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My faith is strong BECAUSE I have examined the evidence objectively. |
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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 Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, 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, NT Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus, 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?) |
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Blind faith is useless if you're at all concerned about actually accepting only true things and
rejecting false things. Faith is often used as an excuse to believe in things that rational people
would otherwise reject as ridiculous. |
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Now now, I didn’t start this to do a bunch of Christian bashing. I’m looking for a Christian to
make a case for his or her objectivity or to admit that they are biased on the subject. |
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Other than the so-called holy books, there isn't one shred of evidence they can use. So they point
at quite literally anything, and claim that that is "proof". |
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Because people of Faith believe they are being objective. The bible is an objective book from their
point of view. |
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Excuse me! We Christians have every right to vote that Jesus exists! |
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By that same logic I would also state that most atheists can’t effectively debate on a historical
Jesus either under the basis that their own presumptions often discourage such an event (the same
way a religious person’s presumptions often encourage it). This isn’t to say there is no atheist
or theist who can debate on such a subject. It's meant to assert that most I’ve seen can’t do so
successfully for obvious reasons.
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WOW some people need to read into history more often. We know that a man named Jesus existed through
religious documentation and through recorded history of Monarchs and other rulers. We know that he
had a following and that a man named Jesus was crucified by Roman records, non-religious. There are
also links of a new religious sect of Judaism coming from this is historical writings. Later they
became titled as Christians. In 325ad Emperor Constantine held at a council session that the symbol
for this young religion be the Cross. |
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In theory a non-Christian could have conducted research into the historical reality of Jesus, become
convinced of it, and only then adopted the Christian religion. In that case, the faith has a
rational foundation and so its holder could participate responsibly in debates. However, in
practice, the number of such people must be infinitesimal, especially in relation to all the other
Christian cultists.
In the real world, the process is likely to work in the opposite direction. Those who learn more
about the historical origins of the Christian superstition are more likely to reject it. Bart
Ehrman, for example, is regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on the early Christian
faith. He started out as a committed Christian, then when his researches uncovered how bogus the
whole thing was, how forgeries and bizarre internecine strife between different factions had warped
the original vision of Christianity, he abandoned it and became an agnostic.
In my experience, a magical belief system massively warps and deforms the judgement of anyone
subscribing to it, even on matters only indirectly related to the faith itself, rather than its core
tenets. |
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By this logic no-one could debate on anything they felt passionately about. And maybe that is true
that we are all swayed by our beliefs when we look at evidence. But if you want to have a debate you
must accept that people can belief something and still use evidence to back it up.
If you believe in Jesus because of faith and not evidence then indeed you cannot debate on his
historical likelihood. But if you believe in Jesus because of evidence (and perhaps faith, why not
both?) then I see no reason why it is impossible for someone to carry out a reasonable debate. Maybe
many people do not, but that doesn't mean that no-one can.
For the record, I am an atheist. |
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If you have utter contempt for religion how can you debate objectively on a historical Jesus? |
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Http://www.sowhataboutjesus.com/existed.php
Jesus has been mentioned in numerous writings, as well as other mentions in religion. |
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15 Jun 2008 17:46
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