BOOK REVIEW IN JOURNAL- ROBERT CONNER: JESUS THE SORCERER (original) (raw)
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The Historical Jesus ? T&T Clark, 2008
In conformity with the appropriate method, the study proceeds through four chapters of unequal length. 1. The chosen starting point is the present Eucharist. It is as far as possible from the historical Jesus, but at the same time it is the most real element of Christianity: a presence of Jesus Christ and the formation of a community through the fulfilment of a certain Scripture, here and now. This evidently involves a vision of the human being, which it is necessary to clarify. In addition, it is a matter of an institution, that is to say precisely of a structure or of a model, which brings together by agreement a group of elements in which Scripture holds a privileged place. These elements will subsequently be explained in detail one by one, and then analyzed by going back in time. 2. At the other extremity are found the rather remote Jewish realities that surrounded Jesus in the first century, for which the work of Flavius Josephus constitutes a first-rate source. They are gathered together under two headings: first the sacred library, which was not at all at that time an archive rigidly set for centuries, but a still fluid collection with flexible contours; then Galilee, a small rural province with strong Pharisaic and Babylonian ties, as distrustful of Rome as of Jerusalem. 3. Between the two preceding poles appear the four canonical gospels that effectively resist all attempts at harmonization. In order to gauge the gap between the historical Jesus and the Christ that was later preached, they are first examined from a limited angle, by seeking to determine how the disciples became apostles. The conclusion that emerges is that the Gospel of John is the most Jewish and that of Mark to be the least useful in assessing the original milieu, which makes it necessary to reconsider certain current theories on the formation of the Gospels. 4. After these points as well as some others on the way the New Testament is used, to which other sources can be added, we finally reach the life of Jesus. We begin with the elements essential for the confession of the Christian faith (origin, baptism and passion of Jesus), and deal only at the end with his activity and his teaching, on which the Epistles and the Credo are remarkably silent. The conclusion is very modest, but precise: if we remain hesitant or ignorant in regard to the material details of many of the facts, we see on the contrary very well – and this is the essential – how they escaped being forgotten, that is to say how they have given rise to a word, because they have been understood, memorized and especially transmitted. Taken in a very broad sense, the fulfilment of Scripture has played – and still plays – an essential role. Abraham gives us this to understand in the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus (Luke. 16:31): “If they do not listen to Moses or the Prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” There are finally two Appendices. The first proposes a collection of non-biblical texts that help in being more specific about the silhouette of Jesus and of his circle. The second provides elements of a French bibliography; in fact, to lighten the presentation, all annotation has been omitted and the technical discussions have been reduced to a minimum, but most of the considerations and the options presented here have been studied and justified in more detail elsewhere; it is fair to add that many are subject to controversy. The chosen starting point indicates clearly that nothing can be demonstrated more geometrico. It is a matter first of all of reflections of a believer for believers. In regard to non-believers or of “misinformed-believers,” the only really useful Christian apologetic is a mixture of testimony and announcement of the Gospel, which moreover necessarily gives rise to objections. Even if it has long been asserted – and Paul recalls this – that the human being has the natural capacity to know God, it is evident that a positive mind can declare, in good faith and with good arguments, that Christianity is a deception, or at least an illusion. Such a one should congratulate herself/himself, since the Christian language offers its services, like a parable; it honours the demands of reason, but it cannot be imposed for fear of reducing the Gospel to a theorem, namely a cultural fact to master.
The Quest to Digest Jesus: Recent Books on the Historical Jesus
Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2000
Books reviewed in this article:Mark Allan Powell, The Jesus Debate: Modern Historians Investigate the Life of ChristPhillip J. Cunningham, A Believer's Search for the Jesus of HistoryClive Marsh and Steve Moyise, Jesus and the Gospels: An IntroductionN. T. Wright and Marcus Borg, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions
i t is generally affirmed that the history of the research on the historical Jesus begins with H. S. Reimarus on the influence of Deism and the Enlightenment (an idea that rests on a book published more than a century ago by Albert Schweitzer) 1 and that it is characterized by a series of phases or stages that culminate in the "last quest." The aim of these pages is to present a critique of both of these opinions. In fact, the attempt to reconstruct an image of Jesus independently of the theological interpretations of the churches is already attested at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Second, the history of the research must be understood not in the frame of a linear historical evolution that proceeds by subsequent phases but in the light of a social history that takes into consideration the conflicting attitudes of different intellectual and academic institutions of the modern age: Catholic theological faculties, Protestant theological faculties, Jewish theologians, and independent academic institutions and scholars. The first condition that made possible new historical research on Jesus was humanism. This intellectual movement emphasized reading texts in the original language and, starting at the beginning of the fourteenth century, influenced biblical research by bringing in a new understanding of early Christian concepts (e.g., metanoia versus poenitentia) in light of the Jewish and Greek cultures in which they were produced. The critique of medieval theology and the rise of a method of philological and historical 1. Albert Scheitzer, Von Reimarus zu Wrede: Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung