Lesson 2 - The Quest for the Historical Jesus Flashcards
What is the difference between liberal and radical approaches to historical quest for Jesus?
- ) Liberal - “the Bible doesn’t really teach that…”
a. ) Jesus was really a good ethical teacher and left a good example to follow - ) Radical - “The Bible does teach it and it’s wrong.” (Strauss)
Who was Herman Reimarus and what was his major contribution to the Old Quest?
- 1st person to construct a critical study on life of Jesus (separated Christ of history from Christ of faith); everyone follows this argument today
- Split Jesus and the disciples (gospels were written by the disciples who were hoisting the fraud in public)
Who was Heinreich Paulus and what was his major contribution to the Old Quest?
- didn’t want to attack Christianity, but save it and made Jesus into a good ethical teacher that gave us a good example to follow
- precursor to Ritschlian Liberalism
Who was David Strauss and what was his major contribution to the Old Quest?
- Challenged the historical reliability of the gospels and claimed the gospels were myth (true lessons, but not historical stories)
- disagreed with both the naturalists and supernaturalists
- beginning of the distinction between radical (Strauss) and liberals (Heinreich Paulus)
- language games - “true” doesn’t mean historical, but means true principles can be learned from stories. Bible can be true, but doesn’t mean it actually happened.
Who was F.C. Baur and what was his major contribution to the Old Quest?
- 2 forms of early Christianity, each NT document has an agenda promoting its form of early Christianity (1st to suggest this)
- 1st to suggest that Paul was the real founder of Christianity, not Jesus. (The Jesus of faith comes from Paul, and is not the Jesus of history)
Who was Albert Ritschl and what was his major contribution to the Old Quest?
- Ritschlian Liberalism (religious affirmations about God or Jesus are mere “value judgements”)
- History no longer matters, but more of your experience
- Jesus is God = doesn’t mean that objectively he is God, but that he is God to me
- Consequences - the main essence of the kingdom is ethics, and a gospel message suitable to America
Who was William Wrede and what was his major contribution to the Old Quest?
- the beginning of the end of the Old Quest
- The Messianic Secret - historical Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah
- the gospels are not reliable records, but are the church’s attempt to explain who Jesus was (Redaction Criticism - each gospel writer modified the story of Jesus to match their theological bend)
Who was Albert Schweitzer and what was his major contribution to the Old Quest?
- the end of the Old Quest
- rejected the skepticism of prior writers, and returned the eschatological component to the person of Jesus
- Jesus died as a failure
Significance:
- Ended the 1st quest for the historical jesus
- All future authors would be divided into 2 categories:
a. ) skeptical
b. ) eschatological
- All future authors would be divided into 2 categories:
What was the Jesus Seminar?
- organization started by Robert Funk in 1985
- group of scholars to reconstruct the real Jesus
- color coded the gospels to figure out what was from the real Jesus (5 Gospels)
Gospel of Thomas (lots of red)
Gospel of John (no red)
What was the Jesus Seminar’s criteria of authenticity?
- ) Multiple Attestation - only believe the stories of Jesus that had mulitple retellings
- ) Dissimiliarity - if Jesus says something that no early Christian would have made up, its probably true (the crazier the story, the more true)
- ) Contextual Credibility - if the gospels say something about ancient history that is consistent with what others have said about ancient history
What distinguishes the 3rd quest from those that come before it?
- Improvement beyond all other quests
- Serious about placing Jesus in his Jewish context
- More optomistic about the reliability of the gospels
- Favor, broader more all-encompassing hypotheses
a. ) Eschatological version of Jesus
b. ) Showed how the Jesus Seminar was too narrow
- Favor, broader more all-encompassing hypotheses
