A Seminar paper on

The Quest for the Historical Jesus

Submitted to Rev. Dr M. Stephen Submitted by: Jerin & Jithin

Introduction

According to James Before the nineteenth century, when Christians sought to understand Jesus
and the ancient world depicted in the gospels, they adhered to naturalistic literalism. Naturalistic
literalism is the practice of reading the Scriptures and accepting the events that are described
therein as the literal truth.No one had ever given much thought to reading the New Testament
(NT) any other way. Things have changed dramatically since then. Today, the only Christians
that still hold to a natural-literal reading of the NT are Fundamentalists who believe it to be
"plenary," which is to say that every word is inspired by God. However, even a quick glance at
the NT reveals inconsistencies. In Matthew, for example, the Capernaum centurion himself
approaches Jesus while in Luke the centurion sends elders to speak for him (Mt.8:5; Lk.7:1).
Matthew also tells us that Judas hung himself after his betrayal of Jesus, but we learn in Acts that
Judas died from an accidental fall (Mt. 27:5; Acts 1:18). It is clear that the NT is not infallible.
Modern biblical criticism is the attempt to study the NT’s literary, stylistic, rhetorical, and
doctrinal patterns in order to understand what its human authors are expressing. criticism is the
freedom to come to interpretive conclusions that do not necessarily conform to traditional religious views.
Criticism is a tool for looking at the NT from many fresh and exciting directions in order to better
understand what its authors were trying to communicate. Through this seminar paper I would like to
explore the humanity of Jesus and the issues relating with this theme.

First Quest

On his deathbed in 1768, German scholar Hermann Samuel Reimarus turned over a manuscript
that was later published in 1778 under the title On the Intention of Jesus and His Teaching. Reimarus
disputed the resurrection of Jesus and argued that the disciples stole Jesus' body and fabricated the entire
story. Reimarus’s work caused an uproar, but it also sparked interest in the critical study of the NT.
Reimarus’s challenge to traditional dogma forced theologians to look closer at the gospel accounts. David
Friedrich Strauss of Tübingen University did not wait until his death to publish The Life of Jesus in 1835.
Strauss’s deconstruction of the gospel stories (in which he discarded all supernatural events and miracles)
created a backlash that cost him his position at the university. Others, like Woolston and Aikenhead were
imprisoned or hung for publishing controversial ideas about the NT texts. Nevertheless, the genie was out
of the bottle. A contemporary of Strauss, Karl Lachmann, argued that Mark’s gospel was written earlier
than Matthew and was therefore more historically reliable than the other three gospels. But how could this
be? According to Church tradition, Mark was a follower of Peter in Rome long after the crucifixion, while
Matthew was a disciple of Jesus. How did Peter’s interpreter come to write an earlier gospel than a
disciple of Jesus? If Mark was written first (around the year 70), who wrote Matthew’s and Luke’s
gospels? These questions led to still more and what is now called the "First Quest" for the historical Jesus
was well underway.Kerygmatic Sources for the Jesus MovementHowever, the first quest for the historical
Jesus would end in disappointment. Many scholars recognized that all four gospels were just as much a
product of theology as they were of history. Wilhelm Wrede’s The Messianic Secret showed how even
Mark’s gospel was ahistorical and shaped by early Christian belief. It is now generally accepted that the
gospel writers engaged in an anachronistic portrayal of Jesus, projecting back onto him a highly
sophisticated and elaborate Risen Christ motif. The scholars who sought to remove this superfluous motif
from the historical man soon found that, like a peeled onion, nothing was left behind once the layers of
christological material were stripped away. Albert Schweitzer signaled the end of the first quest by
concluding in his watershed book The Quest for the Historical Jesus that Jesus could not be found in the
gospel accounts at all and that his "image has not been destroyed from without, it has fallen to pieces,
cleft and disintegrated by the concrete historical problems which came to the surface one after another.

Second Quest

"Not to be defeated, a second attempt to discover the historical Jesus within the gospel accounts
was led by Rudolf Bultmann at Marburg University. Bultmann used a new scholarly tool called "form
criticism" (Formgeschichte) to methodically deconstruct the gospel narratives in order to cull the
authentic sayings of Jesus from later Church additions. Form criticism looks closely at small literary units
(called pericopes) and asks for what "situation in life" (Sitz im Leben) or purpose the story came to be
written. For example, the form critic argues that the purpose of the Syrophoenician woman story in Mark
7:25-50(and paralleled in Matthew15:21-28) was to address the extension of salvation to the Gentiles.
Bultmann concluded that the early Christians had very little interest in the historical Jesus and that Jesus
was forever buried under the mythology of Pauline Christianity. However, Bultmann found a silver lining
in existentialism and wrote that even "mythology expresses a certain understanding of human existence."
We may not know who the historical Jesus was, Bultmann thought, but we can find meaning in the Christ
of faith. This is the essence of mainstream liberal Christianity today.Most scholars believe that a real,
flesh and blood Jewish peasant whom we call Jesus lived and taught in first-century Galilee. What they
disagree on is what this man was like. After his crucifixion this Jewish rabbi and teacher is spoken of by
his followers as "Lord" and as someone who has transcended the grave to become a spiritual figure. This
transcendence or resurrection is called the Easter event. The quest for the historical Jesus involves an
attempt to separate the pre-Easter historical figure of Jesus from the post-Easter Christ of faith. Scholars
generally agree upon four simple criteria to use in reconstructing the historical Jesus from within the
gospel accounts. I should point out that we are dealing here with probabilities rather than absolute
certainty.

Third Quest

The first two quests for the historical Jesus ended in failure. There is room for pessimism in the
third quest as well. Anthropological studies of oral traditions based on eyewitness accounts have shown
that such traditions are not very reliable. However, the search for the historical Jesus is hopeful in that it
can at least tell us the degrees of probability for Jesus' sayings. Using criteria for testing the gospel
passages, scholars may be able to assess whether a saying is unlikely, possible, or probably unlikely. This
may be the best that we can hope for. Thus, these criteria can work to include or exclude a saying of Jesus
depending upon whether or not it is likely or unlikely that he would have said it. These four general
criteria are typical of those that scholars use: 1.language
2.theology3.attestation 4. Distinctiveness. Let us take them one at a time. The criterion of language
simply asks what language the phrase has its origin in. Since we know that Jesus spoke Aramaic, Semitic
phrases are more likely to have come from Jesus than Greek constructions. The criterion of theology asks
whether or not the teaching attributed to Jesus derives from Jewish theology or from Greek theology.
Since Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, Jewish teachings are more likely to have come from him than Greek
teachings in the Hellenistic world. The criterion of attestation asks, "where do we find the saying of
Jesus?" and "how many sources tell us that Jesus said it?" We are more comfortable with multiple
attestations than with a single attestation since sayings repeated by more than one source are more likely
to have come from the historical Jesus. The criterion of distinctiveness asks whether or not the saying is
typical or atypical of the emerging portrait of Jesus. This one is tricky because it requires us to first have a
kernel of authentic material in order to know what the emerging portrait of Jesus is. However, we can tell
the difference between something Jesus might say and something that the Apostle Paul said. If Jesus
repeats a distinctly Pauline phrase then we must examine the passage further to see if it really did come
from Jesus or was projected onto him after Paul. Generally speaking then, if a saying seems to run
counter to other authentic teachings then we have reason to suspect that the statement is not original to
Jesus.Let us take an easy example in order to illustrate how these criteria work. Did Jesus use the term
"son of Adam" in his teaching? We know that "son of Adam" (bar adam or "son of man") is a Semitic
phrase and since Jesus spoke Aramaic the phrase fits the criterion of language. If the phrase "son of
Adam" means something like a "chosen human being" it fits Jewish theology well. On the other hand, if it
means something akin to a divine god the phrase is better suited to Greek theology. Mark seems to use the
phrase in a Jewish context so it seems to meet the criterion of theology. So far, so good. What about the
criterion of attestation? Well," son of Adam" is found in the early Q gospel (Lk. 7:34, 9:58, 11:30, 12:8-
10,and 17:23-30),the Gospel of Thomas (86), as well as Mark, Matthew, and Luke. It seems that "son of
Adam" enjoys multiple attestation and, more importantly, exists in the earliest layers of material about
Jesus. Further, we find that the phrase is distinctive with Jesus and not used by others (such as Paul or
James) so it fits well with other authentic sayings of Jesus. We can safely conclude that the phrase "son of
Adam" is probably authentic
andoriginateswiththehistoricalJesus.ApocryphalApparitions:1Corinthians15:3-11AsaPost-
PaulineInterpolation ThenstitutionNarrativeofLuke22:19-20 The Syrophoenician Woman in Mk. 7:25-
30/Mt. 15:21-28As we move further in time away from the historical figure, the Christ of faith gradually
becomes less and less recognizable. The first impulse of pagan converts to the new religion was to see
Jesus as a virgin-born god. Speculations about Jesus' divinity first began appearing in Christian literature
about two centuries after his death. The New Testament has nothing to say about the tripartite nature of
God, nevertheless, these interpretations about Jesus solidified over time in the post-Easter Church. With
the Chalcedonian Definition of 451 CE, Jesus Christ was formally received into the Church as both a god
and the second member of the Holy Trinity. The claim that Jesus was an intentional founder of what
would become Christianity is referred to by scholars as Jesus' "self understanding." In the earliest gospel
traditions about Jesus (beginning with the gospels of Q at about 50 CE and Original Mark at around 70
CE) Jesus is not depicted as a supernatural god. His familiar maxims such as "do unto your neighbor as
you would have them do unto you" are actually Pharisaic in origin and this particular phrase was said by
the famous Rabbi Hillel about80 years prior to Christ. The early material puts Jesus squarely in the
Jewish world and his background as a Jewish peasant in Galilee assures that his education as a youth must
have come from the Pharisees. Later gospels, particularly the canonical Gospel of John, mythologize
Jesus and portray him as a divine Logos or "mind" of God. However, these post-Easter interpretations
developed later by the Church should be viewed for what they are: stories about a Risen Christ and not
historical facts about the real historical Jesus. Once we sort out the historical Jesus from the Risen
Christ--the facts from the myths--we can better appreciate the Jewish peasant that changed the Western
world.

Evaluation and Conclusion

In retrospect it is clear that impressions of the course of the quest of the historical Jesus, and even
of how many quests there have been, have been shaped by the viewpoint of the person giving the
impression. It also is clear that the Jesus that was discovered in particular quests all too often reflected the
image of those engaged in it. Harnack’s Jesus was the reflection of a liberal Protestant face at the bottom
of a well. Schweitzer’s Jesus had the demeanor of Nietzsche’s superman. The Jesus of the New Quest
sounded like an existentialist philosopher summoning his hearers to make existential decisions. In all this
the hermeneutical circle came into play: the questioner’s questions and outlook helped shape the answers
that were given. No single school of thought has attained absolute results and driven all rival theories
from the field. As in all theorizing, all claims are open to evaluation in the light of the methods pursued.
However, in the battles between rival schools of thought and in the process of successive approximation
that belongs to all scholarly inquiry, positive gains have been made. It is no longer possible to have a
docetic Christ. Jesus was a particular historical figure rooted in his times, but speaking to all times. The
study of Jesus and the Gospels in the light of the social, economic, political and religious conditions of his
times has immensely enriched our understanding not only of history but also of theological issues
embedded in history.