Talk:Jesus/Historical Jesus

Scholarly opinions of the Historical Jesus

Subpages

It might help to divide this and other Wikipedia Articles on religious figures into an F-section (Faith) and an SC-Section (Secular Confirmation). Note that neither section makes a stand on FACT, but reports what are claimed according to those descriptors. Note that there can also be overlap, for example that Jesus existed and was crucified...

There is historical error in the current article that would fall under both headings. Jesus was not crucified for sedition. This is well documented. Pilate found no fault in him, whereas the Sanhedrin, I believe, said, "We have a law and according to that law, he must die." He was crucified for claiming himself God.

Wikipedia should not be bashful about mentioning, and would be innaccurate for not mentioning, that the reason Jesus is the central HUMAN figure of Christianity, is that Christians, like myself, believe that he is God's son and one with God, though the expression, "One with God," is interpreted in wildly different ways.

--The accuracy thing is this: He did not become the central human figure because he was just a moral teacher, but because of Jesus' claims of who he was. There has been a long line of moral teachers before and after Jesus who did not become the central figures of the faith, most notably perhaps, Paul. Jesus divine status should not be glossed over or left out or displayed without prominence.

/Moral teacher

/Apocalyptic prophet or Messiah

/Pharisee or Essene. See also Talk:Jesus/Scribes Pharisees and Sadducees.

/Sources

Further discussion

There are currently eight proposals at the Talk:Jesus/2nd Paragraph Debate subpage, which is currently on its ninth (!) subpage. A different solution, first suggested by CTSWyneken but which makes a lot of sense to me, is to create a FAQ to answer common objections. I find this to be a better idea than burying the lead in a bunch of qualifications.

Another thing is that while we keep saying that we can explain things in more detail in the body of the article, we really haven't done so. We really should explain in the historicity section how there were other healers, miracle workers, prophets and messiahs running around at the time. (This doesn't challenge my faith, because Jesus warned us about the others. However, it does help to provide context.) Another thing that can be explained further in the historicity section is the charge of sedition. Finally, we might say a little more about how, since the Gospels are religious documents, critical scholars find some details more historically plausible than others. Frankly, there is a selection bias at work since the early Christians were the ones who cared the most about preserving the accounts of Jesus. Guided by the Holy Spirit, IMHO, but still the documentary evidence comes largely from an early Christian POV. This does not, however, mean that Jesus did not exist. Grigory Deepdelver of Brockenboring^TalkTCF 07:07, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad that we've been discussing the historical Jesus and the Historicity section, because I feel there are some perspectives that have been missing. However, the discussion is getting a bit long. I've created an active subpage, Talk:Jesus/Historical Jesus, with its own subpages, for further discussion on this topic. We currently have 25 sources listed on the subpage. Grigory Deepdelver of Brockenboring^TalkTCF 07:31, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

One final comment. While we're working on improving the historicity section here, let's not forget the related articles Historical Jesus, Historicity of Jesus, and Cultural and historical background of Jesus. I'm sure the sources we've compiled at Talk:Jesus/Historical Jesus/Sources would be useful for those articles as well. Grigory Deepdelver of Brockenboring^TalkTCF 08:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, one more thing. At the time of the last peer review in October 2005, there was a section in this article on the cultural and historical background. I've copied this to User:Archola/JesusBackground. While the section is a bit long and should be condensed, I do think that we need to include some of these details in the historicity section of this article. Grigory Deepdelver of Brockenboring^TalkTCF 09:21, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Historical Jesus metahistory

OK, I see that Peter Kirby might be planning on working on this via The Quest for the Historical Jesus, and that the original form for the HJ article might have come from him. That strikes me as useful, and it might be best to go with that form. His website has some very useful info on this, including an HJ theory page and this Marcus Borg article. Other brief intro articles can be found here and at N.T. Wright's page. For those of you interested, though, the history of HJ studies can be (very) roughly broken down as follows (this is how HJ is usually taught):

1) The First Quest (1774-1906) -- The concentration is on removing supernaturalism from Christianity and focusing on the works of the man Jesus. Thus the emphasis on Jesus as moral teacher. Important writers here are Reimarus, Schliermacher and Strauss. The First Quest is traditionally ended with Wrede's theory of a messianic secret in Mark (1901), and Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906).

2) The No Quest period (1906-1953) -- Here the emphasis is on Jesus as he relates to the believer in practice (kerygma). No need for historical Jesus, then. Important writers are Bultmann, Tilich and Barth.

3) The Next or Second Quest (1953-1970s) -- Starting in the fifties, students of Bultmann began questioning whether Christianity might be stronger if the kerygmatic vision of Jesus weren't grounded in some sort of historical person. The emphasis is on what the texts can show us about Jesus through, and the conclusion is he was an eschatological prophet. Important writers here are Kasemann, Bornkamm, Robinson, Perrin and Schillebeeckx.

4) The Third Quest (1980s-present) -- This is what people have become familiar with through WP. Stemming from the Second Quest, the Third attempts to combine textual analysis with a growing knowledge of the historical and archeological record. The pictures produced vary, but most seem to concentrate on Jesus' essential Jewishness (Pharisee or Essene). This is the work of Sanders, The Jesus Seminar, Meier, Freidriksen and just about everyone else ever mentioned on WP Jesus pages.

I take your point that the HJ article has a Q&A format, but I suspect Mr. Kirby was trying to just cover questions that might come up about the personage of Jesus. The above was probably going to be put under the QftHJ article. I don't see a problem in merging them, myself, but I'd prefer to see at least some mention made.--Mrdarcey 16:54, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

In terms of the third quest, there seems to be a fairly strong bifurcation between supporters of an "apocalyptic Jesus" (like Meier, Fredriksen, Sanders, and so forth) and supporters of a "non-apocalyptic Jesus" (Crossan, Funk, Borg, etc.). This seems to be generally acknowledged by scholars in the field - for instance, I came across a blog comment on a christian apologetics blog in which James D. Tabor, having been insulted by the site's proprietor and apologized to, responds to question from the writer about why he objected to being compared with the Jesus Seminar. He says I think many realize that the Jesus of Crossan, Funk, Borg, et al., is quite opposite of the apocalyptic figure that I am convinced Jesus was...On this issue "Jesus historians" seem fairly well divided into two camps, the "apocalyptic" and the "non-apocalyptic," and I along with Ehrman, Fredriksen, Sanders, and others stand firmly with the former...[1]. This seems to fit fairly well with most of the criticisms I've seen of the Jesus Seminar - which is to say, that many of the "Third Quest" people seem to essentially be using the "historical and archaeological record" to support Schweitzer and the second quest's idea of an eschatological Jesus. Another group (Crossan, Funk, Borg, and so forth) seem to be using it to get back to some late 20th/early 21st century version of the first quest - to emphasize Jesus as moral teacher. Does that make sense? john k 20:31, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I think that's fair, keeping in mind that what I said was reductionist. Let me put it another way: It's a political battle. The more vocal members of the Jesus Seminar (it's not really homogenous) have tried to put forth what could be called a marxist Jesus (loaded term, I know). Borg, for instance, is quite concerned about the rural/urban bifurcation in first century Palestine (his favourite statistic being a 90/10 split between the rural and urban populations), and sees Jesus' in the prophetic tradition, literally the voice of rebellion from the wilderness. Perhaps they are taking from Schillebeeckx and Hans Kung here, with their concern for Liberation Theology. I think more moderate and conservative scholars probably look at that and just throw Schweitzer's argument back at them: you get the Jesus you go looking for. So you get people like Dunn who examine the roots of Pauline Christological titles, or Sanders and Meeks who look at the Pauline social situation. They try to then put that in a context of what we know of Jewish life in Roman occupied Palestine.

I apologise for jumping in and then disappearing. My exams end the 18th, and after I plan on spending a good part of the summer trying to help on this. Best,--Mrdarcey 04:17, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Historicity section

Sorry if I'm late to the game, but I'd start by proposing:

historicity of the texts:

1) a cite for the first sentence. Probably Davies and Allison, though I'll have to think about it. Redaction and form crit has too much to say here.

2) "Paul's letters, which are usually dated from the mid-1st century." Could we say from 53-63 CE, though some would place Galatians as early as 48 CE? I can find cites.

3) "while others were suppressed because they contradicted what had become the Christian orthodoxy." -- I'd question the POV here. Source, other than Pagels or King? Many, many, scholars believe an orthodox canon came about not as an attempt to crush diversity, but as a natural consensus based on what Christians found authentic. Its a question of some complexity, but the weight of the academy still seems solidly on the side of the latter.

Aside: I don't want to hear complaints of Christian bias. I'm not Christian. Neither are a large number of people who research in this field.

4) "chief amongst them, heavily suppressed by the Church as heresy and only rediscovered in the 20th Century, is the Gospel of Thomas" -- See point 3. chief according to whom? Suppressed is a loaded word: there is still an onus on Gnostic supporters to prove it. This guy, starting on pg. 61, certainly doesn't agree they were suppressed. Notice also the 19th century dating of Thomas' publication!

Possible earlier texts:

1) In regard to the two-source theory, should it also be mentioned that Q has come under some recent fire? I know at least one NT scholar who believes the Gospels (particularly Matt) worked as a narrative framework onto which common oral rememberance of Jesus' words and deeds could be hooked when being read in worship. I'll have to dig for sourcing.

External influences on gospel development:

1) I'd like to, if I may, rework this to emphasise most contemporary academics feel Jesus is best understood in his Jewish context. As it stands, it sounds as if the mythicist position is better represented (or represented at all) in the academy. At the least, I'd want to add to cites to some of the following authors: Barclay, Sweet, Allison, Meier, Sanders, Fredriksen, Vermes, Theissen, Bornkamm, Betz, Davies, Luz, Stanton, Brown, Kasemann, Dunn, Meeks and Wright. Dunn's work on Judaic influences on early Christology alone is enough to show the Jewish tradition was far more prevalent in Gospel writing than anything else. And Sanders and Meeks are meticulous in showing the archeology of the early Pauline Church arising from a Jewish setting.

2) Though I don't really believe it, is it appropriate to talk about Pagels's and King's work on Gnosticism here? Possibly vis a vis Bultmann on John?

I general, might I also suggest Barton and Muddimann's Oxford Bible Commentary? It's a tremendous general source. (Disclosure, one of those men was my advisor...)

Much to do here, but that's a start. --Mrdarcey 16:02, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to the Jesus page, it's good to hear from you! This is just the sort of feedback I was hoping to receive from the Peer Review request and AID drive. Unfortunately, we've barely heard any response from the Peer Review request. I agree that we need more about the Jewish background in this article. Check out Cultural and historical background of Jesus. Grigory Deepdelver of Brockenboring^TalkTCF 16:38, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Hey Mrdarcey, all those suggestions look good to me. john k 17:01, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Good stuff. » MonkeeSage « 17:52, 21 April 2006 (UTC)