This essay will situate Wrede, Schweitzer and other early adherents of the “Jesus as Apocalyptic Prophet” thesis within German Romanticism and suggest that this view of history defined much of the vernacular for modern Jesus studies. It will then examine an often overlooked element of the Jesus tradition, what this study will call Jesus’ “greater than” rhetoric. In doing so, the author will (largely) avoid the terms “prophet,” “apocalyptic,” and “eschatological” for heuristic purposes. Thus this essay will explore the possibility of epochal aggrandizement in the Jesus tradition without hinging the notion on the vernacular of Romanticism.

... Instead of endless attempts at finding our favourite Jesus and how important Jesus-the-individual was, this approach will hopefully point to ways in which social historical explanations of the Jesus movement and Christian origins can be pursued without the relentless reliance on the nineteenth century Great Man view of history so embedded in historical Jesus scholarship.

The character of Jesus’ apocalypticism has been analyzed and debated since the birth of modern biblical studies. Dividing lines have been established and the trenches are dug deep. Either Jesus is regarded as an apocalyptic prophet or as a subversive sage. There seems to be no way out of the present stalemate...

...I argue that Coherence was applied in Jesus studies before the prominent years of Form Criticism, but became a sub-criterion of Double Dissimilarity within the programs of Bultmann, Käsemann, and Perrin. I then argue that Perrin’s application of Coherence as a sub-criterion to Dissimilarity is beyond repair and that both criteria should be abandoned. However, I suggest that recent adaptations of Social Memory theory might provide new life for the more general principle of Coherence as employed from Weiss to John P. Meier. The chief problem with its present use is that New Testament studies works from a premise of binary (or ternary) opposites as they conceive of the divide between Jesus’ context and Christianity’s context. As long as Jesus historians think along the lines of binary opposites, the Criterion of Coherence will continue to be misleading. Thus Perrin’s use of the criterion is beyond repair and Meier’s use must be rebuilt from the ground up.

The 'criterion of crucifiability' has been used as a means of dismissing or validating entire reconstructions of Jesus and to argue for or against the historicity of given stories in the gospels. ...

... The striking ambiguity of the older texts is far more present in the younger texts – and depictions – that is commonly assumed. By that the detailed knowledge of what struck the historical Jesus on Calvary might basically be without support.

The institution of communion poses a difficult problem for the study of the historical Jesus. It is early and well attested, predating the Gospels in Paul, being found in the synoptic tradition, and even hinted at in John. This early and multiple attestation supports its historicity, however, accounts of the institution are dominated by theological overtones that seem more likely to reflect the beliefs of the early church than those of the historical Jesus

The institution of communion poses a difficult problem for the study of the historical Jesus. It is early and well attested, predating the Gospels in Paul, being found in the synoptic tradition, and even hinted at in John. This early and multiple attestation supports its historicity, however, accounts of the institution are dominated by theological overtones that seem more likely to reflect the beliefs of the early church than those of the historical Jesus