An examination of the historical Jesus based upon recent critical scholarship of the New Testament. Topics include the life of Jesus, the role of Jesus in historical Christianity, and the implications of an historical approach for a contemporary Christology. Pre-requisite: RELS 110 or RELS 151.
“As early as 1906 Albert Schweitzer showed that a life of Jesus, in the usual sense of the word, could no longer be reconstructed. There is almost nothing to learn about his family, his inner and outer development, the teachers, parents, and friends that influenced him, and so on. [Schweitzer] concluded that the evangelists are not primarily interested in a historically accurate report, but rather in the proclamation of their faith in Jesus.” (Eduard Schweizer, Jesus: The Parable of God, (Pickwick Press: Pittsburgh, 1994), 3.
“The historical Jesus was a peasant Jewish Cynic. His peasant village was close enough to a Greco-Roman city like Sepphoris that sight and knowledge of Cynicism are neither inexplicable nor unlikely… He announced…the unmediated or brokerless Kingdom of God.” J. D. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, (HarperCollins: San Francisco, 1994), 198.
“The Jesus to whom Saint Francis of Assisi appealed in his call for a poor and giving rather than a powerful and grasping church was not the Historical Jesus but the Jesus of the Gospels. One must only wonder why this Jesus is not also the “real Jesus” for those who declare a desire for religious truth, and theological integrity, and honest history.” Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus, (HarperCollins: San Francisco, 1996), 177.
- Teacher: Lewis Robert