The Historical Jesus

[Graham]

I just remembered this video clip I saw a while ago. I didn't see the whole film, but maybe it'll help.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=696492648668420724&ei=h48gSt3_Boi0-QGdweG5Bw&q=the+god+that+wasn%27t+there&hl=en&client=firefox-a

[VietnamVet-BRIGHT]

I wrote a 29 page paper for one of my master's courses reviewing the debate on the historicity of the Jesus character.   A great source is Albert Schweitzer's book (pub. 1906) which I used as an introduction to the historicity issue; here's an excerpt of that paper:

Schweitzer's credentials include receiving a doctorate in religious philosophy from the University of Strasburg, becoming a preacher and being appointed as principle of the theological college associated with his alma mater.    

Embracing the modernist ideals of Hegel’s science of religion which differentiated analyses of religion among component parts -- metaphysical, psychological and historical -- Schweitzer represented an influential 19th century theological movement sometimes referred to as the Tübingen school of thought.  Buttressed by his formidable theological training, he delved into a quest to discover the historical Jesus realizing, as he put it, that there was “no analogue in the field of history [and that] … no historical school [had] ever laid down canons for the investigation of this problem.”    He further surmised that because of the “complexities of the situation,” standard methodologies of historical investigation were “inadequate” and “not immediately applicable;”   Schweitzer asserted that though it would take continuous experimentation to create a system to engage this unique problem, the guiding principle in this quest would “ultimately rest upon historical intuition.”  

Schweitzer saw the problem as inherent in part due to the “nature of the sources” and, as well, because of an imprecise understanding of the religious thinking from which those sources emanated.   Engaging in a critical analysis of New Testament literature, Schweitzer recognized the irreconcilability of historical data between two sets of gospels: the Synoptics -- Mark, Matthew and Luke -- and the Gospel of John, a problem which compelled the decision to utilize one set, but not both, within his methodology.   Problematic too was the lack “of any thread of connection in the material.”   He describes the Synoptics as “collections of anecdotes” and John, in contrast, as a “selection of the events and discourses.”   The product that the historian eventually produces, Schweitzer reckons, is a picture of Jesus with “yawning gaps” that, at best, could be filled with “historical imagination.”   Among the designs of his working methodology was reconciling natural history with narratives of supernatural events; here he agrees with an earlier 19th century theologian, David Friedrich Strauss, that supernatural events such as miracles “have no rightful place in the history, but are simply mythical elements in the sources.”
 
Schweitzer perceived Strauss’s insight as the line of demarcation between two historical phases of the quest.  The earlier, dominated by questions of miracles, had now been put to rest which thus freed the historian’s focus on what Schweitzer saw as the paradigmatic problem of the new phase: the contradiction between Jesus’ messianic consciousness in contrast with his non-messianic discourses and actions.   It was an either/or scenario: Jesus either thought of himself as the Messiah or as a prophet.  Schweitzer asked if the difficulties in explaining Jesus’ historical personality “lie in history itself, or only in the way in which it is represented in the sources.”

Though more of Schweitzer’s work will be explored later in this paper, it is necessary to understand the post-Schweitzer phase by moving his research forward and revealing his conclusion.  Though his quest set out to discover the historical Jesus, his ultimate conclusion was that the Jesus described in the New Testament had never existed; he writes:

  "The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth and died to give his work its final consecration never existed" (478).

Source:  
Scweitzer, Albert.  The Quest of the Historical Jesus: First Complete Edition.  
Translated by W. Montgomery, et al.  Edited by John Bowden.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.

What is interesting is that the Wikipedial entry for Schweitzer completely leaves out his seminal conclusion that the Jesus character never existed!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer

If any of you want to go and edit that, I've given you the source and page number of his quote.

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[joeactor]

I wrote a 29 page paper for one of my master's courses reviewing the debate on the historicity of the Jesus character.   A great source is Albert Schweitzer's book (pub. 1906) which I used as an introduction to the historicity issue;

Thanks for that - I hadn't read any of Schweitzer's views on this topic... fascinating!
JoeActor

[VietnamVet-BRIGHT]

I wrote a 29 page paper for one of my master's courses reviewing the debate on the historicity of the Jesus character.   A great source is Albert Schweitzer's book (pub. 1906) which I used as an introduction to the historicity issue;

Thanks for that - I hadn't read any of Schweitzer's views on this topic... fascinating!
JoeActor

It's a great read which I'm sure has been pushed to the sidelines of reading lists because of his powerfully argued and "dangerous" conclusion.

I'm sure that it's been an embarrassing situation for Christians of the last 100 years to have to deal with the fact that a brilliant dean of a university theological school and later Nobel Peace Prize recipient concluded that the Jesus character never existed.  

This may be why his conclusion is strategically omitted by whoever inputted data into Wikipedia for Schweitzer.

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[Sophus]

Schweitzer comes to the conclusion of Jesus never existing? I thought with all the historical documents that support his existence most historians agreed he did but it was too cloudy to make out any specifics?

[Will]

I don't think there can be a conclusion that the historical Jesus never existed, but there's no evidence that he existed. Kinda like god, really.

I think the point is that because there's no evidence whatsoever that Jesus existed, certain belief in Jesus cannot be explained by apologists. It has to be another "I just have faith" cop out.

[VietnamVet-BRIGHT]

Schweitzer comes to the conclusion of Jesus never existing? I thought with all the historical documents that support his existence most historians agreed he did but it was too cloudy to make out any specifics?

There is not one contemporary piece of non-biblical evidence of the Jesus character's existence.  Not one.  

Scweitzer, an evangelical pastor, theologian and dean of a theology college, based his conclusion on the textual analysis of the NT; its gross and irreconciliable inconsistencies led him to conclude that the character was fictional.

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[MikeyV]

Have you visited the Freethought & Rationalism Discussion Board (formerly the Internet Infidels Discussion Board)?

In the Biblical Criticism and History Board, there is a wealth of information on the historicity of Jesus.

[Will]

Any particular threads?

[MikeyV]

No, I haven't been in a while, but there are a few with lively debate between the camps. I'll look around and see what comes up.

Some of the posters are scholars, and do this for a living. I'll give you some names when I get some more time.