The Historical Jesus: Rethinking Some Concepts

Abstract

1 The most recent full review of literature since 1950 can be found in W. G. Kummel's Dreissig Jahre (1950-1980) (Bonn: Hanstein, 1985). This great scholar of Jesus research continues his work in recent volumes of Theologische Rundschau; see, e.g., Jesusforschung seit 1981. I: Forschungsgeschichte, Methodenfragen, TR 53 (1988) 22949; II: Gesamtdarstellungen, TR 54 (1989) 1-53. A 116-page bibliography, introduced by a 111-page sketch of the chief questers, can be found in Warren S. Kissinger, The Lives of Jesus (New York/London: Garland, 1985). A more general bibliography on Christology, including sections on the historical is available in Leland Jennings White, Jesus the Christ: A Bibliography (Wilmington, Del.: Glazier, 1988). For general overviews of the quest, see the handy summary (from a conservative point of view) in Charles C. Anderson, Critical Quests of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969); or still more schematically, John S. Kselman and Ronald D. Witherup, Modern New Testament Criticism, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1990) 1130-45. See also my own attempt at a synthesis of the results of recent research in Jesus, ibid. 1316-28. Some trenchant critiques of the unexamined presuppositions of many questers can be found in Ben F. Meyer, The Aims of Jesus (London: SCM, 1979) 23-110, and in James P. Mackey, Jesus: The Man and the Myth (New York/Ramsey: Paulist, 1979) esp. 10-51. It is perhaps symptomatic of a newer, different approach that E. P. Sanders does not begin his work Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) with a lengthy history of all research on the subject. Rather, in a State of the Question (23-58), he reviews and criticizes positions of major 20th-century scholars. Given all this material already in print, I think it unnecessary to drag the reader on another stroll down quest-for-Jesus lane. For those who would like to read the key works of major questers, these are available in English in the Lives of Jesus Series, edited by Leander E. Keck and published by Fortress Press. 2 See, e.g., John Dart, The Jesus of Heresy and History: The Discovery and Meaning of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988). 3 See, e.g., Marcus J. Borg, Jesus: A New Vision. Spirit, Culture, and the Life of Discipleship (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987); Henrikus Boers, Who Was Jesus? The Historical Jesus and the Synoptic Gospels (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989).