Reconstruction Of Jesus Research Articles

Christian theology emerged by way of a Kuhnian Paradigm Shift

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that, historically, Christianity emerges out of Judaism by way of a paradigm shift in Thomas Kuhn’s sense of the word and that this emergence has normative consequences regarding the legitimacy of Christianity. Paradigm shifts are characterized by observational anomalies (e.g. Röntgen rays) triggering particular kinds of theoretical modifications, e.g. meaning-changes of key terms, leading to a coherent re-disclosure of reality. The first Christians underwent such a paradigm shift: The anomalous experience that the dead Jesus has risen triggered theoretical modifications – the term ‘Messiah’ underwent a meaning-change – so that reality could be coherently re-disclosed as eschatological reality. If Christianity emerges by way of a paradigm shift, this shift should be the foundation of Christological theorizing: Rather than basing Christology on what the ‘historical Jesus’ did or said, the reconstruction of Jesus as the Christ in the context of this shift is foundational for Christology (in line with Rudolf Bultmann). The resurrection is crucial not as a historical fact but as an anomaly in this sense. Since they acquired their beliefs via a paradigm; shift, the first Christians were entitled to their ways of reading the Jewish Scriptures without, however, the Jews being disentitled to their ways.

Reimarus, Schweitzer, and Modern Theology

The 250th anniversary of Reimarus’ death can be marked by questioning Albert Schweitzer’s stimulating but tendentious evaluation of the most remarkable of all historical reconstructions of Jesus and Christian origins, and by considering how far Reimarus anticipated twentieth-century research, and asking how this work might still challenge and inform modern theology and biblical studies.

Jesus and the Anti-Roman Resistance

Although the hypothesis according to which Jesus the Galilean was involved in anti-Roman, rebellious thinking and activity has been advanced since the eighteenth century, it is now held only by a minority of New Testament scholars. The aim of the present article is to carefully survey the arguments supporting that hypothesis, and at the same time putting them forward in a novel way. I contend that the cumulative effect of these arguments is compelling, and that only a reconstruction of Jesus in which the aspect of anti-Roman resistance is consistently contemplated deserves credibility. The essay argues that there is in the Gospels a great amount of material which points precisely in the direction of a seditious Jesus, that this material configures a recurrent pattern, and that this pattern enjoys the highest probability of historicity. Furthermore, I evaluate different interpretations which try to make sense of the pattern, with the aim of deciding which of them is historically the most plausible. The essay then argues that the hypothesis advanced here has the greatest explanatory power, that the proposed alternatives are unconvincing and often far-fetched, and that every objection levelled against the hypothesis can be reasonably countered. Finally, I point out the disastrous implications for scholarship of the dismissal of the seditious material and of the correlative rejection of the hypothesis.

The portrait of a prophet - why is Wright not right about Jesus?

N T Wright’s extensive research on the subject of the historical Jesus has led him to the conclusion that the office of eschatological prophet passionately bent on delivering an urgent eschatological message is best suited to describe the portrait of Jesus as it emanates from the sources at hand. Wright furthermore abstracts from the sources the program of this prophet which involves extending a message of welcome and warning. Many a scholar would agree with these conclusions. When revealing how he arrived at the conclusions he refers to the “notorious” complexity of the problem of the literary relationship between the gospels. Can any scholar disagree? What does, however, seem to invite contention, are his statements that the gospels tell us far more about Jesus than scholarship has ever done, and that the two-source hypothesis which has been misleading scholars over the past two hundred years is not of any great importance in the study of Jesus. Wright believes that we are not in a position to answer the synoptic question and then bases a reconstruction of Jesus on this answer. What, then, are his sources and how does he apply them to arrive at these conclusions? This article presents the portrait Wright painted of the historical Jesus and investigates how it was arrived at.

The Critical and Dogmatic Agenda of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus

This article seeks to explore the twofold agenda of Schweitzer’s The Quest for the Historical Jesus. The first element is well-known and obvious: Schweitzer’s intention to put to death the ‘liberal German’ Jesus and to reinstate the true historical Jesus whose preaching and actions were wholly eschatological in orientation. The second element lies below the surface, and this article argues that Schweitzer structured the book around Reimarus, Strauss, Weiss and himself, as they aim to show the impossibility of maintaining Jesus’ own dogmatic construction of eschatology in the modern era. It is also demonstrated (against some current understandings) that Schweitzer’s reconstruction of Jesus’ eschatology does not simply involve Jesus’ belief in the end of the space-time universe.

Jesus Christ in history and scripture: a poetic and sectarian perspective

Jesus Christ in History and Scripture highlights two related bases for the current revolution in Jesus studies: (1) a critically-chastened world view that is satisfied with provisional results and (2) a creative (or poetic) use of the sources of study of Jesus.The first part of the book shows that precritical, critical, and postcritical epochs and attitudes (all alive today) support different sorts of knowledge concerning Jesus (historical reconstructions; historic memory and appropriations; imaginative, poetic, and artistic creations; and theological formulations) and that the Gospels themselves Support different sorts of knowledge and approaches. The Gospels were composed by Christians who combined historical information and historic memory in imaginative ways to present a Jesus who was relevant to their congregations as he was to the earliest disciples. The creative contribution that readers of the Gospels make in their reconstructions of Jesus is a recapitulation of the creative activities of the earliest evangelists.The central section of the book provides a philosophical rationale for correlating the historical-critical methods of biblical scholars and the rationalist methods of theologians and for correlating these modern Enlightenment modes of knowledge with feeling, lived experience, and praxis. It also traces the attempts to do justice to the historical Jesus with particular attention to the different philosophical and theological presuppositions supporting the different attempts.A final section discusses the values of non-foundationlist hermeneutical approaches for the broader questions of the use and authority of the Bible. In the end, ecumenical ratherthan divisive approaches are advocated. Different ways of doing church and different ways of discovering and creating truth demand an ecumenical approach.

Taking the Text with Her Pleasure

Crossan's newest book bases its reconstruction of Jesus on sources such as the Gospel of Thomas, a hypothetically reconstructed ‘Early Q’, and a hypothetical ‘Cross Gospel’ reconstructed out of the Gospel of Peter, Crossan argues that, faced with the ‘brokered empire’ of the Roman world, Jesus initiated a ‘brokerless kingdom’ in which all had equal access to God, Crossan's work in one way, and that of scholars like Helmut Koester and Burton Mack in other ways, form a serious revival of the until-recently moribund Bultmann school of Gospel interpretation.

Theology in Mark and Q:Abbaand “Father” in Context

In the last twenty years, Joachim Jeremias's interpretation of the wordabbahas become a focus of theologies that attempt to base themselves on the Jesus of history. In the face of feminist critiques of the use of “father” for God, Robert Hamerton-Kelly reiterated Jeremias's case for Jesus' supposedly unique usage of bothabbaand “father,” asserting its revelatory status and its freedom from and even opposition to patriarchy. Some feminist scholars have attempted to incorporate Hamerton-Kelly's description of Jesus' use ofabbainto feminist understandings of God, based on reconstructions of Jesus' teaching.