A Brief History of the Modern Quest
The quest for the historical Jesus is a scholarly attempt to see behind the New Testament portraits of Jesus and the traditions of the church to discover the true identity and message of Jesus. The modern quest, which began over 200 years ago, is generally divided into four periods.
The First Quest
The First Quest for the historical Jesus began in the late 1700s and ended in the early 1900s. (Of course, one can follow William Herzog's argument that Mark, Matthew, Luke, John--and the other gospel writers--were really the first questers.) It came about as a result of the rationalism of the Englightenment and the liberation of the Bible from the church. The quest can be regarded as beginning in 1778 when Gotthold Lessing published a text written by Hermann Samuel Reimarus, a German professor. In this text, which was published after Reimarus' death because he feared the consequences of its publication, Reimarus argues that there was a difference between the real Jesus and the portrait of him we find in the Gospels. He believed that this difference existed because the disciples wrote their own views about Jesus, and felt that Jesus reaffirmed Judaism and had no intention of starting a new religion or doing away with the Law. Reimarus argued that Jesus thought of himself as a political messiah, and that after his death the disciples created a scheme to preserve Jesus' movement by stealing his body and proclaiming his resurrection. Following the post-Enlightenment rationalistic tendencies of the era, many scholars of the late 1700s and the early 1800s, such as K.F. Bahrdt and K.H. Venturini, attempted to explain away the supernatural elements found in the Gospels in rationalistic terms.One scholar who made a large impact on the popular level was David Friedrich Strauss, whose book The Life of Jesus Critically Examined denied the reliability of the Gospels on the basis of their supernatural elements and contradictions found within them. He labelled much of the Gospels myth, arguing that they record the mythological ideas of early Christians rather than historical information about Jesus' life. He felt that the attempts to explain miracles rationally were mistaken, and that they were properly viewed as mythical creations. One of the main lines of inquiry during this time was the synoptic problem. Through this investigation, scholars hoped to determine the relationship between the synoptic Gospels and the order in which they were written. Prior to the mid-1800s, most scholars followed church tradition in believing in the priority of Matthew. This assumption was challenged by the two-source hypothesis, which was first advanced as a comprehensive theory by H.J. Holtzman in 1863. This theory posits that Mark was the first written Gospel, and that Matthew and Luke then used Mark, as well as another written collection of sayings, in constructing their books. In 1890 Johannes Weiss gave this sayings collection the name "Q," an abbreviation for "quelle," the German word for "source."
Although the majority of 19th-century questers felt that the historical Jesus was significantly different from the portraits of the Gospels, some were more conservative. Alfred Edersheim was one of these scholars. He believed that scholars' radical conclusions about Jesus were the product of their worldview rather than a critical approach to history. He had faith that the Gospels relate reliable history and were written by those to whom authorship is traditionally ascribed.
Although most scholars of this period saw Jesus as a moral reformer and ethical teacher who preached the brotherhood of mankind and the fatherhood of God, there were some who argued that this view was incorrect. Among these dissenters was Johannes Weiss, who argued that Jesus was an eschatological prophet who expected the imminent end of the world. Weiss felt that because of this Jesus was not relevant to those who did not share a first-century apocalyptic worldview.
Another scholar who rejected the ethical teacher model was Albert Schweitzer, whose famous 1906 book The Quest of the Historical Jesus was an analysis of the First Quest that also served as its eulogy. He felt that the portrait of Jesus as an ethical teacher was essentially a creation of rationalistic liberalism and argued that scholars had been writing lives of Jesus that mirrored their own values. Schweitzer's view of Jesus was that of an apocalyptic prophet who sacrificed himself in order to bring about the Kingdom of God. He argued that the Quest was not possible, not only because of authors' lack of objectivity, but also because the Gospels don't contain enough biographical information. Because of Schweitzer's book, the optimistic view that the historical Jesus could be found behind the Gospels was lost, and the First Quest was brought to an end.
The period of No Quest
The years from the publication of Schweitzer's book to the end of World War II is generally known as the period of No Quest. During this time, it was generally believed that it was impossible to disentangle the Jesus of the Gospels from the historical Jesus. In addition, many felt the quest was theologically illegitimate because Christianity is based upon faith in Christ rather than the historical person of Jesus, and thus it really isn't important who the historical Jesus was.The most influential scholar of the period was Rudolf Bultmann. He saw the quest as methodologically impossible because he felt that one cannot get behind the faith of the authors of the Gospels and that we can know almost nothing about the life of Jesus because the earliest available sources are not particularly concerned with it. Bultmann interpreted Christianity through the philosophy of existentialism as a call to living an authetic existence through radical decision.
The New Quest
Soon after World War I, scholars began to investigate the Gospels with a new tool known as form criticsm. Form criticism seeks to understand the oral tradition which led to the Gospels and attempts to trace the development of pieces of the tradition through the oral and literary stages. Shortly following World War II, scholars began using redaction criticism, which investigates the way in which each Gospel writer pieced together his book from various written and oral sources. These two tools served as the basis of the New Quest, which began after World War II and continued until around 1970. The aim of the quest was to reconstruct the original message of Jesus and compare this with the proclamation of the early church to determine in which ways they were the same.The Third Quest
The Third Quest, which began in the 1970s and continues to this day, has been called the interdisciplinary quest for the historical Jesus because it uses archaeological, historical, and textual sources from the first century and applies the findings of sociology and anthropology to these sources to attempt to understand Jesus. This search is helped by the fact that about 40% of all documents of early Christianity have been discovered in this century as well as by better methods and increased knowledge. Like any good intellectual movement, the Third Quest is far from monolithic. It incorporates a great number of viewpoints, but the dominant trend seems to be to see Jesus as a non-apocolyptic wisdom teacher.For the most part, The Third Quest emphasizes the Jewishness of Jesus and the necessity of understanding him in the context of first-century Judaism. Because of this a great deal of attention is placed on the social world of first-century Palestine.
Most Third Questers see early Christians as remarkably diverse in their interpretation of Jesus and feel that what we now call orthodox Christianity was only one of many traditions. They believe orthodoxy didn't come into being until one tradition acquired enough power to brand others heretical. Because of this view, many believe non-canonical Gospels are as valuable as canonical sources. These scholars use the Nag Hammadi collection discovered earlier this century, and especially the Gospel of Thomas, because they believe that these texts represent an early independent tradition.
The Third Quest's dominant view of Jesus as a non-apocalyptic wisdom teacher is derived partly from an the hypothetical sayings source Q. Many scholars hypothesize that there were three layers in Q that represent different stages in the development of the Palestinian Christian community. The first layer, which is seen as closest to the historical Jesus, consists of sapiential wisdom teachings. The lack of apocalyptic sayings in this layer has led scholars to challenge the apocalyptic view of Jesus.
The Third Quest's work has become relatively prominent largely due to the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars started in 1985 by Robert Funk which has voted on the authenticity of sayings attributed to Jesus. The Jesus Seminar is committed to making the public aware of its work and has gotten a great deal of attention in the media. The group published its conclusions in The Five Gospels, a translation of the canonical Gospels as well as the Gospel of Thomas. It has also produced a translation of canonical and non-canonical gospels known as The Complete Gospels. Because of its high profile and revisionist tendencies, the group has been critized by traditional Christians. Although not all members of the Seminar agree, the view of the historical Jesus that has emerged in their work is that of a non-apocalyptic wisdom teacher who taught and lived subversive forms of behavior. They feel that Jesus did not believe he was God, and that he proclaimed the Kingdom of God in the present rather than the future.
by Travis Brouwer