Jewish Jesus Research and Its Challenge to Christology Today by Walter Homolka (original) (raw)
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What kind o f man is the Jesus who emerges from the nineteentheentury European imagination? Historicist seholarship on the New Testament and Christian origins began in the late eighteenth century as a movement that claimed scientific objectivity and indeed was willing to reject doctrine and church authority in making its claims for the am henticity-or inamlenticity-of individual G o s^ls and pericopes. But perhaps that scholarship was not quite as objective, scientific, or inde^ndent-minded as we may have telieved; perhaps it was deeply affected by the political and cultural currents that dominated Europe، That is foe argument o f the new masterpiece by Halvor Moxnes, Jesus and the Rise ofNationalism. Moxnes alters the landscape ofbiblical studies by presenting foe figure o f Jesus not as solely foe product Q^ilosop h y, theological scholarship, or modem religious currents, but as foe creation of the European nationalisms o f foe nineteenth century, with all their attendant cultural and even racial biases, His book conveys foe richness o f foe nineteenth-century "Quest for foe Hstorical Jesus" lucidly and energetically, and is a crucial addition to foe secondary literature on foe topic that began with Albert Schweitzer and has continued with other important historiographical studies by Colin Brown and William Baird, among others. Moxnes expands our historiographical lens by including not only Germany, foe unquestioned center of biblical scholarship and theology in foe nineteenth century, but also France and England. He does so by examining four nineteenthHcentury theologians who reshaped our image o f Jesus: Ernest Renan in France, Schleiermacher and David Friedrich Strauss in Germany, and George Adam Smith in England. Each scholar, he demonstrates, ^rirayed Jesus in a unique way, shaped by contemporary political and cultural interests. I want to focus my remarks on the German New Testament tradition, because that is foe one 1 know best, and ! want to suggest ways ا M.W. D © y l e , Empires (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986); c ite d by E . S a id ,
German-speaking Protestant theology was caught in a real dilemma through its inquiry into the historical Jesus, since from its very beginnings with Reimarus it had to grapple with the fact that Jesus was a Jew in more than a casual sense. This suited neither orthodox dogma nor modern Protestant theology’s arrangement with historical criticism. In order to maintain theological control, scholars described a tension between Jesus’ “religion” and his “ethnicity” (or “nationality”). Jesus was construed as a figure whose religion conflicted with or transcended his (Jewish) ethnicity or nationality, which were understood as merely external or formal facts. Further, when, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the non-dissoluble cohesion of Jesus’ ancient ethno-religious Jewish identity had to be acknowledged, the pattern shifted to (Christian) transethnic religion versus (Jewish) ethno-religion (including the historical Jesus). In the quest for the historical Jesus, the modern concept of “religion” was conceived as a separate sphere; a modern conception of individualism allowed scholars to construe a historical Jesus along lines in which the nature of his “religion” could be distinguished or even separated from his “ethnicity.” Examples include the “de-nationalizing” of Jesus’ religion in the First Quest (Herder, Baur) and his “de-Christianizing” in the so- called No Quest (Wellhausen, Bultmann), which paved the way for the return of the Life-of-Jesus-theology in the New or Second Quest (Käse- mann). Although the Third Quest locates the Jesus movement clearly within Judaism, a number of scholars have recently questioned whether Jesus’ Judaism is really acknowledged everywhere.
‘The Nazi Quest for an Aryan Jesus’ Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 2 (2004), 56–90.
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 2 (2004), 56–90., 2004
This paper introduces perhaps the most neglected era in the history of the Quest for the historical Jesus. The era is National Socialist Germany and the particular Quest involves the attempt to prove Jesus was not Jewish but rather Aryan. Despite several recent attempts to associate the contemporary Jesus Seminar with such approaches, the whole period is largely ignored in the standard works on the history of New Testament scholarship. This paper introduces and describes the most important of the attempts to prove that Jesus was Aryan, that of Walter Grundmann. Important aspects of the general ideological background, as well as the influence of his teacher, Gerhard Kittel are discussed, with a more detailed treatment of the arguments in his Jesus der Galiläer und das Judentum (1940).
‘Susannah Heschel’s The Aryan Jesus: A Response’ JSNT 32.4 (2010), 421-430.
Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 2010
This appreciative and critical review briefly summarizes the contents of Susannah Heschel's book, The Aryan Jesus and probes four areas of engagement and disagreement with Heschel: the incomplete portrayal of Grundmann, the question of the influence of Grundmann and his Institute, the question of the common elements of anti-Judaism shared by the Confessing Church and the German Christians, and the nature of Christianity itself.
The Nazi Quest for an Aryan Jesus
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 2004
This paper introduces perhaps the most neglected era in the history of the Quest for the historical Jesus. The era is National Socialist Germany and the particular Quest involves the attempt to prove Jesus was not Jewish but rather Aryan. Despite sev eral recent attempts to associate the contemporary Jesus Seminar with such ap proaches, the whole period is largely ignored in the standard works on the history of New Testament scholarship. This paper introduces and describes the most impor tant of the attempts to prove that Jesus was Aryan, that of Walter Grundmann. Important aspects of the general ideological background, as well as the influence of his teacher, Gerhard Kittel are discussed, with a more detailed treatment of the arguments in his Jesus der Galiläer und das Judentum (1940).
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 2005
The aim of this review article is to participate in the current “Jesus studies” debate. “Jesus in New Contexts” is a collection of essays read at an international symposium held in June 1999 in Tutzing, Germany. The symposium endeavoured to provide an answer to the question: What can be known about the historical Jesus with the help of social-scientific models that is not known through other approaches? With this collection of essays a group of prominent international scholars provides wide range answers, depicting a world foreign to twenty first century readers, yet home to the historical Jesus. Characteristic of this edition is the inclusion of an essay that reflects critically on the methods and models employed by social scientists in reading a biblical text.