The Jesus History wars - build a bridge guys!

Introduction

The “Third Quest” for the historical Jesus, is the latest manifestation in over 100 years of research dedicated to uncovering as much information about Jesus as a real person in a particular place and time.

Recent research appears to be based on generally agreed models for determining the authenticity of biblical witness to Jesus and is fuelled by contemporary academic developments which Borg notes have emerged as a result of “insights and models gleaned from the history of religions, cultural anthropology, and the social sciences.”

As a result, the area is ripe for further exploration. Currently however, three key issues appear to be presenting as a result of the research.

The first is the nature of the research itself. The literature surrounding the approach and methodology of the research is reminiscent of the recent “history wars” in Australia, as scholars argue about the legitimacy of each other’s approach. Such discussions evoke the broader questions about the relevance and application of the research to New Testament studies generally.

A second is the new information that is emerging about the social and cultural milieu in which Jesus lived.

The third is the struggle to come to conclusions about the nature of Jesus himself in light of new information.

The research itself
The current different methodological approaches within the ‘quest for the historical Jesus’ are not necessarily at extremes from one another. They are all caught up in what Meier describes as the “improvement in the articulation and use of criteria of historicity.”

However, within that framework differing approaches are discernible. One notable example is the Jesus Seminar. Watson summarises the Seminar’s approach. He writes
“the Seminar consists of a group of scholars from North America who meet regularly to discuss sayings of Jesus and stories of Jesus and to vote on their authenticity or otherwise.”

The Seminar’s approach to determining historical reliability has resulted in strong criticism from a number of authors. N. T Wright, in critiquing a publication by members of the Seminar, is scathing of its approach, accusing it of failing to practise genuine historiography. Others, who critique the Seminar and the conclusions that it reaches, generally attack its research methodology.

Thus, heated debates circulate around the methodology and weight given to the historical and analytical tools available.

But more broadly, the quest attracts criticism about its epistemological framework. Such a meta approach asks questions about the legitimacy of the current exercise.

For example Schussler-Fiorenza, who while supporting the research as important to the field of New Testament studies, is impatient with the fact that it is not being “problemitized and critiqued.” She writes:
“historical- Jesus research as a rhetorical practice must critically explore and assess its own internalisation of hegemonic knowledge about Jesus and discursive kyriocentric frameworks that make “sense” of the world and produce what counts as the “commonsense reality” of Jesus.”

She also critiques the historical positivism apparent in all streams of the research, stating that,
“Its emphasis on the “realia” and “facts” of history and the reliability of its methods serves to promote scientific fundamentalism. Its universalising discourses obfuscate that historians select and interpret archaeological artifacts and textual evidence as well as incorporate them into a scientific model and narrative frame of meaning.”

Such critique begs the questions about why and for whom the research is being done. This is not an area that can be fully canvassed in this essay, but like the “history wars” in Australia, is likely to be related to a search for identity within the contemporary religious and social climate.
Jesus’ social location and cultural milieu
Notwithstanding the broad critique, the quest does have new evidence to work with, both as a result of methodologies developed in order to authenticate text, and as a result of archaeological excavations.

When analysing textual sources Loader notes that the methodologies used have produced a “new element in gospel research (coming) partly from research on Q and from the Gospel of Thomas.”

An improvement in the techniques used to critique and evaluate primary sources has also meant that there has been “a more confident acceptance of the core text of Josephus’ Testimonium, a small but precious piece of independent attestation to Jesus’ existence, ministry, and fate.”

In addition, archaeological discoveries such as the Dead Sea scrolls and the excavations of Sepphoris have provided rich material to assist in the understanding of the social location and place in which Jesus existed.

As a result, the research focuses significantly on social and cultural findings. For instance, Loader writes,
“The major effect…(of the Dead Sea Scrolls) has been to transform our understanding of Judaism…They not only alerted us to diversities in understanding Torah, but also led to a rediscovery of the rich sources which Jewish literature of the period offered.”

Meier concludes that the written and archaeological evidence highlights again the Jewish identity of Jesus. Thus, reconstructions of the historical Jesus must take seriously “Palestinian Judaism at the turn of the era.”

The nature of Jesus

New insights into cultural clues however, have not led to a consensus about how Jesus was located, or indeed located himself in that era. Again, the emergence of distinct theories can be highlighted by reflecting on some of the conclusions emerging from members of the Jesus Seminar.

Marcus Borg has used data from the history of religions, anthropology, and the psychology of religion to discern the type of religious personality which Jesus may have embodied, namely the “charismatic holy man…the sage…the prophet…and the revitalisation movement founder.” Crossan is noted to have used a socio-economic model to discern Jesus as a Cynic, arguing for a “brokerless kingdom: an immediacy of access to God beyond and outside of the institution and seeking to transform society accordingly.”

What is distinctive about both these approaches, and that of the Jesus Seminar is the movement toward an understanding of Jesus as a non-eschatological figure. Namely Jesus is identified as a subversive figure, counter-cultural and interested in the transformation of his culture, rather than end of the world.

Other authors have vehemently disagreed. One criticism has been that such an approach de emphasises Jesus’ Jewishness. Wright notes:
“Judaism only appears as the dark backcloth against which the jewel of Jesus’ message — not now as a Christian message, but as a subversive, present-kingdom, almost protognostic, possibly-Cynic, laconic-cowboy message—shines the more brightly.”

Wright argues that “Jesus’ language about the Kingdom of God was thoroughly Jewish, and belonged within the Jewish setting and aspirations of his day.”
Meier also locates Jesus as an eschatological prophet firmly within the Jewish tradition. He writes,
“most of the material that we can trace back to the public ministry of Jesus reflects the pattern of a miracle-working eschatological prophet wearing the mantle of Elijah. Yet in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the cleansing of the temple there seems implied a certain royal Davidic claim. It may be that Jesus reflects the syncretistic tendencies of his time in meshing more than one messianic role in his own claim and conduct.”

Conclusion

While the quest for the historical Jesus is not a new phenomenon, its re-emergence highlights our own cultural context, in particular the nature of academic enterprise, the emergence of refined tools for historical research and the uncovering of new primary sources.

In Australian we have seen a similar phenomenon in relation to our own social history. The current push by the Federal government to rescue “history” from “ideologues” is probably as a result of the murkiness that attends such explorations into self identity. As the new understandings that will emerge from the third quest start to filter through to the breadth of the church, it too will have to formulate its own public response.

Bibliography

Borg, M. Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship, Trinity Press: Valley Forge 1994, pp 3-17.

Crossan, J. “The Power of the Dog” in Adam, A. Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible – A Reader, Chalice Press: St Louis, 2001.

Evans, C.A. Assessing Progress in the Third Quest of the Historical Jesus, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, Vol 4.1 pp 35-54.
[Accessed 19 Sept 2006 at www.search.epnet.com]

Loader, W. The Historical Jesus Puzzle, Colloquium 29.2 (1997) 131-150
[Accessed: 19 Sept 2006 at: http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/HJPuzzle.pdf.]

Meier, J. “The Present State of the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Loss and Gain” in
Biblica 80 (1999) 459-487.
[Accessed: 25 September 2006 at: www.bsw.org/project/biblica/bibl80/Comm11.htm]

Schussler-Fiorenza, E. Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation, Continuum: New York, 2000.

Watson, G. “The third quest for the historical Jesus and the Jesus Seminar” in Trinity Occasional Papers, Vol XVII no. 1, 1998.

Wink, W. The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of Man, Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2002.

Wright, N T. “Five Gospels But No Gospel: Jesus And The Seminar” in Authenticating the Activities of Jesus, ed. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans.
Leiden: Brill, 1999, 83–120.
[Accessed 19 Sept 2006 at http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Five_Gospels.pdf]