Historical Jesus Studies Today: An Update
Historical
Jesus studies is a science that attempts to determine what can be known
of Jesus on the basis of historical research alone, that is through the
analysis of data pertaining to Jesus in accord with the same standards
that would be employed when analyzing data pertaining to any other
figure from antiquity. Such analysis is supposed to be free of religious
(or anti-religious) bias, and scholars engaged in the field call each
other to task when they suspect that one’s conclusions have been
influenced by personal predilection. The scholars frequently maintain
that they are not trying to discover what might be true of Jesus, but
what is verifiable.
By Mark Allan Powell
Professor of New Testament
Trinity Lutheran Seminary
June 2014
Professor of New Testament
Trinity Lutheran Seminary
June 2014
In the 1990s, the field of historical Jesus
studies enjoyed a significant renaissance and attracted an inordinate
amount of media attention. Near the end of that decade, I published a
book that surveyed the field and summarized the major themes and
positions. That book became a standard textbook in many colleges and
universities and I recently revised it for a second edition.1
I thought that might be a fairly simple task, but as I worked on the
revision I discovered that more than 50% of the material in the new book
would be completely new. A lot has happened in the last twenty years!
This might come as a surprise to non-specialists because, for the most
part, the media lost interest in historical Jesus studies around the
turn of the millennia and most of the work that is now done does not get
noticed beyond academic quarters. In this article, I will briefly
describe some of the most significant developments.
First, for those who might not be familiar with
this field of inquiry, historical Jesus studies is a science that
attempts to determine what can be known of Jesus on the basis of
historical research alone, that is through the analysis of data
pertaining to Jesus in accord with the same standards that would be
employed when analyzing data pertaining to any other figure from
antiquity. Such analysis is supposed to be free of religious (or
anti-religious) bias, and scholars engaged in the field call each other
to task when they suspect that one’s conclusions have been influenced by
personal predilection. The scholars frequently maintain that they are
not trying to discover what might be true of Jesus, but what is verifiable.
Thus, if (as a Christian) you want to believe Jesus was born to a
virgin, that’s fine, but (as a historian) you must recognize that this
is not verifiable–at least, not in accord with any criteria that are
normally employed for historical research.
So where are we now? I will list eight
developments that have marked the last twenty years of research–and,
then, I will mention three “peripheral currents” that might be of
interest to purveyors of this website.
1. Historical Jesus studies is becoming more
clearly identified as a discrete field of inquiry. The field has
typically been regarded as a sub-division of New Testament Studies,
which, in turn, belongs to the academic discipline of Religion or
Theology. There have, however, been voices who questioned whether Jesus
studies might not be more properly conceived as a sub-division of
Ancient History (parallel to, say, “Julius Caesar studies” or “Alexander
the Great studies”). This identity crisis continues to be investigated
but, right now, the growing sense is that Jesus studies does not have to
be a sub-set of anything. There are an increasing number of academics
who think of themselves primarily as “Jesus scholars,” rather
than as “New Testament scholars who happen to be interested in the
historical Jesus” (or, for that matter, as “ancient historians who
happen to be interested in Jesus”).
2. As a consequence of the above, the field has
become more self-reflective with regard to its own history. In the first
edition of my book I employed a cute paradigm that described the
history of historical Jesus studies as a series of phases (“Old Quest”;
“No Quest”; “New Quest”; “Third Quest”– with dates that supposedly
marked each phase). At the time, this paradigm was in wide use (I did
not invent it), but in the current century, it has fallen out of favor.
It tended to relegate entire movements of the discipline to relative
obscurity, as representative of failed, terminated projects, and it
probably did this in a way that reflected Protestant and/or American
bias. In any case, most Jesus scholars now regard such labels as
unnecessary. There is a quest for the historical Jesus and it has
been going on with diverse (but not easily or helpfully categorized)
expressions for more than 200 years. In other words, whereas the 1990s
seemed to be a decade in which Jesus scholars wanted to be known as part
of something new (a current “cutting edge” approach to Jesus unlike
those unproductive quests of the past), the new millennium is an era in
which Jesus scholars are prone to connect their work with previous
research. These days, the history of the discipline is not viewed as a
fitful chronicle of stops and starts but as a progressive process of
often insightful exploration. Current Jesus scholars embrace that
history without feeling the need to define themselves over against it.
3. The last twenty years have witnessed a
decrease in biographies of Jesus and an increase in dissertations
concerning him. That translates into more focus on detail. There is a
new generation of scholars who seem to have little interest in telling
us everything about Jesus but who possess a passion for considering one
thing that might ultimately contribute to a bigger picture (Was Jesus
illiterate? Did he speak only Aramaic? Did he predict the destruction of
the Jerusalem temple?).
4. There is less reliance on the apocryphal
gospels than was in vogue a few years ago. No one can ignore those
writings completely, but they seem to have worn out their welcome among
many scholars who now think that their significance for historical
reconstruction was exaggerated. With the possible exception of the
Gospel of Thomas, the apocryphal works are almost unanimously viewed as
late and all but void of historically reliable material independent of
what can be found in canonical writings.
5. There is a new, cautious appreciation for the
historical value of John’s Gospel. In the 1990s, Jesus studies
invariably involved analysis of the Synoptic tradition; the Fourth
Gospel was deemed too theologically developed and its compositional
history was considered too complex for it to function effectively as a
source for historical reconstruction. In the last few decades, however,
James Charlesworth, Paula Fredricksen, John Meier and a number of other
prominent scholars have made considerable use of John in their work on
Jesus. Paul Anderson has led the charge in calling for an
across-the-board reconsideration of John’s value as a historical
witness.2 The growing trend in current Jesus studies is to recognize the Fourth Gospel as a minority “dissonant tradition” that not only can be utilized but must be, if the Synoptic tradition is not to be accorded free reign in a manner that seems uncritical.
6. One of the most significant recent
developments in Jesus studies has been the de-throning of dissimilarity
as the favored criterion for historical research. For decades, scholars
deemed material inauthentic if it seemed overly compatible with the
interests and ideologies of developing Christian religion. There is
logic to this that ought not be dismissed, but scholars with a more
optimistic appraisal of tradition have complained that such a criterion
guarantees a Jesus who has little in common with his closest followers.
The more common view today is that, while the presence of dissimilarity
may help to establish authenticity, its absence does little to challenge
authenticity. Certain traditions (that Jesus was baptized by John; that
he befriended prostitutes; that he regularly ate with tax collectors)
are likely to be authentic because they did not serve the theological
interests of the church and, in fact, necessitated apologetic
explanations. But traditions about Jesus that comport well with
confessions and practices of the early Christians should not
automatically be suspect: it is at least as likely that those
confessions and practices were inspired by Jesus as it is that the
traditions concerning Jesus were re-shaped to conform to confessions and
practices he did not inspire. Gerd Theissen proposes that the criterion
of dissimilarity be replaced by a “criterion of historical
plausibility,” according to which “whatever helps to explain the
influence of Jesus (on early Christianity) and at the same time can only
have come into being in a Jewish context” is to be judged historical.3
7. As one example (or consequence) of the point
just discussed, there has been a notable increase in the willingness of
scholars to attribute messianic consciousness to the historical Jesus.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence cited to support this is the
across-the-board claim in New Testament documents that Jesus fulfilled
what were thought to be messianic prophecies. For decades, most
historical Jesus scholars dismissed passages in which Jesus fulfills the
scriptures as apologetic fabrications of the early church. The assumed
scenario was that believers scoured the scriptures for messianic
prophecies and then created or shaped their traditions of Jesus in ways
that presented him as fulfilling these prophecies. But, recently, a new
wave of scholars have posed a sensible alternative scenario: perhaps
Jesus himself (like many other people known to us from history) became
convinced that he was the Messiah and then he read or heard about
things that the scriptures said the Messiah would do and tried to shape
his life accordingly. This would not explain everything: obviously,
Jesus could not have orchestrated his own birth in Bethlehem (the
authenticity of which remains highly contested), but why would he not
have chosen to ride a donkey into Jerusalem in emulation of Zechariah
9:9?
8. There is also a marked return to the idea that
Jesus proclaimed an eschatological/apocalyptic message of a coming
kingdom. Perhaps the most distinctive hallmark of Jesus scholarship in
the 1990s was a repudiation of the notion that Jesus expected and
announced an imminent end of the world. John Dominic Crossan, Robert
Funk, Marcus Borg, and others maintained that Jesus did not speak about
the end of the world but of a new way of being.4
The eschatological and apocalyptic sayings attributed to Jesus in the
Gospels were dismissed as enthusiastic attributions of a church in
crisis, exemplary of the kind of rhetoric spouted by sects experiencing
violent persecution and/or social ostracism. The compelling question,
however, has been whether the scenario that rejection of this material
requires is more plausible than that which ensues if the material is
accepted as authentic. We may start by noting that almost all scholars
grant that 1) John the Baptist spoke of an imminent end; and, 2) Paul
also thought the end was at hand. Is it reasonable, then, to assume that
Jesus broke with his mentor on this point only to have his own
(non-apocalyptic) stance subsequently rejected by his most prominent and
earliest interpreter? That could have happened, but isn’t it more
reasonable, this argument suggests, to regard Jesus as the midpoint on a
trajectory, as the connecting dot on a line from the Baptist to the
Apostle? Is it not simpler to assume a progressive development of ideas
than to adopt a scenario that requires at least two 180-degree
turnabouts? The debate does continue5 but those who grant general authenticity to the eschatological material are now regarded as representative of the mainstream.
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All of these developments are sweeping and
transcendent, applying to the field of historical Jesus studies in
general. But the last two decades have also witnessed the development of
certain para-disciplines, scholarly movements that progress alongside
the field of historical Jesus studies without necessarily interacting
with it. In the new edition of my book, I treat these in a series of
three appendixes because, in my judgment, they are not actually having
much of an impact on the quest for the historical Jesus. Nevertheless, I
recognize the potential for public interest in these matters (and I
suspect that the appendixes might be the most popular part of my book).
First, there is the work of mythicists who
claim that Jesus never existed. The notion that Jesus is a completely
legendary figure (like Robin Hood or King Arthur) or a total fabrication
of the church has been bandied about at a popular level for centuries,
usually among atheist or vehemently anti-Christian groups who rely on
elaborate conspiracy theories rather than academic evidence. Recently,
however, the “Jesus myth theory” (as it is called) has been taken up in
earnest by a handful of academic scholars, including Robert M. Price, a
respected New Testament professor who remains a Christian, committed to
faith in the mythical Jesus, while maintaining that the historical Jesus
did not exist.6
Second, we should mention the work of Christian apologists
who devote themselves to establishing the historicity of various
matters that historical Jesus scholars have deemed unverifiable. Craig
Keener, for example, authored a detailed two-volume work on why the
miracles attributed to Jesus should be accepted as authentic, historical
events.7
He maintains that a refusal to recognize the historicity of events that
are deemed “supernatural” stems from an anti-religious form of bigotry
that is at least culturally biased and probably racist. Others wonder if
he would apply the same reasoning to miracles reported in the Qu’ran or
Book of Mormon.
Finally, there is the work of psychohistorians
who attempt to construct psychological profiles of Jesus that would
account for his behavior. Popular topics have included family
circumstances that might have contributed to his particular conception
of religion (e.g., he was an illegitimate son who found comfort in
thinking he was the “son of God”); factors that would have contributed
to development of what is now called (because of him) a “messianic
complex”; personality disorders that might explain his suicidal
tendency; and so forth. Psychologists of various types (Freudian,
Jungian, Eriksonian, etc.) have surveyed what is regarded as the most
reliable data regarding Jesus and offered their opinions concerning what
sort of person in that social context would have chosen to remain
celibate, or call disciples, or tell parables, or relate to the
marginalized (or to women, or to authority figures) as Jesus is reported
to have done.
In general, the work of mythicists, apologists,
and psychohistorians does not get much traction in historical Jesus
studies. The “Jesus myth theory” is typically dismissed as tendentious
and lacking reasonable support. The work of apologists is considered
sporadically–almost everyone will admit that the apologists sometimes
make good points worthy of consideration, but their unwillingness to
consider counter-arguments excludes them from settings where the bulk of
academic conversation occurs. And while psychohistories of Jesus might
be filled with intriguing possibilities, they are nevertheless regarded
as too speculative to be taken seriously by most historical Jesus
scholars.
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Mark Allan Powell is Professor of New Testament at Trinity Lutheran Seminary. He served as General Editor for the Harper Collins Bible Dictionary (2011) and is the author of a widely used college textbook, Introducing the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2009).
Notes
1 Mark Allan Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee, 2nd edition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2013); the first edition was published in 1998.
2 Paul N. Anderson, The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus: Modern Foundations Reconsidered (New York: T&T Clark, 2006).
3 See Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, trans. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), p. 116.
4 See especially Marcus J. Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Society
(Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1994), p. 74. But
studies on Jesus by Dale C. Allison, Darrell Bock, James D. G. Dunn,
Bart Ehrman, Craig Evans, Joachim Gnilka, Leander Keck, Scot McKnight,
John Meier, E. P. Sanders, Graham Twelftree, and N. T. Wright have all
argued for an eschatologically focused Jesus.
5 A good, though somewhat dated resource for assessing this discussion is Robert J. Miller, ed., The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2004).
6 See Robert M. Price, “Jesus at the Vanishing Point,”pp. 55–104 in The Historical Jesus: Five Views, ed. by James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2009).
7 Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of New Testament Accounts (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011).
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