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6 Faith and the Historical Jesus Does A Confessional Position and Respect for the Jesus Tradition Preclude Serious Historical Engagement? Darrell L. Bock Can the lion and the lamb lie together? For many people, no matter where they are on the spectrum, the idea of an Evangelical engaging in a historical-Jesus discussion is an oxymoron. For many critics, the Evangelical view of Scripture is said to skew Evangelicals’ discussion of Jesus issues. For many Evangelicals, especially lay Evangelicals, the skepticism surrounding much of historical-Jesus work is to be shunned as a rejection of the Bible as the word of God. So can there be Evangelical approaches to the historical Jesus that can contribute to the lively discussion about the historical Jesus? I believe the answer is yes. To get there, however, one must appreciate the nature of what historical-Jesus work seeks to achieve, as well as the limitations such a historically oriented study operates under when it seeks to cross thousands of years to do its work. In addition, there is a difference between what one might believe in part by faith and in part because of trajectories one might see in historical work and what one can make a strong case to show is likely rooted in the accounts tied to Jesus. These distinctions are important in this discussion. There are differences between what one can show, what one can think plausible and make a case for, and what one can’t. Preliminary Remarks on the Value, Limits, and Roots of Historical-Jesus Study Historical-Jesus study has developed over time and has had many different emphases and shifts in method over that time.1 The goal is to pursue what 143 it can show to be most likely about Jesus through the variety of sources and objects (realia) we currently possess. It does so with a limitation of total available sources, as well as the boundaries of time that have impeded our ability to understand first-century culture. We have to try to reconstruct in its pluralistic complexity both Greco-Roman and Jewish elements. This gives the results of such study a very provisional nature. New finds could greatly change “established facts,” just as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls brought a new and significant impetus to the understanding of Jesus in a Jewish context. This development came long after Albert Schweitzer pleaded for us to understand Jesus in such a milieu almost a half century earlier, when he was sounding a death knell for what has come to be called the first quest. What he lacked, the scrolls helped to supply, giving fresh routes by which to appreciate Jesus and his world. Historical-Jesus study began as a project of the Enlightenment to strip Jesus of the doctrinal layers said to be tied to him by the early church, so that only a historical Jesus should remain, stripped of any dogmatic or theological accretions. It was rooted in an intense skepticism about the Jesus tradition. The history of historical-Jesus study has shown the process is a little like trying to divide an atom or separate out cleanly a strand of DNA. It is a difficult exercise, that is, full of judgments. Some say there have been three quests, while others suggest that once the quest started down this road in the eighteenth century, it never let up.2 Numerous Jesus portraits have resulted. Some say this diversity negates the exercise and shows its inability to cope with the data.3 But recent historical-Jesus study has for the most part started in a Jewish context to understand Jesus, a starting place that makes sense in light of Jesus’ roots and our still-accumulating knowledge of Second Temple Judaism.4 It is a method committed to a kind of corroborative model, setting a high burden of proof. To 1. In the history of this pursuit, three approaches have dominated. The first sought to strip what was perceived as dogmatics from the portrait of Jesus using a worldview that ruled out certain possibilities a priori and working with what were argued to be differences between the accounts. It also introduced into the study genre categories as ways to make the case for separating out the dogmatics from the history. The second approach thought it could locate later additions of a more exclusively Hellenistic emphasis and remove them as anachronistic. It also was the period in which important criteria of authenticity were developed from a...

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