who Is Jesus?

Films

Who Do You Say that I Am?

How Do We Know? 3Using the Sources –New Testament: Gospels and Paul –Early Church Fathers –Non-Christian contemporary literature 3Using our Minds –The Importance of Methodology

The Rise of Historical Consciousness 3Cause and Effect 3Historical distance Thus, the question arises… Who was Jesus?

How does who Jesus WAS compare with Who Jesus IS? The Jesus of History The Christ of Faith and

Some Background in the History of New Testament Scholarship

The Effects of the Enlightenment 3John Locke ( ) –Natural Law & Miracles –The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures (anon, 1695) –“properly understood, the Scriptures contain nothing that was in conflict with reason” 3Herman Samuel Reimarus ( ) –published posthumously –absolute distinction between what Jesus said and did and what the Evangelists reported him to have said and done.

On Reimarus -- “It is not overstating the case to claim that all historical study of Jesus is a critical appropriation of this view or a debate with it.” --Leander Keck

Liberal Reconstructions of Jesus 3Holtzmann ( ) –Markan priority –Thus, Mark is most “authentic” 3Adolf von Harnack ( ) –Das Wesen des Christentum

The “Liberal View”: (Harnack) 3Inward rule of God 3Infinite worth of human soul 3Higher righteousness and the command of love

Attacks on the Liberal Reconstructions Albert Schweitzer ( ) The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1899) showed that the reconstructed Jesus was a retrojection of the scholar’s own paradigm Apocalypticism

After Schweitzer -- 3Martin Kähler: –the Jesus of History vs. the Christ of Faith 3Rudolph Bultmann ( ?) –How did the Proclaimer become the Proclaimed?

A Summary of the First Quest -- The Historical Jesus... 3Viewed as incompatible with Christianity (Reimarus) 3Viewed as bulwark of true religion (Harnack) 3Viewed as incompatible with MODERN sensibilities (Schweitzer) 3Brings to expression an understanding of human existence (Bultmann)

The New Quest 3Ernst Käsemann –Bultmann’s student –Criterion of Dissimilarity -- when there are no grounds either for deriving a tradition from Judaism or for ascribing it to primitive Christianity

Critique of Dissimilarity 3Inevitably separates Jesus from both ancient Judaism and early Christianity 3Criterion too ill-defined, leaving far too much scope for influence from the quester’s own prejudice

A “Third Quest” 3Close study of Judaism –Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew (1973) –E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (1975) 3Defined by N.T. Wright (1986) –Jewish Jesus –Proper attitude to primary sources –Importance of eschatology –Understanding the historical causes of crucifixion

The Third Quest Jesus must be understood as a comprehensible and yet, so to speak, crucifiable first-century Jew, whatever the theological or hermeneutical consequences. -- N.T. Wright

The Jesus Seminar 3Concerned to determine “what Jesus actually said and did” 3Major players include -- –John Dominic Crossan –Marcus Borg 3Not limited to canonical gospels –**Gospel of Thomas**