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Surveying the Quest of the Historical Jesus Robert B. Stewart In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is famously recorded as asking his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” (Mark 8:27 RSV). This question can easily be translated into “Who do scholars say that I am?” Then it is only a small step to the question “What do they take my message to be?” Jesus’ disciples answered, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others one of the prophets” (Mark 8:28 RSV). The important thing to see is that, even at that stage, there were a number of opinions concerning who Jesus was and, by implication, about his message. Simply put, one cannot talk about Jesus without making some assumptions as to his message, and vice versa. Though the man and his message can be distinguished, they cannot be divided. This book features a dialogue about the message of Jesus, but lurking in the background (and sometimes coming out into the open, at times even moving to center stage) is always the question of who Jesus was. Attempts to answer this question are typically referred to under the rubric of the quest of the historical Jesus. This introductory essay will provide a flyover of some important moments in that quest.1 The Background of the Quest for Jesus and His Message Nothing of historical significance takes place in a vacuum. There are no bare historical facts apart from a historical context. The quest for Jesus is not unique in this regard. In large part, the quest arose as a result of a seismic shift from one historical era to another. Its first rumblings were felt in the Renaissance, they continued on through the Reformation, and erupted with full force in the seventeenth century as part of modernity as a new way of thinking about both history and religion. 1. The amount of space that can be allotted to any individual in this section is limited. Some significant scholars will be overlooked entirely, a matter that is unavoidable. It is hoped, however, that enough of a sketch will be provided that one may make out the general features of historical-Jesus research over approximately the past 230 years. 1 The Renaissance is generally dated to the fourteenth century. One frequently hears of how the classical age was again appreciated in the Renaissance. No doubt this is true. This was due to the widespread recognition of just how different people in the fourteenth century were from those of Plato and Aristotle’s time, as well as those of Jesus’ age. Most importantly for our purposes, it marked a time when the pastness of the past was duly recognized, along with all that doing so entailed. The past was thus seen as both distant and different. These twin differences were fully appreciated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For our purposes, this may be seen primarily in two ways: first, in a willingness to revise what had previously been dogma;2 and second, in a renewed interest in understanding ancient documents in light of their original languages and cultural contexts. This attitude ushered in a fresh breeze of skepticism about the old and openness to the new that birthed the disciplines of philology and textual criticism. Philology led to Lorenzo Valla’s demonstration on historical and linguistic bases that the so-called Donation of Constantine could not be genuine. Textual criticism ushered in Desiderius Erasmus’s publication of the received text of the Greek New Testament, which prompted a young German monk named Martin Luther to rock the Western church with his declaration that he would take his stand with sacred Scripture and evident reason over against tradition and authority. The seventeenth century ushered in modernity in all its fury. The methodological skepticism of Rene Descartes’s Cogito coupled with his rigorous logic and epistemological foundationalism led to a type of rational Christianity in which the concept of divine revelation was still accepted but no longer required for religious knowledge. This in turn led theologians to seek to ground Christian truth claims in reason rather than revelation. Fundamentally, this was a radically new way of conceiving religion, one in which reason came in practice to have priority over faith. But perhaps the most significant role would be played by Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza. In many ways, inclusion of Spinoza seems a bit odd for an essay surveying research on the historical Jesus. After all, Spinoza died before H. S. Reimarus...

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