Historical Jesus Research Articles

The relics of Jesus and Eucharistic miracles: scientific analysis of shared AB blood type.

Various relics ascribed to have been in physical contact with the historical Jesus of Nazareth have been evaluated for the presence of blood, including the Tunic of Argenteuil, the Sudarium of Oviedo, and most famously, the Shroud of Turin. Interestingly, the blood type on all three textiles was found to be AB by serological testing; a similar result was observed for various modern Eucharistic miracles, in which consecrated hosts are reported to change into human cardiac tissue and blood. As AB is a relatively rare blood type, these collective observations have been used in numerous contemporary media outlets to support the idea that all such objects share a common origin. Here, the scientific validity of mutual blood type expression is evaluated. As discussed, AB antigens are not unique to human red blood cells but are also expressed in bacteria, providing a practical connection between such varied objects. Moreover, this article clarifies that the communal presence of specific and unique polymorphic markers would be required to validate that bloodstains associated with such items truly originate from a single source.

A Previously Overlooked Life of Jesus by Martha Louisa ‘Lily’ Watson (1885)

Abstract This article provides an overview and analysis of a previously overlooked nineteenth-century Life of Jesus by Martha Louisa ‘Lily’ Watson. It takes as its starting point metacriticism as a vital task of present scholarship on the historical Jesus of Nazareth – in particular, the contributions of women and other scholars on the margins. This study provides a biographical overview of Watson and analyses the sources, methods, and historical approach she takes in her portrayal of Jesus, while also paying attention to some of the pitfalls of her study. Ultimately, engagement with Watson’s work is generative for new avenues of inquiry in historical Jesus studies such as (a) the need for an assessment of the nineteenth-century Lives of Jesus often ignored by scholarship, (b) nineteenth-century conceptions of non-canonical material and its relevance for the historical Jesus, (c) the rationalization of demonic possession over the unquestioning acceptance of Jesus’ other miracles, (d) the prevalence of anti-Jewish portrayals of Jesus, (d) and the use of rabbinic sources to reconstruct Jesus’ Jewish context.

Teaching the Historical Jesus in Continuing Education: Of Ghosts and Groundhogs

Abstract This article reflects upon the author’s twenty years of experience in teaching undergraduate-level courses in the study of the historical Jesus outside of a traditional university context as part of the programmes offered by the Institute of Continuing Education of the University of Cambridge. It identifies a number of distinctive pedagogical challenges faced in teaching adult learners, and strategies for addressing them, as well as the wider implications for the field that arise from such teaching activity.

Salome’s Dance and the Question of Historical Plausibility

Abstract The Markan account of Salome’s dance before the Herodian court is historically plausible. There is a logical gap, however, between what is historically plausible and what is historically probable. Roman (i.e., pagan) and Jewish individuals that were high born and low born – both men and women – could occasionally dance. Sometimes those dances were seen as transgressive according to Roman mores. Sometimes they occurred in the context of festivals. Mark describes Salome’s dance in such a context. The narrative explains Herod’s puzzlement about Jesus’ identity and his view that Jesus is Iohannes redivivus and is significant for historical Jesus research because Mark uses it to foreshadow Jesus’ own death for seditio.

“If Jesus lived today, he would smell like smoke”: Contemporary Visions of Jesus Christ in Philip Pullman’s Novel and Tumblr Blogs

Influenced by critical race theory and drawing on historical Jesus scholarship, the paper discusses the portrayals of Jesus Christ in Philip Pullman’s novel The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (2010), and the poems written by young, mainly anonymous, poets found online on the social media platform Tumblr. The interpretation of Pullman’s novel and the selected poems is placed within the context of past and current struggles over the historicity, human/divine status, and politics of Jesus Christ.

Jesus was Married? “SCANDALOUS!” Field Theory in Reporting on a U.S. Religion Scandal

ABSTRACT The scandal story reflects an essential journalistic lens to understand culture; scandals circumscribe attention to the norms, values and expectations of a culture. This study explores the nature of the scandal story through an examination of a case in U.S. journalism: the coverage of the now-disproved “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” This study examines the initial 2012 case of an ancient papyrus scrap alleged to prove that the historical Jesus was married, and that over a period of eight years, was disproved to a complicated backstory of cultural misogyny, academic dishonesty, and a con man. Through the lens of field theory, this study aims to explore how scandal stories help shed a light on how a culture informs a newsroom doxa.

The Quest for a Historical Jesus Methodology: Graeco-Roman Biographies, the Gospels, and the Practice of History, written by Michael Vicko zolondek

The Quest for a Historical Jesus Methodology: Graeco-Roman Biographies, the Gospels, and the Practice of History, written by Michael Vicko zolondek

Problematic aspects of the ethno-religious affiliation of Jesus of Nazareth to Jewish Judaism in the context of the "Third Search for the Historical Jesus"

Problematic aspects of the ethno-religious affiliation of Jesus of Nazareth to Jewish Judaism in the context of the "Third Search for the Historical Jesus"

Reclaiming History and Memory: Bridging the Jesus Event and the Nakba

ABSTRACT This article examines the interconnected histories and memories of two Palestinian points in time: the historical Jesus event and the Nakba. It critiques colonial-imperial narratives that have historically disconnected the Jesus event from Palestine, often interpreting it as a divine sacrifice that signified Europe’s transition into a new era: Christianity. Inspired by Ahn Byung-Mu’s work on the minjung or ochlos (the sheep without a shepherd, the dehumanized and alienated crowd in the Gospel of Mark), this study draws on critical historical Jesus scholarship, seeking to reevaluate the journey of the ochlos between exile and redemption. It offers a postcolonial interpretation of the Jesus event through the concepts of collective memory and trauma, arguing for the importance of revisiting the past to address and reframe present injustices and disenfranchisements. The conclusion discusses the relationship between remembrance and belongingness, emphasizing its potential to challenge memory erasure and trauma denialism.

The Oldest Past of Christianity

Abstract The article argues that just as religion is manufactured or invented, so is tradition and history. This starting point is worked out with reference to history as a discursive construction, the past as fictioned in the present. The past does not exist independently of historical practice. History is a tool for ideological persuasion and ideological criticism in the chaotic, disputed and contested present. This understanding of historiography is brought to bear on the scholarly discourse on Christian origins, highlighting the performativity or mythic character of conventional reconstructions of the historical Jesus and the formation of early Christianity, in which sacred apologetic texts are employed as ethnographic sources. What is called for is to take leave of the “stance of the faithful,” and to reorient the study of the history of Christian origins away from a “protectionist doxa” towards a critical historiography that understands early Christian history as invented or manufactured.

Divine presence in Human world: The place of the Communicatio Idiomatum in Lundensian theology

AbstractThe classic concept of the communicatio idiomatum, “communication of attributes,” is as indispensable as it is central to Lutheran theology. The councils of Nicaea (325 CE) and Chalcedon (451 CE) affirmed that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures: human and divine. The divine attributes and the human attributes communicate with one another while remaining distinct. “In, with, and under” the historical Jesus with his human attributes, Lutherans exclaim, the eternal Christ with his divine attributes is present. Martin Luther (1483–1546) adds a comparable role for the communicatio idiomatum within soteriology. The attributes of Christ communicate with the human attributes of the person of faith. Theologians have tried to find answers about how Christ's divine and human natures exist in the person of Christ for forgiveness of our sin. Lundensian theology argues that God abandoned Himself to the death on the cross through Christ spontaneously. Its emphasis offers innovation while remaining within classic orthodox parameters.

Divinity of the Historical Jesus. Incarnation in the Light of Jesus Quest

Divinity of the Historical Jesus. Incarnation in the Light of Jesus Quest

Teaching the Historical Jesus over Three Decades, from Waikato to London

Abstract Having taught the subject of the historical Jesus for more than thirty years, from New Zealand to London, I review from a personal perspective what has changed, and how I have taught the course over the decades. Overall, it seems harder to teach now than ever before, for reasons explored here.

The Historical Jesus and the Temple: Memory, Methodology, and the Gospel of Matthew by Michael Patrick Barber (review)

The Historical Jesus and the Temple: Memory, Methodology, and the Gospel of Matthew by Michael Patrick Barber (review)

Colin Brown with Graig A. Evans, A History of the Quests for the Historical Jesus. Vol 1 & 2

Colin Brown with Graig A. Evans, A History of the Quests for the Historical Jesus. Vol 1 & 2

Thoughts on Teaching Critical History Using the Historical Jesus

Abstract This article discusses the author’s experience of teaching historical Jesus courses at several institutions in the United States over a span of fourteen years. It outlines some observed pedagogical challenges in teaching these courses and some strategies the author has employed to address them.

One Person, Two Natures, and Four Gospels

One of the most difficult flashpoints between biblical studies and confessional theology is the study of Jesus—whether we define this as studying the historical Jesus or studying Jesus historically—and thechurch’s creedal Christology. In this essay, I consider the dangers of Nestorianism in modern studies of Jesus. First, I outline the dangers and tensions between the study of the historical Jesus and the church’s creedalstatements about Christ. Second, I discuss the relationship between creeds and Scripture. Third, I consider briefly what we can say about Nestorianism, and how one arguably finds echoes of Nestorianism in modern approaches to the historical Jesus. Fourth, I offer six suggestions for a way forward for those who seek to honor both the church’s creedal traditions and the witness of the New Testament.

Social Memory Theory and the Enigmatic Mediated Past in Historical Jesus Research

Abstract The recent appropriation of social memory theory in Jesus studies has brought us to a fork in the road in relation to what is meant by a continuity of remembrances about Jesus. Currently, the common claim among many Jesus scholars is that the past of Jesus is knowable through or is contained within the memory process, not behind it or apart from it. Mnemonic processes and their text-products are regarded as a means to an historical end as opposed to being an end in and of themselves. The main problem presented in this article is that the pervading references to, and assumptions about, the mediated past as a potential link between the evangelists’ present and the actual past of Jesus lack the clarification and critical support that is needed for advancing historical Jesus research.

The Historical Reality of Jesus as Criterion for Present-Day Christian Discipleship

This paper outlines elements of a biblically informed theology for faith-based activists. First, it examines the historical reality of Jesus as the defining sign of the Word made flesh (Jn 1:14) and an important bridge to seventy years of biblical studies on the historical Jesus and his Palestinian context. Second, it argues that Jesus’s baptism “of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mk 1:4b) functions as a highly symbolic public action defining his message, mission, and identity as God’s loving response to the sinful decimation of Israel’s institutions. Third, it asserts that Jesus’s choice to accept responsibility for the sins of his people is the first step of a new exodus leading to the confrontation at the Temple in Jerusalem and the question every disciple must face: How is God moving and acting in history now, and how am I called to collaborate with those movements in my historical context?

The Historical Jesus and the Temple: Memory, Methodology, and the Gospel of Matthew by Michael Patrick Barber (review)

The Historical Jesus and the Temple: Memory, Methodology, and the Gospel of Matthew by Michael Patrick Barber (review)