Biographers, like historians, rely on sources to build a picture of their subject.
Take Margaret Thatcher as an example. A biographer setting out on the task would have an excellent range of rich sources – television interviews, House of Commons speeches, memories of Thatcher’s family, friends and acquaintances, Parliamentary papers, Civil Service documents, newspaper and journal articles, letters, photographs and Thatcher’s own autobiography, The Path to Power (1995) and The Downing Street Years (1993).
If we compare this cornucopia with sources for the life of Jesus of Nazareth we can understand how slender is the latter. The historian has much more to work with for other figures from classical antiquity such as Cicero, Seneca or Julius Caesar. Something of the minds of these figures can be discerned because they left us their writings. We have no writing from Jesus of Nazareth, whilst the oldest references in the New Testament are found in the letters of Saint Paul, particularly in his undisputed epistles like 1 Thessalonians (written around 50-51 AD) and Galatians (written around 53-54 AD). These documents, written roughly 20-25 years after the crucifixion, predate the Gospels. The sources that have survived to the present day in textual form are themselves copies of copies of copies.
From the 1700s onwards scholars began to take seriously the project of investigating the ‘Jesus of History’ in contrast to the ‘Christ of Faith’ (Historical Jesus – Wikipedia) The aim was to reconstruct the life of Jesus of Nazareth using historical and archaeological methods, separating the human figure from theological doctrine. The first scholar to separate the historical Jesus from the theological Jesus in this way was philosopher, writer, classicist, Hebraist and Enlightenment free thinker Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768).
A step forward is then found in the Protestant theologian David Strauss’s ‘Das Leben Jesu‘ (‘The Life of Jesus‘, 1835), in which the author expresses his conclusion that Jesus existed, but that his godship is the result of “a historic nucleus [being] worked over and reshaped into an ideal form by the first Christians under the influence of Old Testament models and the idea of the messiah found in Daniel.”
The enthusiasm shown during this first quest diminished after Albert Schweitzer’s critique, ‘Von Reimarus zu Wrede‘, of 1906, in which he pointed out various shortcomings in the approaches used at the time. After Schweitzer’s work was translated and published in English as ‘The Quest for the Historical Jesus‘ in 1910, the book’s title provided the label for the field of study for eighty years. Scholarship on the historical Jesus since 1910 has expanded into a veritable industry within New Testament studies.
Paula Fredriksen, historian of early Christianity, (Paula Fredriksen | Department of Religion) thus stands in a 250 years old tradition of attempts to bring the historical figure of Jesus into sharper focus. Fredriksen takes us into the religious worlds – both Jewish and pagan – of Mediterranean antiquity, and through the labyrinth of Judean and Galilean politics. She presents a careful study of the material accounts we have of Jesus and his contemporaries: the four Gospels and Q (the theoretical pre-Gospel Source), as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the letters of Paul, and the histories of Josephus.
The result is a superb contribution to our understanding of the social and religious contexts within which Jesus of Nazareth moved, and to our appreciation of the mission that ended in the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah. The author portrays Jesus not as a divine being or social reformer, but as an apocalyptic prophet expecting immediate divine intervention to establish God’s kingdom. She argues that Jesus did not explicitly proclaim himself Messiah during his ministry, but rather the crowds in Jerusalem hailed him as such, creating the political tension that led to his execution.
For further reading on this subject, turn to the following:
- Bultmann, Rudolph Jesus and the Word (1934)
- Leon-Dufour, Xavier, S.J. The Gospels and the Jesus of History (1963)
- Vermes, Geza Jesus the Jew (1973)
- Schillebeeckx, Edward Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (1979)
- Sanders, E.P. Jesus and Judaism (1985)
- Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (5 Volumes, 1991-2016)
- Sanders, E.P. The Historical Figure of Jesus (1993)
- Thiessen, Gerd and Merz, Annette The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (1998)
- Ehrman, Bart D. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (1999)
- Levine, Amy-Jill The Misunderstood Jew (2006)
- Cupitt, Don Jesus and Philosophy (2009)
- Ehrman, Bart D. Jesus, Interrupted (2009)
- Casey, Maurice Jesus of Nazareth (2010)
- Bond, Helen The Historical Jesus: A Guide for the Perplexed (2012)
Check if Fredriksen’s work of historical scholarship is in stock at your local library by consulting the online catalogue here Home | South Lanarkshire Libraries (sllclibrary.co.uk)
352 pages in Vintage
First published 1999
ISBN-13 : 978-0679767466
Paula Fredriksen