𝕽𝖆𝖓𝖌𝖔 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖗

Who Was the Historical Jesus? The attempt to catch lightning in a bottle. For more than two centuries, historians have attempted to reconstruct the historical Jesus independently of the theological interpretations preserved in the canonical Gospels. The results have been remarkably diverse, producing portraits of Jesus as a failed political revolutionary, Jewish apocalyptic prophet, ethical philosopher, charismatic healer, and teacher of radical social reform. The First Quest (1778–1906): The modern investigation is conventionally traced to Hermann Samuel Reimarus, whose writings were published posthumously beginning in 1774. Reimarus distinguished Jesus' historical intentions from the religion subsequently proclaimed by his disciples. He argued that Jesus anticipated the restoration of Israel's kingdom, but after his execution, his followers transformed the failure of his mission into a religion centered upon his resurrection. David Friedrich Strauss, in The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835–1836), challenged the historical reliability of the Gospel narratives by interpreting many miraculous episodes as myths developed through the application of Jewish scriptural expectations to Jesus. The most significant turning point came with Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906). Schweitzer argued that earlier scholars had repeatedly reconstructed Jesus according to their own cultural and philosophical ideals. Liberal Protestant writers discovered a rational ethical teacher resembling themselves, while overlooking the thoroughly Jewish apocalyptic environment in which Jesus lived. For Schweitzer, Jesus expected God's imminent supernatural intervention, the overthrow of the present age, and the establishment of his kingdom. The historical Jesus was considerably stranger to modern sensibilities than the ethical philosopher constructed by nineteenth-century European scholarship. The No Quest and New Quest (approximately 1906–1980): Following Schweitzer, historical Jesus research entered a period traditionally called the No Quest, although research never actually ceased. Rudolf Bultmann emphasized the difficulty of recovering Jesus' exact teachings from Gospel traditions shaped by the faith and preaching of early Christian communities. His form-critical approach shifted attention toward the development of those traditions. In 1953, Ernst Käsemann initiated the New Quest, arguing that the historical Jesus could not simply be separated from the Christ proclaimed by the church. Scholars increasingly developed criteria for distinguishing earlier traditions from subsequent Christian interpretations. The Third Quest (1980s onward): The Third Quest placed greater emphasis upon Jesus' Jewish environment, archaeology, Second Temple literature, and the political circumstances of Roman Judaea. Géza Vermes, in Jesus the Jew (1973), helped redirect scholarship toward understanding Jesus as a charismatic Jewish holy man rather than through later Christian theological categories. E. P. Sanders, in Jesus and Judaism (1985), reconstructed Jesus as a prophet anticipating God's restoration of Israel. John P. Meier, in A Marginal Jew (1991–2016), attempted a detailed historical reconstruction through critical evaluation of the available evidence. Yet this renewed investigation produced one of the sharpest disagreements in modern Jesus scholarship. Was Jesus an apocalyptic prophet or a teacher of a kingdom already present? Schweitzer, Sanders, Bart Ehrman, and Dale C. Allison Jr. emphasize the apocalyptic character of Jesus' message. Mark 1:15 announces that God's kingdom has drawn near. Mark 9:1 anticipates some listeners witnessing its arrival before death, while Mark 13:30 declares that the predicted events will occur within the present generation. These expectations fit a Jewish environment shaped by Daniel, apocalyptic literature, hopes for Israel's restoration, and the expectation that God would overthrow oppressive powers. Ehrman, in Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (1999), argues that Jesus anticipated a dramatic transformation of the world within his contemporaries' lifetimes. Allison, in Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet (1998), argues that apocalyptic expectations appear across sufficiently diverse early traditions to make their wholesale attribution to later Christians historically improbable. However, John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg offer a substantially different reconstruction. Crossan's The Historical Jesus (1991) presents Jesus as a Jewish peasant sage proclaiming a radically egalitarian kingdom through healing, shared meals, and the dismantling of social hierarchies. Borg similarly emphasizes Jesus as a charismatic religious figure whose teaching concerned transformation in the present. Their interpretations find support in sayings such as Luke 11:20, where God's kingdom has already arrived through Jesus' exorcisms, and Luke 17:20–21, which rejects identifying the kingdom through observable signs and declares it already among the people. The Jesus Seminar, associated with Robert Funk, gave considerable weight to the wisdom traditions while questioning the historical authenticity of many sayings predicting catastrophic future judgment. The disagreement becomes especially interesting when examining the earliest Christians. Paul, writing during the 50s AD, already anticipates Christ's imminent return and the resurrection of the dead. 1st Thessalonians 4:15–17 speaks of living believers remaining until that event. If Jesus himself primarily proclaimed a non-apocalyptic kingdom already available through human transformation, why did his earliest followers so quickly develop an expectation of imminent supernatural intervention? Allison considers this a serious difficulty for the non-apocalyptic reconstruction. Crossan instead argues that Jesus' proclamation was interpreted through apocalyptic expectations already circulating within Jewish society. ––– The conservative historical-critical response: N. T. Wright, in Jesus and the Victory of God (1996), proposes another interpretation. Jesus genuinely proclaimed an approaching divine judgment, but much of his apocalyptic language concerned the impending destruction of Jerusalem and its temple rather than the literal destruction of the physical universe. Wright draws particular attention to Daniel 7, where the humanlike figure approaches the Ancient of Days and receives heavenly authority. He understands Jesus' language concerning the Son of Man through the vindication of Jesus and the catastrophic judgment upon Jerusalem in AD 70. John P. Meier also complicates a strict division between apocalyptic prophet and wisdom teacher. Jesus could proclaim God's future reign while understanding that reign as already manifesting itself through healings, exorcisms, and his ministry. The fundamental historical question remains whether Jesus' proclamation concerned an imminent supernatural transformation, a kingdom already present through changed human relationships, or some combination of the two. Schweitzer's enduring warning is that historians repeatedly discover a Jesus reflecting their own intellectual commitments. The liberal scholars of the nineteenth century found an ethical teacher; twentieth-century apocalyptic scholars recovered a prophet anticipating divine judgment; others reconstructed a social reformer challenging oppression and hierarchy. The difficulty of recovering the historical Jesus is that every surviving account has already interpreted him. Historical-critical scholarship attempts to reconstruct the figure behind those interpretations while remaining conscious that its own reconstructions are interpretations as well.

Loving another person doesn't mean accepting them as a hylic. Some people are genetically disadvantaged in their capacity to think and act beyond short-term gratification. They must be cultivated into being a good person.

suddenly remembered this guy

"Brigham Young wasn't racist"

Explain to me why we can't have Native American angels.

God doesn’t exist.

How are you still single??? At BYU, no less. Is Satan working overtime to prevent you from meeting the right guy?? Or have you secretly been pledged to Amish royalty so that you can be queen of the future Mormon-Amish Alliance that will supplant the United States and rule earth?

To not believe in gods as a Christian makes you just one step away from being a full blown atheist. You’re already 99.9% there.