Jewish Jesus Research and Its Challenge to Christology Today by Walter Homolka

Abstract

JEWISH JESUS RESEARCH AND ITS CHALLENGE TO CHRISTOLOGY TODAY By Walter Homolka. Jewish and Christian Perspective Series 30. Leiden: Brill, 2016. xi + 180 pp.Walter Homolka adequately addresses the effects and defects of academic scholarship on the role of the Jewish in Second Temple Judaism; also, in two millennia of Jewish-Christian Testament near-existence, medieval/Enlightenment/Shoah/anti-Judaism/Semitism dubious existence, and contemporary coexistence. Homolka's chapters are grounded in standard Quests for methodology in pursuit of the Nazarene purposely grafted in Jewish clime and time. His probe of European sources, particularly German, is refreshing.In my Reflections on Jesus (Shofar 27.2), and particularly my critique of The Historical in Context (Edited by Amy-Jill Levine, Dale C. Allison Jr., and John Dominic Crossan, 2006), I offered an overview of the of the historical Jesus. Academia prefers historical-critical methodology in the quest for the historical contra the creedal authority of the Gospel narratives as believed and preached in the Ecclesia. The favors Reason (objectively setting in a historical and cultural context) over Revelation (creedal statements molding a dogmatic Christ). The history of the is parsed into the old and the new. The Old Quest established a distinction between rational ethical religion and historical religion that emerged in a given culture at a particular period of time and whose claims of truth are not necessarily rational. Many in the original quest deconstructed the Gospel miracles, myths, and legends and reconstructed into an advocate of late-nineteenth-century enlightened rational religion.Early twentieth-century Form Criticism (structural study of literary units) raised questions about the nature, origin, and transmission of the Synoptic Gospels. It dismissed outright any kernel of historicity in the Gospels and suggested that many of the traditions about in the Scriptures were created later than this historical period to fulfill the liturgical, preaching, and teaching needs of nascent church communities. Each tradition has a Sitz im Leben (setting in life) which is interpreted in its own right, independent of historical validity. Kerygma (teachings about Jesus) has replaced history as the central core for the Christian faith. Indeed, Rudolf Bultman, the leading kerygmatic theologian, argued the only essential historical teaching is the crucifixion of Jesus: all else is conjecture and interpretation.The New Quest began after World War II. Like the Old Quest, it questioned the Gospels as they are but also considered the input of a flesh and blood Jesus. …