After completing the historical survey of the quest for historical Jesus, which covered the first half of the introduction, I now want to explore the remaining part of the essay. This time, the editors discussed methodology and related issues and the diverse portraits of historical Jesus produced by the quest.

Source

Methodology and Related Issues

This part of the essay includes the question about the viability of the quest, the terminology problem, the philosophy of historiography and historical method, the interdisciplinary quest, and the question of literary sources.

As for the viability of the quest, scholars are divided into two camps: those who are questioning the legitimacy of the quest and those who are defending it.

Against the Quest

For those who question the legitimacy of the quest, scholars raised at least two categories of questions: historical and theological.

William Hamilton, following Bultmann and even Paul Tillich, confirmed that "Jesus is inaccessible by historical means" (p. 31). Others, coming "from a poststructuralist-inspired rejection of historiography in general, and/or following from the observation that scholars continue to discover a plethora of discordant, often mutually exclusive historical Jesuses, have concluded that the quest itself is a "'failing enterprise'" (ibid.). William Arnal took another route, which to his mind is the best direction in the third quest: to revert to no quest again. The last question based on history is similar to Bruno Bauer's position in the first quest, where he denied the existence of Jesus in history. Robert Price, the contributor of the first chapter, followed this track of the Christ-Myth and concluded that the "historical Jesus" "shrunk to the vanishing point" (p. 32).

Shifting our attention to theological arguments, Timothy Johnson, the contributor of the third chapter, following Martin Kahler, argued about the impossibility of any attempt to make the Christian faith dependent on a historically reconstructed Jesus. From this perspective, "historical research is irrelevant to Christian faith," and the most important thing is to keep our faith in the living and active presence of the risen Jesus now. Anticipating the docetic accusation of his interpretation, he confidently affirms "that there are resources within the tradition itself that safeguard against this error" (p. 33).

Frank Thielman and Jacob Neusner share Johnson's interpretation. For the former, the quest is "theologically ill-advised" (ibid.). The latter warned Christians against the danger of associating the product of the quest with the historic Christian faith.

In Defense of the Quest

Not all scholars follow the footsteps of Kahler and Johnson. There are scholars like Leander Keck who argue that the study of the historical Jesus has an appropriate place, provided that scholars will acknowledge both the value of historical insights and the limitation of historical research. The editors enumerated four factors in Keck's position shared by many Christian scholars of diverse schools within the quest:

• If the claims about Jesus cannot be supported by history, the integrity of both preachers and their message is at stake.

• The quest for the historical Jesus can serve as a corrective to ideological distortion.

• The appropriate use of the quest for the historical Jesus can serve as a preventative to excessive tendencies such as docetism and fideism.

• With the marginalization of Christianity in the West and in an ever-increasing pluralistic age, a faith disconnected from serious historical inquiry could be perceived as outdated, suitable only to the premodern past.

Terminological Problems

Turning our attention to terminological problems, the real point of contention is the distinction between the "Jesus of history" and the "Christ of faith" (p. 36). Other distinctions are added, such as "pre-Easter Jesus" and "post-Easter Jesus," "historical Jesus" and Jesus of piety," and "historical Jesus" and "real Jesus" (ibid.).

The last distinction has been proposed by John Meier and considered it as a replacement to earlier distinctions. The idea is that the "historical Jesus" is the one that can be recovered via scientific methodology of modern historical research, whereas the "real Jesus" is the sum total of all the data about the actual Jesus, but the problem is that the scholars do not have access to that complete data. Meier's warning is funny:

The reader who wants to know the real Jesus should close this book right now, because the historical Jesus is neither the real Jesus nor the easy way to him. The real Jesus is not available and never will be. This is true not because Jesus did not exist—he certainly did—but rather because the sources that have survived do not and never intended to record all or even most of the words and deeds of his public ministry—to say nothing of the rest of his life (ibid.).

Philosophy of Historiography and Historical Method

Under this discussion, the search for a "proper" historical method has been prioritized. The recognition of metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions is also acknowledged. Due to the widespread influence of methodological naturalism of the Bultmannian school, miracles are considered out of place. Nevertheless, there are scholars who think that such naturalistic presuppositions are unwarranted.

The methodological issue between "atomism" and "holism" reminds me of philosophical terms like "inductive" and "deductive." I am uncertain if this observation is accurate. However, the atomistic approach of prioritizing the details or small bits of Jesus material and then from there arriving at the historical Jesus appears to be an inductive methodology to me. On the other hand, holism's approach, starting from a hypothesis and then testing its credibility with available data, seems similar to the deductive method.

The final issue in historical methodology is related to the identification of criteria to assess the authenticity of data about Jesus. Proposed popular criteria include the "double dissimilarity criterion," "multiple independent attestation," and the "embarassment criterion" (pp. 40-41).

The Interdisciplinary Quest

Many scholars consider the entry of the interdisciplinary quest as the most distinctive feature of the third quest. Here, the quest is no longer dominated by historians and New Testament scholars. Other specialists from the fields of philosophy, philosophical theology, archaeology, and social sciences (cultural anthropology, sociology, and socioeconomics) joined the quest. Moreover, last but not least, the "cross-fertilization" between contemporary oral tradition/orality studies and Jesus/Gospels research is another development in this interdisciplinary quest.

The Question of Literary Sources

Literary sources can be categorized as Christian and non-Christian. For the non-Christian literary sources, the works of Flavius Josephus, such as Jewish Antiquities and The Jewish War, top the list. Others include Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucian of Samosata, and Thallus (p. 47).

As for Christian literary sources, we can divide them into canonical and extracanonical. The extracanonical books include the Q Gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, the Secret Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Peter. The use of new sources became widespread among scholars since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library (1945) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947).

When it comes to canonical books, except for the four Gospels, the other 23 New Testament documents are considered less valuable. Scholars are even divided in their assessment of the four Gospels. With the advent of critical scholarship in the 19th century, the Gospel of John is considered less reliable as a historical source. However, a minority voice protests the marginalization of the fourth Gospel, and the voice of Paul Anderson represents this position for the reassessment of the "dehistoricization of John" and the "de-Johannification of Jesus" (p. 45).

Diverse Portraits of Historical Jesus

Finally, I reached the last section of the introductory essay, and I would like to be very short in this. I think the paragraph below captured in summary the diverse portraits of Jesus presented in the third quest:

Among them (in no particular order) are: an eschatological prophet, a Galilean holy man, an occultic magician, an innovative rabbi, a trance-inducing psychotherapist, a Jewish sage, a political revolutionary, an Essene conspirator, an itinerant exorcist, an historicized myth, a protoliberation theologian, a peasant artisan, a Torah-observant Pharisee, a Cynic-like philosopher, a self-conscious eschatological agent, a socioeconomic
reformer, a paradoxical Messianic claimant and, finally, as one who saw himself as, in some sense, the very embodiment of Yahweh-God (p. 53).

Given the plurality of portraits of the historical Jesus that emerged from the third quest, at least there was a consensus when it comes to the Jewishness of Jesus. A Jesus disconnected from 1st-century Palestinian Judaism could not be the real Jesus.

Concluding with the apocalyptic mind of Jesus, there is still an ongoing debate among scholars. Scholars who follow Schweitzer concluded that Jesus was a failed prophet, for his prophesied end of the world did not happen. Wright, on the other hand, interpreted that apocalyptic language as something that took place in the past when Jerusalem fell. Others resolve this seeming dilemma with the "already-not yet" theme.

Grace and peace!