Over the past two centuries, New Testament scholars,
from virtually every denomination and tradition around the world, have been engaged in an enterprise known as "The Quest for the Historical Jesus" (so named
from the title of the English translation of a book written by Albert Schweitzer in 1906). This quest, which started in Germany in the late eighteenth century, has sought to get
behind the many interpretations of Jesus, produced by Christians down through the centuries, and back to the Jesus who actually lived in the first
third of the first century of the Christian era. One interesting feature of the quest is that until recently it was a well kept secret. Hardly anyone outside
the highest levels of theological scholarship was aware of it. Even most American seminaries ignored the quest while preparing their students to fill
American pulpits. The result was that many American pastors did not know of the quest for the historical Jesus, and even among those who did,
many were reluctant to share their knowledge with their parishioners.
In the last few decades, however, all that has changed. The "Quest" has
come out of the closet. Many books on the historical Jesus have appeared in the past few years, especially by American scholars, including some in a
consortium called the Jesus Seminar (see Appendix I). The result has been that not only are American colleges and seminaries finally paying attention
to Jesus and Jesus studies, but the general public is becoming increasingly aware of what is going on. The quest for the historical Jesus is no longer confined to the world of academia.
As a result of this openness, newspapers and the major news magazines in America have reported frequently on the work of the Jesus Seminar. In
1995, Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report all contained stories about contemporary Jesus scholarship. In their 1996 Easter issues,
all three news magazines not only ran feature stories on Jesus scholarship, they even pictured Jesus on the cover! This caused one Time writer to note
that Jesus now shared a world record with basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson: they are the only two people ever featured on the covers of all
three major American news magazines in the same week. This raises two questions.
First, what is the quest of the historical Jesus all about? The quest is based
on two recognitions. One is that the Galilean Jewish Jesus of the first century was quite different from the Jesus who has come to be interpreted
through the theology, creeds, art, liturgy, hymnody and piety of Christians over the past two millennia. The other is that the way to get back to the
Jesus of history is the same as that of any historical figure, namely, through the rigorous application of the tools and methods of historical scholarship.
Second, what has been the reaction of the people to the current research on Jesus? Since Jesus is the most influential figure of human history, one
might expect an overwhelming interest in the quest. But that has hardly been the case. On the one hand, there has been wide spread support from
many New Testament scholars. The Five Gospels, The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (the first major publication of the Jesus Seminar)
is used in many college and university courses on Jesus, and books by such Jesus Seminar members such as Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan have been on best seller lists for a long time.
But for many, especially those in established positions in the church, current Jesus scholarship has been very unsettling. Many have not only assailed the
work of the Seminar, but have launched vituperative attacks on the scholars themselves. Nearly every religious publishing house either has
published, or is soon to publish, a book refuting the work of the Jesus Seminar. The reaction to current studies by both members of the Jesus
Seminar, as well as those who are not, is much like the criticism which was directed at the French scholar Ernst Renan, author of The Life of Jesus,
published almost a century and a half ago.* As Albert Schweitzer wrote:
Whatever wore a soutane and could wield a pen charged against Renan, the bishops leading the van. The tone of these attacks was not always very elevated, nor their logic very profound. In most
cases the writers were only concerned to defend the Deity of Christ, and the miracles, and are satisfied that they have done so when they have pointed out some of the glaring inconsistencies in Renan's
work.
One only needs to substitute "Jesus Seminar" or "modern Jesus historians" for "Renan" to have the quote apply equally well to today.
So what is one to do with the historical Jesus? In the past it was easy to ignore him: keep the books on the historical Jesus cloistered in seminary or
graduate school libraries and away from the general public. That way neither clergy nor lay people will be troubled or aroused by current Jesus
scholarship. For better or worse, however, Jesus scholarship is alive and well and the cat is out of the bag. Denouncing modern Jesus scholarship
does not free Christians from the obligation of taking the historical Jesus seriously, whether or not they like what he said and did. The object of this
book is to lay out some of the main things recent scholarship on Jesus has learned about what Jesus said and did, and to let the chips fall where they may.
One popular objection to modern studies of Jesus is that they deal with the "historical Jesus" not the "real Jesus." There is some truth in that statement.
What is meant by "the historical Jesus" is the person that can be reconstructed from a rigorous application of historical scholarship. Such a
portrait is never more than the bare bones. It is like reading a curriculum vitae; it states the basic facts but hardly discloses the entire person.
Obviously, any person is much more than the basic facts of birth, death, words and deeds. Nevertheless, when we deal with any person of the past,
the historical data must be the place to start. Otherwise we will create a person out of our imagination, in our own image, who said and did only those things we want him or her to have said or done.
Let us also be clear that when the term "historical" is used it does not refer to absolutely proven facts, but rather to what is at the time, and on the
basis of the best data available, the most plausible explanation of the data. Some future discovery or some new method may disprove what we deem
historical today.* Consider just the two great manuscript discoveries of the twentieth century, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library, and
how they have changed our understanding of Jesus and his world. As historians, unfortunately, we have to go with what we have to work with
today. Finally, let me stress that no concept of the "real" Jesus can be valid unless it accords with the historical data of Jesus' life, words, and deeds.
