According to N. T. Wright, biblical scholar and venerable Bishop of Durham, we have arrived at the Third Quest for the historical Jesus.[1] The word ‘quest’ makes it sound like an adventure, a bit like Frodo and Sam’s quest in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It implies there is something discoverable at the end of the process; something attainable after all the tireless scholarship, painstaking exegesis and orc killing. Whether there is anything to find, or find with any certainty, is what this study will examine. It wants to look at how historians go about their task. As historical Jesus research historiography is huge, it will limit itself primarily to research in approximately the last fifty years, through the work of five scholars: E. P. Sanders, John P. Meier, N. T. Wright, Geza Vermes and John Dominic Crossan. These five will act as a focal point to the study. Through their work, it will examine historical Jesus scholarship, its methods, debates and conclusions. Can we know anything about Jesus?
This study will also look at the wider aspects of historical investigation and the reconstruction of past events. It will examine the relationship the present has with the past, and question whether historical writing merely reflects present day concerns. Taking its cue from the historian R. G. Collingwood, it will also look at the concept of the historical imagination and its role in constructing a historical narrative.
These are the study’s broad aims, with “broad” being the operative word. No doubt the study will narrow its parameters as it gains further understanding. But before moving on to this particular essay, a note of clarification concerning the nature of the investigation: this study does not benefit from reading the primary documents in their original language (Greek). Recognising this deficiency, the investigation will examine mostly secondary literature and not attempt its own reconstruction of Jesus. While we are at it, this study also lacks any assistance from the Holy Spirit, or a Jesus who lives within the researcher’s heart. All bias, presupposition and pig ignorance are the author’s own. But it does have one weakness that it shares with all historical Jesus scholars: it has no ability to reach the ‘real Jesus’. What does this mean? Well, one could say there are three Jesuses: the ‘real Jesus’, the ‘Christ of faith’ and the ‘historical Jesus’. The real Jesus is the total life experience of a Palestinian Jew: his thoughts, his beliefs, his motivations, his favourite colour, etc. Historical research cannot recover such a figure.[2] Indeed, history cannot rebuild the totality of any individual’s existence. The ‘historical Jesus’, on the other hand, is a theoretical construct abstracted from the relevant source material, and is therefore fair game for historical study.
This essay will contextualise its aims within a number of areas. (1) It will outline its epistemological stance on the study of history, and the study of ancient history in particular. (2) It will introduce the five historians under discussion, examine their contrasting views of Jesus, analyse the importance of historical presuppositions and highlight a major paradigmatic issue in Jesus research: the apocalyptic prophet/cynic philosopher debate. (3) It will examine to what extent a historian’s individual outlook affects historical Jesus research, as well as how present day considerations influence the writing of history. (4) It will look at R. G. Collingwood’s concept of the historical imagination, and its potential relationship to historical Jesus research.
This study is in a sense a vicarious one. Instead of doing its own investigation of the past, it will look at how others write history. Because of this, it will not use an overt theoretical perspective. In doing so, the danger is that the investigation may lack a certain ‘cutting edge’ and will simply be a bland description of a small selection of historical Jesus research. The study must avoid such a pratfall. It will do so by throwing the emphasis on other historians and how they go about their work. By scrutinising the presuppositions, theoretical perspectives and conclusions of other historians, it will attempt to give an informed opinion on whether one can learn anything about Jesus using historical-critical methods. Nevertheless, it would still like to state its epistemological stance, even though it will not directly partake in historical analysis of the New Testament. By explaining how it views history and its limitations, it will demonstrate how it intends to engage critically with the work of historical Jesus scholars.
Even though this study will not work with an overt theoretical perspective, it does not mean it is free of bias. Claiming one is of discrimination is the height of hubris. This study rejects the nineteenth century ideal of the objective historian simply marshalling the facts and making ‘value-free’ judgements. Such Rankean idealism is no longer an obtainable goal. If history is a science, then it is a very weak one. Its conclusions cannot give the same certitude that the natural sciences can offer. Each historical situation is unique and unrepeatable; historians cannot put an event in a laboratory and run tests on it. Furthermore, historical causation is a highly variegated phenomenon uneasily explained under one single comprehensive theory.[3] Marx had a good stab at doing so, but as it involved complex human interaction, it could not gain the same consensus or explanatory power as say, Newton’s theory of gravity or Darwin’s theory of evolution. Scientists can empirically test these theories today, make predictions with them and apply them to new discoveries. They are also open to falsification, something that Marx’s theories are not. The scientist, whilst not completely objective, is significantly less prone to bias entering her work. By the very nature of the subject, the historian is painfully vulnerable to subjectivity having a significant impact on his conclusions.
This need not be a terminal problem, however. This study believes there are gradations of partiality. Admitting that complete neutrality is impossible does not mean that historical investigation is invalid or the result of preconceived ideology. All historians have bias, but some have more bias than others. In the area of historical Jesus studies, there are clearly going to be scholars working from a theological or apologetical viewpoint. But it is an insult to suggest that all Jesus scholars do what they do to prop up orthodox belief. The problem of personal involvement in history will receive further treatment later in the essay.
We have seen that the study of history in general has severe limitations. Studying Jesus, however, creates additional problems that stretch historical explanation to breaking point. It does, after all, feature a man who periodically breaks the laws of the known universe. Miracles and historical investigation have a long and difficult relationship. Many historians avoid commenting on the miracles of Jesus entirely, believing them off radar for investigative study. Others believe only our post-Enlightenment worldview prevents us from viewing miracles as probable (only the Christian miracles, mind). Such disagreements often centre on the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher David Hume, and his sceptical view of miracles.
These various arguments do not lend themselves to easy investigation in such a small space. Nevertheless, this study will offer a very quick opinion: history struggles to prove miracles because history only says what ‘probably’ happened, and miracles are rarely ‘probable’. Naturalistic explanations are nearly always a more plausible choice for the historian. As this study is historical, and not theological in its aims, it views the concept of ‘methodological naturalism’ as the best way of exploring past events. Such a view makes no claim about whether the supernatural exists. Instead, it argues that natural causes and entities are the only ones we can investigate. [4] Critics will still suggest it begs the question against miracles taking place, but in reality it simply acknowledges the strictures we must place on historical investigation if we are to consider it results plausible. As Robert Price opines, if historians were not sceptical of the miraculous, ‘we would be at the mercy of every medieval tale, every report of a statue that wept, or that someone changed lead into gold or turned into a werewolf.’[5] Miracles may indeed have happened in the past, but to say that they probably happened is a level of certitude that no historian can claim. Once again, history is a very weak science.
We must also consider the question of whether what historians think a text says is what it meant to people two thousand years ago. Here is a hermeneutical gulf that may be larger than we think. And if language, as postmodernists claim, is non-referential and inherently unstable, can we really make any claim on authorial intent? When we consider that people have killed each other over scriptural interpretation, it seems clear that God’s word does not lend itself to unambiguous reading. Granted, these disagreements have been theological rather than historical, but even the plurality of Jesuses found in New Testament studies indicates how difficult it is to settle on one consistent interpretation of Jesus. Faced with such issues, one could easily succumb to the soothing waters of relativism.
However, this study will take the initial view that the past is recoverable in some approximate form. Scholars can critically examine documents from the past, and draw tentative conclusions. The certitude of these conclusions must reflect the nature of the sources. In the case of the gospels, our sources are ancient, limited in number, show heavy signs of redaction, and are (largely?) motivated by didactic and theological concerns. These concerns were not primarily to accurately depict the historical Jesus, but to glorify the risen Christ.[6] Technically, they may not even be primary documents, as the earliest gospel (Mark) dates from around thirty-five to forty-five years after Jesus’ life. Nevertheless, this study shares the scholarly view that the canonical gospels contain some words of the historical Jesus.[7] Discovering them is the task of New Testament exegetes. The task of this study is to examine their conclusions with a modicum of impartiality.
To sum up this part of the essay, history is a ‘soft’ science. It works only on the data that has survived, which is a tiny fraction of human existence. And if history is a “soft” science, then ancient history is downright pusillanimous: so little has survived over the centuries that scholars must rely on inference and imagination to draw their conclusions rather than depending solely on the extant data. For these reasons and more, history can only deliver an approximation of what really happened. Some may feel this makes history a meaningless venture; after all, our conclusions could be completely wrong. This is true, and until someone invents a time machine (still years behind schedule, frustratingly) we can never be certain that our reconstructions match the historical referent in question. Nevertheless, this study will assume, however cautiously, that historical investigation of the gospels can yield some reasonable conclusions.
The five historians in question approach Jesus from contrasting backgrounds and beliefs. Sanders a liberal Protestant, Meier a Catholic priest, Wright, a Church of England Bishop, Vermes, a Jewish historian and Crossan, a former monk, now perhaps best described as lapsed Catholic. Do these facts shape the conclusions reached? Almost certainly, and this study will look at how a historian’s presuppositions affects his or her conclusions. But it also aims to look at how scholars use their exegetic skills to reconstruct Jesus. From initial reading, they have different ideas as to who Jesus was and what his aims were. All privilege certain parts of the gospel tradition whilst disregarding material they deem spurious, and no doubt what one scholar exorcises from the record another will make they keystone of their portrait. These are critical scholars, but they are also selective. In The Idea of History, R. G. Collingwood comments that the historian
selects from them what he[8] thinks important, and omits the rest; he interpolates in them things which they do not explicitly say; and he criticises them by rejecting or amending what he regards as due to misinformation and mendacity.[9]
In this process, Collingwood views the historian as a figure of some autonomy. The historian does not simply copy out sources from past: s/he is ‘always selecting, simplifying, schematising, leaving out what he thinks unimportant and putting in what he regards as useful.’[10] Collingwood rejected the nineteenth century ideal of the disinterested scholar making unprejudiced decisions. For Collingwood, the historian is a proactive and integral part in the whole progress.
Such a description fits the historical Jesus scholar. Most approach the gospels actively seeking information not explicitly stated within the text. The danger is that the historian simply chooses material that suits his or hers preconceived ideas of Jesus. Anyone can read the bible and cherry pick some choice quotes to buttress their own views.[11] Such a process is hopelessly arbitrary. Because of this, scholars have developed criteria (dissimilarity, multiple attestation, coherence, embarrassment etc.) to establish potential authentic material. This particular essay will not digress into a study of the criteria used. The main study, however, would like to examine how the five scholars use the various criteria to sculpt their historical Jesus. From initial reading, some scholars are clearer about how they deem material authentic than others, with John Dominic Crossan being the most upfront about his methodology. Others scholars, like N. T. Wright, relax the standards of historical authenticity. Wright deploys a “criterion of similarity” that allows material seen as credible within first century Judaism and credible as the implied starting point of early Christianity as containing genuine data on historical Jesus. Is this done for sound historical reasons, or simply to redress what he views as unwarranted scepticism in historical Jesus research? Do a priori presuppositions drive Wright into an overly credulous acceptance of the gospels’ reliability? However, does someone like Crossan make similar assumptions? Does Crossan’s view of Jesus (examined later in the essay) rely on fundamental assumptions about dating sources, many of which scholars feel are dubious at best?
It is inescapable that scholars have to make some assumptions about early Christianity, an area where evidence is scarce. [12] Scholars usually presuppose a community out of which our four canonical gospels emerged. The form critics of the early twentieth century made assumptions about how the early church used (or created) material for its own didactic purpose.[13] Such methods have the danger of circularity; basing two points on each other. A historian might want to base an argument on a certain gospel passage and compare it to an assumption about what early Christianity wanted to say about Jesus. The historian’s assumption may simply reflect what the historian wants it to say so it agrees with the gospel passage in question. This study wants to look carefully at how historians’ suppositions engage with the available evidence. An initial assumption is probably unavoidable, and because we are dealing with events from two millennia ago, ancient historians have to assume a bit more than say, a historian studying the Second World War. But do historians take blatant liberties, determining the conclusion before the start?
It is the provisional opinion of this study that the work of E. P. Sanders offers a cogent reconstruction of Jesus. In approaching the subject, Sanders highlights a lack of scholarly consensus surrounding the authenticity of Jesus’ sayings. Another problem is that focusing on these sayings often involves a tacit admittance that Jesus was primarily a teacher, and as Sanders notes, ‘[i]t is difficult to make his teaching offensive enough to lead to execution or sectarian enough to lead to the formation of a group which eventually separated from the main body of Judaism.’[14] Therefore, he puts more emphasis on Jesus’ actions; facts about his life that Sanders believes are as solid as anything we know. These include his baptism by John the Baptist, his temple contretemps, his crucifixion and the continuation of a religious movement after his death.[15] These probable events provide a framework on which Sanders constructs his Jesus.
Whilst his scholarship certainly does not lack rigor, Sanders attention to detail is perhaps less than other historians. Many scholars, like John Meier and those associated with the Jesus Seminar, still favour painstaking examination of the gospels to discern authentic material.[16] It would be interesting to examine which approach is more favourable. Perhaps it is not vital to know with certitude whether this verse or that verse came from Jesus to be able to reconstruct his life.
How much authentic material do the gospels actually contain? Historical Jesus research is a historical and not a theological field of study, after all, so scholars generally want to know if the words of Jesus and the events of his life comport to some kind of reality. [17] E. P. Sanders, certainly no craven apologist, insists we do have good evidence for Jesus. [18] Some historians might feel more confident than Sanders; others may think the exact opposite. It therefore may be interesting to make a comparative study with another figure in ancient history to examine how good/bad this evidence is. Someone like Alexander the Great, for instance. Certainly, Jesus and Alexander are two very different people, but the sources we have on both of them share many difficulties. It seems the only real way of gauging the evidence on Jesus is to contrast it to other fields of historical study. Historical Jesus research often feels like it exists in its own little world, with its own criteria, comparing one gospel to another, neither of which may reflect real events. Such a caricature is probably unfair as many historical Jesus scholars exhibit wide-ranging knowledge of the classical world. But when the gospel narratives receive very little independent corroboration, one starts to wonder what the expected standard of evidence is for ancient history, and whether or not the gospels fail, meet, or exceed this standard. This study wants to investigate such issues. It does not expect to make any discoveries of earth shattering significance, but it wants to investigate nonetheless.
An interesting area in historical Jesus research is whether Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet proclaiming the end of the world, or a kind of Cynic sage, doling out pithy epigrams on first century life and advising listeners to take up an egalitarian lifestyle. The New Testament contains both these positions. Indeed, it is one of the strangest aspects of the gospels that Jesus offers instruction in how to live one’s life, only to then proclaim that the world was nearing its conclusion. These contrasting positions may be harmonised, to varying levels of plausibility. The fundamentalist finds it plausible because everything in the gospels happened more or less as depicted. A better hypothesis, one favoured by Albert Schweitzer is that Jesus taught a kind of interim ethic before the advent of the Kingdom. However, some scholars see the eschatology[19] and teaching slightly incongruous; could someone really teach moral guidance whilst simultaneously preaching the end of the age?[20]
Four of the historians featured in this study place Jesus under the rubric of apocalypticism, but with differing readings on the nature of Jesus’ eschatology. J. D. Crossan views Jesus as a peasant Cynic sage who talked of the Kingdom in present terms only.[21] Crossan is the wildcard in our study, one of the most stimulating Jesus scholars working today, as even N. T. Wright, a harsh critic of him, admits.[22] In constructing his historical Jesus, Crossan treats most of the apocalyptic sayings, of which there are many, as secondary accretions. He also dates much extra-canonical material earlier than that already in the New Testament[23]
Crossan’s methods have not won universal support amongst historical Jesus researchers. His attempts to rethink early Christian chronology seem rather strained, as if he is hammering square pegs into some very round holes. His thesis also relies on Hellenistic culture influencing Jesus to a far greater extent than other scholars (including E. P. Sanders[24]) believe was the case, and although criticisms of Crossan’s Jesus as being un-Jewish are not entirely fair, his Jesus is certainly very Hellenised. According to Crossan, Sepphoris, the nearest major city to Nazareth, Jesus’ probable place of birth, was a thriving Greco-Roman centre, and it is here he likely imbued a lot of Cynic thought.[25] Other scholars such as Burton Mack, Gerald Downing and Richard Batey,[26] share similar views; the majority of New Testament academics, however, do not.
Yet it is perhaps wrong to dismiss Crossan’s central thesis out of hand, as some scholars might like to do. His use of sociological and cross-cultural anthropological studies to understand first century Mediterranean life shows a willingness to explore different avenues of investigation. This study wants to examine to what extent historians use models borrowed from the social sciences as frameworks for interpreting the gospels. Do they contribute to a more plausible reconstruction of Jesus? The New Testament scholar Robert Miller believes that ‘it is not whether to use such models, but which one to use’ [Miller’s italics].[27] John Meier, on the other hand, whilst not denying the usefulness of sociological analysis of the New Testament, perceives a danger of reducing Jesus’ life and ministry to the political and socioeconomic conditions of the time. Meier contends that underemphasising the religious element that permeated the life of first century Jews, as well as the glaring fact that Jesus held a considerable amount of human agency, runs the risk of misunderstanding Jesus as an individual person.[28] These arguments merit a closer look in the main study.
Despite Crossan’s efforts, Jesus as an apocalypticist remains a dominate paradigm in Jesus scholarship, given what historians know of first century Palestine. Jesus proclaiming a future Kingdom of God also coincides well with his future hopes for Israel, then suffering under the yoke of Roman rule. Furthermore, the man who preceded Jesus, John the Baptist, and the man that followed him, the apostle Paul, both held apocalyptic views. Ipso facto, Jesus was an apocalypticist. The downside for this view is it admits Jesus was spectacularly wrong in predicting the world’s end.[29] Indeed, from a twenty-first century perspective and a more secular world, Jesus’ preaching the end of ages is a tad embarrassing. Perhaps this is why seeing Jesus as a wandering sage firing off lots of terrific one-liners has such an appeal. One could see how such a person is attractive to the liberal Christian put off by the soteriological[30] aspects of Christianity. And from purely anecdotal observation, this researcher notes how Jesus’ teaching tends to garner warm praise from even nonreligious people.
Now, there may be very good historical reasons to view Jesus as a countercultural Cynic. Certainly, one of the earliest sources, the Q document,[31] seems highly coloured with cynic-like thought, and historians need to explain how such material got into the gospels. But it is the opinion of this study that a Jesus sans the eschatological ravings offers a more pleasing construct in today’s world. This leads to two areas where this study plans to investigate: (1) the role personal interest has in depicting Jesus; (2) how present day concerns influence the writing of the history.
Primarily, this study wants to consider how historians study Jesus and what we can learn through their historiographical skills. Normally, analysing the personal motivations of a historian is not a preferable way of judging his or her work. It also runs the risk of ad hominem attacks: criticising the person rather than the argument. However, in the case of the historical Jesus, it does seem apposite to look at how personal belief potentially shapes research. Certainly, it is hard to approach Jesus without preconceived ideas. As John Meier remarks, ‘[t]here is no neutral Switzerland of the mind in the world of Jesus research’.[32] Many scholars second Meier’s thoughts. Yet despite the caveats historians (as well as this study) flag up concerning history and the gospels, scholars, whether they be Protestant, Catholic, evangelical or smart arse atheist, would still like to think that their Jesus bears a close resemblance to the real thing. What these various Jesuses may resemble, however, is someone far more familiar, as Albert Schweitzer once noted.
Albert Schweitzer, theologian, humanitarian and all round polymath, aimed a devastating critique of nineteenth century historical Jesus study. It was this: many of the depictions of Jesus bore a striking resemblance to the person doing the depicting. Scholars had simply built a Jesus ventriloquist dummy who obligingly agreed with the concerns of the nineteenth century liberal. The Catholic theologian George Tyrell made a similar observation, describing the liberal Protestant quest for Jesus as comparable to looking down a well.[33] Historical Jesus research, despite its airs of objectivity, was suffering from a bad case of projection.
Even though we are a century on from Schweitzer, his critique of Jesus research still seems unnervingly accurate. Take for example the Jesus Seminar, the consortium of seventy or so biblical scholars known for their liberal-minded views (i.e. guided by Satan!). Unsurprisingly, they produced a Jesus who was (relatively) liberal-minded in his outlook. John Dominic Crossan’s Jesus seems another candidate for such an accusation, although he professes that he himself could not become a follower of his own portrait of Jesus.[34] Conservative Protestant theologians usually find a Jesus conducive to their own reactionary views. Catholic scholars generally produce a Catholic Jesus. As a Jewish historian, Geza Vermes’ Jesus is, unsurprisingly, very Jewish.[35] Yet even his work is not above accusations of underplaying Jesus’ deviation from his fellow Jews.
The urge to retroject one’s view onto Jesus is understandable. In fact, if mainstream New Testament scholarship is correct, it is precisely what early Christians did themselves. Many see Jesus’ arguments with Pharisees in the gospels as reflecting what was happening in the late first century rather than what may have happened in Jesus’ own lifetime.[36] Having Jesus on your side was important back then, and for many people, it is still important now. And if you have to shape the evidence to get Jesus saying what you want, well, so be it.
It is probably unfair and reductionist to characterise scholars as driven by nothing more than their religious hormones. But it is mildly perturbing, from a historical perspective, to think of Jesus as simply a palimpsest waiting to be scrawled upon by a scholar, only for another to come along, erase it, and scribble their own picture of the Galilean preacher, which in turn gets rubbed out and… ad infinitum. Yet historians have always rewritten history. Benedetto Croce, the Italian historian, once said that all history is contemporary history: viewing the past through the eyes of the present and in the light of its own problems.[37] Does this continual rewriting of history that naturally happens over time automatically vitiate the findings of history in general? If the next generation of scholars are going to impute their own values onto the past, and the next generation after that etc., in what sense can we know anything?
These problems may lead to some form of historical scepticism. There is simply no way around the problem of present-mindedness leaking into historical investigation. No man or woman can stand outside his or her time to make value-free judgements on the past. We are all moulded by our own culture. Considerations like these seem acutely relevant to historical Jesus research. For many, Jesus has enormous relevance for today. For many, he is still a living presence in the world. Such an observation may break the Jesus of history/Christ of faith distinction that is ‘generally’ enforced in historical research (and this investigation), but it is naïve to think religious matters do not affect scholarly study. Some have a stake in portraying Jesus in a certain manner: a manner that may have more to do with the twenty-first century than the first.
However, is this too hasty a judgement? Historical interpretation does change over time, but how, and to what extent? Certainly, historical writing will never reach consensus on everything, but it may still attain enough agreement to make its conclusions worthwhile. The main study will see if this is the case.
This essay wants to conclude with an examination of what the British historian and philosopher R. G. Collingwood called the ‘historical imagination’. The concept seems appropriate to historical Jesus research, and this study wants to examine how historians move beyond the few documents that have withstood the ravages of time, to reconstruct a plausible account of Jesus’ life. Collingwood saw history as ‘the history of thought’, that is, the documents the past has left us are meaningless unless the historian can reconstitute the thought that they expressed.[38] This is the task of the historical imagination, which is, according to Collingwood,
…not ornamental, but structural. Without it the historian would have no narrative to adorn… Its special task is to imagine the past: not an object of possible perception, since it does not now exist, but able through this activity to become an object of our thought.’[39]
Collingwood strongly insists that by imagining, he does not mean simply creating fiction. For Collingwood, there is nothing arbitrary about such a process; the data, our surviving sources, act as fixed points on which to spin the web of our historical imagination. ‘[T]he whole picture is constantly verified by appeals to this data, and runs little risk of losing touch with the reality which it represents.’[40] As regards to the data (or ‘authorities’ as Collingwood likes to call them), they must be subjected to rigorous critical thinking, and not simply accepted at face value.
The New Testament scholar Gerd Theissen echoes similar thoughts to Collingwood, although he distinguishes between the historical and religious imagination:
all [historical accounts] of Jesus contain a constructive element that goes beyond the data in the sources. Historical imagination with its hypotheses creates an ‘aura of fictionality’ around the figure of Jesus, just like the religious imagination of earlier Christianity.’[41]
Theissen explicates further:
…neither the religious nor the historical reconstruction of the history of Jesus proceeds arbitrarily, but on the basis of axiomatic convictions. The religious imagination of primitive Christianity is guided by the firm belief that through Jesus it is possible to make contact with God, the ultimate reality. The historical imagination is governed by the basic convictions of the historical consciousness: all sources come from fallible human beings and must therefore be subjected to historical criticism.[42]
E. P. Sanders makes a similar point, calling reconstructions of ancient history as much ‘artistic as they are scientific’, before adding the important caveat that the principle aspect of this art is ‘good judgement’. No doubt this ‘good judgement’ is helped by contextual knowledge of the Greco-Roman world and Judaism around the time of Jesus, of which Sanders has in abundance. Like Collingwood, however, Sanders sees the artistry of the imagination subordinate to the hard evidence in the sources; ‘we must sift our sources critically’. [43]
When encountering the idea of the historical imagination, one comprehends the inferential nature of historical knowledge, especially when considering the ancient world. We seldom get the whole story from a source; often we have to make one or two assumptions. When we understand the incompleteness of our sources, we may question how safe these assumptions are. Billions of people have lived without making a single dent in the historical record. What we have is a tiny scrap of human existence from which to work on, and then perhaps make some judgements. Such is the nature of inductive investigation: studying a certain, but finite amount of sources and then drawing general conclusions from them. Collingwood and Theissen stress how the historical imagination works within set limits; eventually, the sources must bear the brunt for any historical reconstruction. Nevertheless, one begins to wonder if it intrudes too much with Jesus, especially when the evidence is so scarce, and the gaps so large. Furthermore, the process of imagining the past is hugely subjective. No two people are going to think exactly alike.
That we need such imaginative skill to write history reminds us again of its weakness as a science.[44] There are too many variables contingent on earlier presuppositions that may or may not be correct. This study will examine how its five scholars go about filling in the historical gaps in Jesus research. Perhaps this is where historians diverge in their depictions of Jesus; not in the evidence, but in the imaginative framework each historian creates to tell his or her story.
This essay has thrown out a few ideas about the historical Jesus, and the difficulty of studying such a figure. It has hopefully highlighted some of its aims and some of the perspectives used in historical Jesus study and the study of history in general. In particular, a duel examination of the historiographical and contemporary aspects of historical study, the dialectical relationship between past and present, seems a fruitful avenue to explore Jesus research. This study concludes with an admission that its aims need greater clarification. Nevertheless, it hopes it has elucidated some of its intentions for the main thesis.
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Journal Articles
Jacquette, Dale, ‘Collingwood on Historical Authority and Historical Imagination’, Journal of the Philosophy of History, 3 (2009). 55-78.
Sanders, E. P., ‘Jesus in Historical Context’, Theology Today, 50 (1993), No. 3, 429-448.
[1] ‘Pre quest’ covered the period up to 1778; the ‘first quest’ 1778-1906; the period of ‘no quest’, 1906-1953; the ‘new quest’, 1953-1985 and the ‘third quest’, 1985 - present. W. Barnes Tatum, In Quest of Jesus, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), pp. 91-106.
[2] Van A. Harvey, John P. Meier and Robert Miller all make this point. Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer - The Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief, (New York: Macmillan, 1996), (first published 1966), p. 266; John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus - Volume One: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, (New York: Doubleday, 1991), p. 22; Robert Miller, The Jesus Seminar and its Critics, (Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 1999), p. 41.
[3] John Tosh, The Pursuit of History, (fourth edn.), (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2006), p. 185.
[4] Hector Avalos, The End of Biblical Studies, (New York
[5] Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, (New York: Prometheus Books, 2003), p.20.
[6] Miller, The Jesus Seminar and its Critics, pp. 32-33.
[7] Of course, many scholars feel material outside the canon contain Jesus’ authentic words, e.g. the Gospel of Thomas. Such issues will be examined in this study.
[8] Collingwood’s gender-specific language reflects the standards of his time. Instead of tiresomely interpolating ‘sic’ at every instance, this footnote serves as an acknowledgement of the oversight.
[9] Collingwood, The Idea of History, (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), (first published 1946), p. 235.
[10] Collingwood, The Idea of History, p. 236.
[11] People have done this for centuries, of course, but that is another story.
[12] E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, (London: SCM Press, 1985), p. 15; Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, (3rd edn.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 222; Ernst Käsemann, ‘Re-opening the Quest’, in The Historical Jesus Quest: Landmarks in the Search For the Jesus of History, ed. by Gregory W. Dawes, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), p. 301.
[13] Form critics worked by isolating individual passages (or pericopes) and separating them from their gospel framework, and then bracketing them into distinct categories, e.g. ‘pronouncement stories’, ‘miracle stories’ ‘parables’ etc. They then postulated the role these individual stories had in early Christianity; each form would have a Sitz im Leben (setting in life) in the church’s early years. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, pp.27, 29.
[14] Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, p. 4.
[15] Of course, radical scholars would disagree with Sanders on the certainty of some of these facts. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, p. 11.
[16] Mark Allen Powell, The Jesus Debate: Modern Historians Investigate the Life of Christ, (Oxford: Lion Publishing, 1999), p. 139.
[17] Whether historical Jesus research is a wholly historical venture is of course debatable. Historical Jesus research was born out of theology, and early scholars were mostly all theologians. Today, many scholars have a foot in both camps and the distinction between the two fields can seem rather hazy. Just how much theology and history clash is perhaps another question for the main thesis.
[18] E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, (London: Penguin Books, 1993), p. xiii-xiv.
[19] Eschatology means in relation to the “end times”. Whether Jesus’ “end times” meant the end of the world, or just the end of the present age, is a continuing matter of scholarly debate.
[20] Burton
[21] John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 227.
[22] Powell, The Jesus Debate, p. 94.
[23] Amongst others, Crossan views the Gospel of Thomas, the Egerton Gospel, the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Q document as predating the Gospel of Mark, which most scholars believe is the earliest gospel.
[24] E. P. Sanders, ‘Jesus in Historical Context’, Theology Today, 50, No. 3, 429-448, (pp. 431-432).
[25] John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 198.
[26] Burton
[27] Miller, The Jesus Seminar and its Critics, p. 88.
[28] Meier, A Marginal Jew: Vol One, p. 11.
[29] There are a number of Christian apologetics employed to smooth over Jesus’ mediocre predictive abilities. Preterism sees the events Jesus prophesises in Mark 13 par concerning the apocalypse refer not to the end of the world, but to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Somehow, according to Preterists, this catastrophic event also represented Jesus’ Second Coming. Another after the fact rationalisation is Futurism. Futurists views Jesus’ prophesising as relating to events in the future, usually centring on the Middle East. Whereas Preterism is mostly benign in today’s world, Futurism seems highly conducive to starting World War III. Welcome to the crazy world of fundamentalism.
[30] Soteriology is a section of Christian theology interested with the doctrine of “salvation”.
[31]“Q” stands for Quelle, which is German for “source”. Q is the hypothetical document that Matthew and Luke drew upon, in addition to Mark. Q also contains apocalyptic sayings that some scholars attribute to a later redaction. Scholars disagree vociferously about Q. Some deny it ever existed; others reconstruct the community(s) behind its composition.
[32] Meier, A Marginal Jew: Vol One, p. 5.
[33] 2,500 years earlier, the Greek philosopher Xenophanes made an analogous observation: ‘If oxen and horses or lions had hands and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds’.
[34] Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p. xiv.
[35] One of the defining and most positive characteristics of the “third quest” is its acknowledgement of Jesus’ Semitic roots. Often previous quests crudely depicted first century Judaism simply to make Jesus look better by comparison (the equivalent of placing a diamond on a dog turd). The work of Geza Vermes and E. P. Sanders, both prominent historians in this study, was important in dispelling such a myth.
[36] Tatum, In Quest of Jesus, p. 106.
[37] Quoted in E. H. Carr, What is History?, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), (first published 1961), p. 15.
[38] Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History, (London: Granta Publications, 1997), p. 31.
[39] Collingwood, The Idea of History, pp. 241-242.
[40] Collingwood, The Idea of History, p. 242.
[41] Gerd Theissen, Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, (London: SCM Press, 1998), (trans by John Bowden), p. 13.
[42] Theissen, Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, p. 13.
[43] E. P. Sanders, Margaret Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels, (London: SCM Press, 1989), p. 38.
[44] This implies that scientists do not need imagination. This is of course not the case. Scientists such as Darwin, Einstein, Hoyle etc., had extraordinary imaginative skills, enabling them to think ‘outside the box’ (dreadful expression, but nothing else comes to mind) and make breakthroughs in knowledge. The historian’s problem is that their subject is in the realm of complex human agency, and therefore highly variable and more open to interpretation.
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