Reviewing the Jesus of history

There is a list of accepted facts about Jesus. Longer lists are proposed, but the following is a short list of events that are almost always present:

Jesus was born about 4 BCE. Jesus grew up in a small community called Nazareth. He was a Galilean. He was a popular, untrained teacher. He had disciples. He was baptized by John the Baptizer. He taught in small towns, villages and the countryside. There is no record of him ever teaching in the larger cities of the area. His message centered on the Kingdom of God.

About 30 CE he went to Jerusalem. He created a disturbance in the Temple. He was arrested. He was executed under the order of Pontius Pilate, a Roman prefect.

Why are these “facts” important? They establish Jesus from Nazareth as a person of history. None of the written records about Jesus was written until at least 45-50 years after his death. By that time, it was fervently believed by many that he was raised from the dead and soon translated into the heavens. Followers firmly believed he would return and establish the Kingdom of God on earth about which he taught. It was in that context that the four accounts of his life were written.

None of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. The writers wrote using a variety of sources. All four versions of the life of Jesus were driven by theology rather than a thirst for facts of history. The writers accepted Jesus as a person of history, but their great passion was the relationship between Jesus from Nazareth and the God of Heaven and Earth. The results are the gospels, which are accounts of theology with very little history.

In the history of the Christian churches, there has always been an interest in the Jesus of history, but not much. The overwhelming interest was in Jesus, the Christ, Son of God and Savior. More than any other person, Albert Schweitzer turned the attention of scholars to discover and restore the place of the Jesus of history. Schweitzer published a book of enormous importance. In 1906 he published “The Quest of the Historical Jesus.” He reviewed the sources used by the writers of the gospels and came to a hard conclusion. A Jesus of history cannot be established by study of the four gospels.

Schweitzer’s conclusion effectively killed the search for the Jesus of history among leading Biblical scholars. Jesus of history remained a dead subject for almost 50 years, when Rudolph Bultmann and his students took up a new quest. Bultmann’s work ended up with the same conclusion as Schweitzer. No reliable Jesus of history could be found in the four gospels.

The third search for the historical Jesus came by surprise. In the 1970s there was a concerted effort to study the Zealot movement in the first century CE. The Galilee of Jesus was a part of that search. Galilee was home to a large Jewish peasant population and was a primary birthplace of the Zealot movement that eventually unsuccessfully challenged Roman rule in Judea. The study of the Zealots gave Jesus, the peasant teacher, a context. It opened wide a door to a better understanding of the Jesus of history. Since introduction of the Zealots to the Jesus of history, a flood of historians and social scientists have started filling out the context of the life of the Jesus of history.

Jesus grew up in an advanced agrarian society of very poor peasants who labored for rich land owners who lived in the prosperous large cities of Sepphorus and Tiberias. He was the son of a peasant artisan, a station in life a bit lower than ordinary peasants. Placed in this newly understood context, the teachings of Jesus and his activities take on new meanings. Apparently Jesus was a devout Jew and dedicated to the laws of God in an anticipated Kingdom of God. He was also a political radical, who developed a large following. Jesus called for justice. He took his movement to Jerusalem and was executed as an insurrectionist. Jesus was unsettling to the religious leaders in Jerusalem, but his message and movement were truly offensive to the Roman rulers.

The third search for the Jesus of history is gaining traction among scholars. The third search is in its infancy. I fully expect an exciting expansion of our understanding of Jesus from Nazareth. Out in the world of preachers and churches, the Jesus that is being brought to light is either being ignored or ministers are choosing to remain ignorant. It may be that the social activist Jesus is too frightening to follow.

The first and second searches for the Jesus of history were abandoned. The third search is just beginning. If you are a devout follower of Jesus, exciting days are ahead.