A brief overview of the research on the historical Jesus is necessary for this introduction. The NT is a small library of books written within a hundred years of Jesus' death by those who believed him to be the Messiah. Also, developments in the study of the historical Jesus have marked major changes in the direction of NT scholarship, so this study can familiarize readers with what has happened in the research. Finally, much publicity has surrounded studies on this issue in recent years; and without explanation, beginners may acquire a distorted view of the directions and their importance.

1. Two Hundred Years (1780-1980) of the Modern Quest

   For some 1,800 years, Christianity largely took for granted that the gospel portrait of Jesus, with all its Christological assessments, was a literally factual account of Jesus' life. The "Enlightenment," the eighteenth-century movement that exalted human reason and empirical scientific inquiry, inevitably led to a new approach to the Bible. The same historical principles used to study other ancient works began to be applied to the NT by R. Simon, a Catholic priest (1690), and by the Protestant scholar J. D. Michaelis (1750). H. S. Reimarus, whose work was published posthumously in 1778, was the first to develop an image of Jesus distinct from the Christ described in the gospels. For him, Jesus was a Jewish revolutionary who unsuccessfully attempted to establish a messianic kingdom on earth, while Christ was the fictional projection of those who stole his body and claimed that he had risen from the dead. Unfortunately, therefore, from the beginning, the application of systematic historical research to Jesus has been mixed with a rationalism (presented as scientific, but in fact sorely lacking in objectivity) that denied a priori the possibility of the supernatural. Often the search for the historical Jesus was conducted with the aim of freeing Jesus from the theological impositions of the later Church, but in fact many researchers imposed their own skepticism and anti-theological prejudices on the image they claimed to have "found." In 1835, D. F. Strauss, a student of R. C. Baur, published a Life of Jesus based on the premise that the Gospels had transformed and embellished the image of Jesus by faith so that the result was mythical. The change was so profound that he considered it almost impossible to write a historical account of the life of Jesus. From this position, but taking different directions, another biblical scholar, B. Bauer (1877), argued that Jesus and Paul had never existed, while E. Renan (1863) portrayed a purely human Jesus. In such an investigation, the Fourth Gospel was quickly dismissed as a theological creation and thus a totally unreliable historical source, while Mark (with the Q document) was carefully studied as a key to the human Jesus. However, in 1901, W. Wrede argued that Mark was also the product of a theology in which Jesus was presented as divine, and was therefore not a reliable historical source. Behind the various examples of what has been called the "first quest" for the historical Jesus was the idea that modern theology had to change according to what scholars were now discerning about Jesus.

   In his History of Research on the Life of Jesus (1906), A. Schweitzer passed judgment on more than a hundred years of research on the "historical Jesus." He argued that most of the research described above tells us more about the researchers than about Jesus, because they were describing their own mirror image. Following the example of J. Weiss, Schweitzer argued that previous research had neglected the apocalyptic perspective of Jesus, who saw himself as the Messiah who, through his death, would bring about the end of the world. For Schweitzer, therefore, Jesus was a noble failure. In The so-called historical Jesus and the historical biblical Christ (1892), Kähler presented another skeptical reaction to "Jesus research" by arguing that it was impossible to separate the historical Jesus from the Christ of faith, since the NT writings all focus on the latter. The Christ of faith is the one proclaimed by Christians and the only one to be concerned with. R. Bultmann went in the same direction. In his History of the Synoptic Tradition (1921), he used formal criticism not only to classify what was said about Jesus in the synoptic gospels but also to judge his historicity; and according to him, the creativity of the early Christians would be the most likely origin of the tradition about Jesus. Thus, the search for the historical Jesus was a virtual impossibility. Bultmann's pessimism about what can be known about Jesus historically corresponded to his theological principle (influenced by a Lutheran training) that one should not seek a historical basis for faith. Thus, if one may simplify, unlike the "modern quest," Bultmann would not change his theology based on "discoveries" about the historical Jesus that are irrelevant to belief. Paradoxically, Bultmann did not wish to dispense with the exalted gospel image of Jesus, for the proclamation of this gospel image offers people today a challenge to believe that is existentially similar to the challenge Jesus offered people in his lifetime. Those who respond in faith, God delivers from the hopeless incapacity of their own human capacities.

   The reaction to Bultmann, largely led by his own students, was the "new" (or second) quest for the historical Jesus. In 1953 E. Käsemann gave a lecture published under the title "The Problem of the Historical Jesus" in which he pointed out the danger of the breach opened by Bultmann: if there is no traceable link between the glorified Lord of the Gospels and the historical Jesus, Christianity becomes a myth. For Käsemann, faith, instead of being indifferent, requires an identity between the earthly Jesus and the exalted Lord. Recognizing that the gospel sources are not coldly factual biographies, he sought to develop criteria for determining what is historical in the gospel tradition. Other "post-Bultmannians" sought to determine the historical characteristics underlying the presentation of the gospel; the result was a variety of portraits of Jesus with religious significance, such as one who saw himself as the eschatological representative of God, exemplifying God's love and values through his actions, teachings, or authority and offering the possibility of an encounter with God. Bultmann's influence remains in the fact that an existential touch dominates in all these representations - a Jesus with whom one can identify, but not a Jesus who offers an explicit Christological formulation, for this is the product of later Christian reflection.

2. After 1980: The Jesus Seminar and Related Scholars

   One can speak of two trends, although the more conservative one is generally considered the study of Christology rather than historical research on Jesus. (The pursuit of this topic belongs more in a book of NT theology than in an introduction to the NT; therefore, this appendix devotes only a paragraph to it.) The desire to ascribe an explicit Christology to the life of Jesus gained new momentum in the late 20th century, as it once again became respectable to assert that Jesus truly believed he had a unique relationship with God and reflected that perspective in his speech and attitudes. "Son of man" is a title that many scholars believe he used for himself. "Messiah" remains a title that others may have used for him during his lifetime, whether or not he accepted the designation. The Qumran finds show that titles such as Son of God and Lord were known in Semitic-speaking circles in Palestine at the time of Jesus. Moreover, the scholarly practice of attributing the introduction of certain Christological titles to specific post-Jesus stages in the geographical and temporal spread of Christianity is now considered too simple. Therefore, a continuity between the life of Jesus and the gospel portraits may be more inclusive than previously thought. Readers are encouraged to explore the trend to emphasize this continuity, as it is widely followed by highly regarded scholars.

   The Specific Case of "Jesus Seminar".

   A more radical trend in the study of Jesus has received more attention, sometimes because its proponents have announced their findings in the media. This seminar was founded in 1985 by R. Funk, with J. D. Crossan as co-chair; it consists of fifty to seventy-five scholars who meet regularly, write papers, and vote on decisions about what the historical Jesus did and said. The color-coding of the votes is designed to attract attention: red = he definitely said this or something very similar; pink = he probably said something like this; gray = the ideas are his even though he did not say this; black = he did not.

   Although inspired in part by the criteria developed by the post-Bultmannians, the seminar differs in several ways.

   1. First, it operated to a remarkable degree on a priori principles, some of which reflect an anti-supernatural bias. For example, the bodily resurrection had no real chance of being accepted as having taken place. The session dealing with the authenticity of Jesus' predictions about his passion and death was dominated by the initial refusal of most participants to admit the possibility that Jesus could have spoken of his impending death by virtue of "superordinate" powers; as a result, they voted black on eleven synoptic passion predictions. Once again, almost as a matter of principle, the eschatological character of Jesus' ministry was dismissed, with a clear negative result for judging the authenticity of gospel statements that echo such a perspective.

   2. Second, the results were exceptionally skeptical. Of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the four gospels, about 50% were judged black and 30% gray, leaving less than 20% that have a chance of being authentic (red or pink). No words of Jesus in John and only one word in Mark received a red vote!

   3. Third, from the beginning, the seminary has sought popular media coverage to an extraordinary degree - one critic compared it to the style of the Barnum & Bailey circus founder. Claiming that scholarly views published in books and scholarly journals don't reach the general public, Jesus' seminary figureheads have turned to newspaper interviews and television shows, even garnering attention in Sunday supplements and periodicals like the men's fashion magazine GQ. Part of the reason for this piquancy is the proclaimed intention to free Jesus from the tyranny of the "religious establishment," represented by the church or Christian doctrinal tradition and worship. Thus, after almost every seminar session, shock announcements are issued to draw the public's attention, for example, that Jesus did not say the Lord's Prayer or any of the beloved words that appear in John. The impression has been created that these outrageous statements represent the current position of scholars.

   In fact, although "Jesus Seminar" spokespersons like to claim that the primary denigration of their positions comes from "fundamentalists," scholarly evaluations and critiques of "Jesus Seminar" productions have often been frankly critical; we can mention NT professors such as A. Culpepper (Baylor), R. B. Hays (Duke), L. T. Johnson (Emory), L. E. Keck (Yale), J. P. Meier (Catholic University) and C. T. Talbert (Wake Forest/Baylor). It contains devastating judgments such as: methodologically flawed; no significant advance in the study of the historical Jesus; only a small ripple in NT scholarship; results representing the Jesus the scholars wanted to find; pursuing a specific denominational goal; and dangerous by giving a false impression. We cannot go into the details of the discussions here, but we will offer an evaluation of this research at the end of the appendix.

   Various participants in the Jesus seminar have written their own books, but only J. D. Crossan and M. J. Borg will be discussed separately here. The seminar dealt largely with the words of Jesus; these authors fleshed out the images of Jesus in the sense of some of the implications of the seminar.

   J. D. Crossan bases his presentation of Jesus on sources he would date to before 60: for example, the reconstructed Q document and the apocryphal gospels (Gospel of Thomas, Secret Gospel of Mark, an early form of Gospel of Peter). It is based on social analyses of Roman rule in Palestine during Jesus' lifetime, which show great political turmoil and assume that Nazareth has a model of power attested to in the larger cities. Jesus is seen as a combination of an itinerant Cynic preacher and an illiterate Galilean peasant who was strongly egalitarian. Crossan rejects the historicity of the account of Jesus' childhood on the basis of an analogy with a 12th century account of the life of Moses (Sepher haZikronot). There are no demons, so Jesus did not perform exorcism in the strict sense, although he did deliver individuals from what they considered to be possession. There were elements of magic, as Jesus operated outside normal religious lines, but there were no supernatural miracles. Most of the passion narrative was created from a reflection on the OT; there was no Jewish trial of Jesus; he was executed by the Romans; and his body was probably eaten by dogs; there was no bodily resurrection. Inevitably, Crossan has been accused of a wild imagination that compromises his claims to a historical approach.

   Borg is in many ways in harmony with the Jesus seminar, for example, the "pre-Easter" Jesus was not a Messiah or divine savior, nor was he eschatologically concerned with the end of the world - such views would make Jesus irrelevant to our time. Reflecting his own pilgrimage of faith, Borg attempts to find a meaningful Jesus; and his eloquence on the very spirituality of Jesus has attracted some who would otherwise find the seminary's claims offensive. Borg proposes a compassionate sage who taught subversive wisdom (indeed, a sage who saw himself as the mouthpiece of divine wisdom), and a prophetic social critic who, through the inclusiveness of his appeal, rejected a politics of holiness that implied separation. The key to his image is that Jesus was a charismatic, Spirit-led holy man - a man who had frequent mystical experiences of God or the Spirit and who became a channel of that Spirit to others. He was thus similar to Honi the rainmaker of the 1st century BC or Hanina of the 1st century AD. Some aspects of Borg's presentation might be widely accepted, but many would argue that he does not do sufficient justice to the essential evidence of the gospel, for his portrayal makes Jesus a person who had no definitive revelation and who did not present himself as having a distinctive role in the final (i.e., eschatological) action of God that had now begun. One wondered whether, once again, as with the discovery of the liberal Jesus in the last century, the search for the historical Jesus was not producing the Jesus the seeker wanted to find.

3. After 1980: Miscellaneous Views

   We now turn to a set of researchers whose approaches are partially or very different from those of the "Jesus Seminar" (which some of them strongly criticize).

   E. R Sanders, rather than appealing to a Greco-Roman model like the Cynic preacher, emphasizes the Jewishness of Jesus, who was an eschatological prophet (not a social reformer) heralding a new age for which Israel would need to be restored. In comparison, he does not build his picture of Jesus from a collection of sayings, but trusts more in the basic gospel pattern of the facts and deeds of Jesus' life. He acknowledges the tradition that Jesus performed miracles (not to be confused with magic), but Sanders would attribute them to natural rather than supernatural causes. He doubts the historicity of the polemics between Jesus and the Pharisees, as Jesus' positions on the Law were within a tolerable range. The historically offensive element was the fact that Jesus offered sinners a place in the kingdom without requiring repentance. Sanders' critique by other scholars, in addition to questioning this unrepentant attitude, argued that there was more conflict between Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries than Sanders admits. Sanders has also been criticized for not paying enough attention to Jesus' "words" in the parables and the Sermon on the Mount.

   1. Scholars Portraying Jesus As A Socio-Political Activist

      Although his description of the social aspects of Palestine appealed to some of the participants in the Jesus Seminar, G. Theissen differs strongly from the Seminar in emphasizing the antiquity of the content of the canonical gospels. He describes Galilee and Judea as ripe for revolt during Jesus' public ministry and incorporates in this context a picture of Jesus and his followers as wandering radical charismatics (pacifists) who had abandoned or renounced their families and homes. More radically, R. A. Horsley (rejecting the image of both a cynical preacher and a wandering charismatic) imagines Jesus as a social revolutionary against the violent, power-hungry elite. Historically, Jesus was not a messianic type; rather, his contemporaries saw a resemblance to ancient social-political reformist prophets, such as Jeremiah. According to Horsley, the religious parties or "sects" mentioned by Josephus (Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes) had little influence on the heavily peasant population of Galilee. Jesus tried to reorganize village life in Palestine into a worldly kingdom, expecting God to overthrow the various Roman and Jewish political leaders in Palestine. Those he "healed," he sent back to their villages to join the cause. It is clear that there is only a tenuous connection between such a Jesus (and his historical followers) and the NT Christian groups that had a high Christology and a primarily religious orientation.

   2. Scholars Interpreting Jesus In Terms Of Divine Wisdom (Sophia)

      It is difficult to classify them. The OT wisdom books (Proverbs, Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon) depict a personified female wisdom figure who was either the first of God's creation (Prov 8:22), or came out of God's mouth (Sir 24:3), or was an emanation of God's glory (Wis 7:25), and participated in creation. Scholars from all walks of life recognize that an adaptation of this figure played an important role in the NT's understanding of Jesus' divine origins. But to what extent does this adaptation go back to Jesus himself? To some extent, this question has been linked to feminist approaches to the NT. E. Schussler Fiorenza, who, like some members of the Jesus Seminar, considers the Gospel of Thomas to be an important early source and speculates about the Q Document community, argues that Jesus saw God as Sophia and himself as Sophia's child and prophet. A major proof of this is the Lucan form (7:35) of Q Document: "Wisdom [understood as God] is justified by all her children [through Jesus]." There are also passages where Jesus uses female images of himself, e.g., Lk 13:34, but they hardly establish that God is Sophia. Despite Schussler Fiorenza's assertion, it is difficult to know whether Jesus, who consciously spoke in wisdom language (e.g., in parables), translated his relationship to God into the mold of Sophia. Schussler Fiorenza would argue that this early level was followed by a later level in which Jesus himself was identified as Sophia, even if the terminology was shifted to masculine titles such as "Lord." It is this level, however, that other scholars consider to be the earliest, for many believe that Jesus saw himself as a unique being linked to God in a relationship that went back to his origins. Some of the pre-Pauline hymns, such as Phil 2:6-11, which may be very early, and passages in John, reflect the influence of wisdom imagery on such a relationship.

   J. P. Meier (The Marginal Jew) has attempted the most ambitious modern reconstruction of the historical Jesus. In principle, it is willing to consider all sources, but it examines and rejects the apocryphal gospels as unnecessary; and while it postulates the existence of the Q document, it does not reconstruct a Q community or early Gnostic or feminist groups as more authentic than the Christians who produced the NT. Methodologically meticulous, it applies some of the same criteria as the Jesus Seminar, but makes clear their limits; and it avoids the a priori exclusions of the eschatological, the supernatural, and the miraculous. It deals with both the words and the works of Jesus. Against the tendency to characterize Jesus as a cynic, a wandering charismatic, etc., Meier emphasizes the difficulty of any classification of Jesus, who was a "marginal Jew," different from others in very many aspects of his life and teaching. Meier sees a Jesus strongly influenced by John the Baptist, whose eschatological message of necessary repentance he accepted. "An eschatological miracle-working prophet wearing the mantle of Elijah," Jesus did not proclaim a social program but the kingdom of God in the sense of God's coming to transform people and reign in the last days. This reign was already present in Jesus' ministry of healing and exorcism; indeed, Meier sees as creations of the early church those words that locate the future coming of the kingdom in an imminent period after Jesus' death. From Meier's extensive work, a more traditional Jesus emerges, having much in common with the Jesus Christ described by Paul and the gospels. Meier traces the authority of Jesus to a claim to know directly and intuitively the will of God in any given situation. This clearly has strong Christological implications.

4. Evaluative Observations
   1. Some speak as if modern methods give great assurance about the "historical Jesus", even if this image is limited. This is simply not true on at least two counts.
      1. First, the portraits of the historical Jesus are drawn by scholars who are very divided in their judgments of the gospels. Even if, as most believe, Matthew and Luke were inspired by Mark, was John independent of Mark, so that we have two distinct witnesses? Is there anything historical about John's presentation of Jesus? If, as most believe, Matthew and Luke drew on a Q Document of Jesus' words, was that source older than Mark? Does the projected Q document reflect a community that did not know or believe in Jesus beyond what is in that source? Can we reconstruct a source that predates Mark? Do the non-canonical materials (none of which, in their present form, predate the 2nd century) tell us anything historical about Jesus?

      2. Second, scholars are also divided on the real value of the criteria for discerning the historical Jesus. These criteria are designed to eliminate anything for which there might be another derivation, for example, that which might come from contemporary Judaism or Christian preaching. Yet a rigorous application of these criteria would leave us with a monstrosity: a Jesus who never said, thought, or did anything that other Jews said, thought, or did, and a Jesus who has no connection or relationship to what his followers said, thought, or did in reference to him after his death.

   2. What is meant by "the historical Jesus"? This designation refers to what, after nearly 2,000 years, we can recover of the life of Jesus of Nazareth by applying modern criteria to the documents written by those who believed that he was God's unique agent for the salvation of all (Messiah, Lord, Son of Man, Son of God, God). The results are necessarily very limited; and it is a major mistake to think that the "historical (or reconstructed) Jesus," a totally modern representation, is the same as the total Jesus, that is, the Jesus as he really was during his lifetime. Indeed, by one generous estimate, if scholars were to agree on a portrait of the "historical Jesus," it would not cover one hundredth of the real Jesus. It is also a mistake to equate the "historical (reconstructed) Jesus" with the real Jesus - a Jesus who really means something to people, a Jesus on whom they can base their lives.

   3. The preceding observation warns us against the folly of making the "historical Jesus" portrayed by a scholar or a seminar of scholars the norm of Christianity, so that the tradition of the Christian churches would have to be constantly modified by the latest representation. On the other hand, the Bultmannian reaction to the quest for the historical Jesus, which almost makes faith independent of (inevitably uncertain) historical research, need not be the only solution. Indeed, it can be argued that churches and believers should not be indifferent to careful historical research on the Bible. On the contrary, it is better to ferment and reformulate traditional ideas under the impact of careful scholarship than to overturn ideas or ignore scholarship. Following the principle of fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking an intellectually respectable expression), Christian faith has nothing to fear from sound and careful scientific research. Such a position requires an open-mindedness on both sides. Church authorities should recognize that past formulations of the faith are conditioned by time and are subject to reformulation. Through critical biblical study, what was once considered a necessary aspect of belief (e.g., creation in six days with rest on the seventh) may turn out to be only a dramatic way of formulating what remains essential (namely, that however things came to be, it was by God's planning and power). For their part, scholars would do well to avoid a rhetoric in which their discoveries are presented as certain, making the discoverers the infallible arbiters of the Christian faith. The biblical books are documents written by those who believed in the God of Abraham and the Father of Jesus Christ; common sense suggests that communities sharing that faith have authority in dealing with them.

   4. The historical Jesus "discovered" (but in fact reconstructed) in the Jesus Seminar and by some of the authors mentioned above could hardly be the object of the Christian church's proclamation. If Jesus was a wise Cynic preacher and teacher and nothing more, why would there be a religion based on him, given the preeminence of other ancient teachers (Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, etc.)? If Jesus was primarily an erroneous apocalyptic preacher who mistakenly believed that the end of the world was near, why continue to proclaim him as the savior of the world? If Jesus' resurrection from the dead is merely a way of expressing the conviction that he is with God, why should he be worshipped, given the many other saints who are surely with God? Those who advocate such a view of Jesus often claim that they are trying to reshape Christian belief and proclamation. More directly, however, their view of Jesus would make traditional Christian belief illusory and traditional proclamation irresponsible.

   5. The apocryphal gospels are a major tool in the more radical search for the "historical Jesus," with the assumption that, in whole or in part, they predate the canonical gospels and are a more reliable guide to who Jesus was. For example, the collection of sayings of Jesus found in The Coptic Gospel of Thomas is supposed to represent a collection that existed as early as the 50s or 60s and (along with the Q document) constitute evidence that Jesus was a cynical preacher. Although reputable scholars argue that some elements of the Gospel of Thomas may represent an early tradition, many others argue that all or most of the Gospel of Thomas is dependent on the canonical Gospels and thus sheds no light on the historical Jesus. Crossan would make all of the canonical Gospels dependent, for the basic account of Jesus' passion and death, on sections of The Gospel of Peter which he claims contain a very early account showing that the passion narrative was not based on recollections of what happened but on imaginative inventions suggested by OT passages. In fact, most scholars who have examined Crossan's work strongly disagree, claiming that, directly or indirectly, The Gospel of Peter is dependent on the canonical gospels and thus offers no independent information about the historical passion and death of Jesus. Despite frequent media claims, it is far from established that we have extensive sources of historical knowledge about Jesus beyond the NT.