Celsus

Hi all,

I've recently taken an interest to BC&A, and was wondering if there are actually any sorts of consensus on what actually happened (with respect to what's recorded in the Bible) in the Middle East circa. 100BCE to 100CE. I've read a few books now, and being new to this subject, can't make heads or tails of what different people have written, and which is actually more accurate, or more speculative.

For the record, I've read "Deconstructing Jesus" by Robert Price, "Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls" by James Charlesworth (ed.), "Is the Bible True?" by Jeffrey Sheler, "It Ain't Necessarily So" by Matthew Sturgis(?) and various things on the Internet, not all related to the historical Jesus. I'm currently crawling through "James the Brother of Jesus" by Eisenman. I've also read about some members of the Jesus Seminar, and some other things here on this forum. The thing is, I can't for the life of me figure out what any general consensus is on the historical Jesus. Is there even a consensus? I don't even want to consider the Jesus myth just yet or my mind will probably explode.

Is there some kind of book that has an overview of this subject? Where do most scholars think the Dead Sea Scrolls fit into this? Where does the Nag Hammadi library fit in? Anyone care to enlighten me?

Questions, questions...

Vorkosigan

Peter Kirby has a page on HJ concepts. It's at the bottom of <a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com" target="_blank">http://www.earlychristianwritings.com</a>

You can judge for yourself about the degree of consensus.

Vorkosigan

Bede

Hi joe x 3,

It is really a boring suggestion but I suggest you read some undergraduate level textbooks. While this might not tell you what the consensus is, it will fill you in on all sorts of stuff that perhaps some of the other things you are reading assume you know.

Michael has already pointed you to the page but the three books down the bottom of <a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/books.html" target="_blank">here</a> cannot be recommended highly enough (although Koester is hard). Read Brown and Theissen to get a look at the question from two point of view.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

Oh, finally back in England and having square brackets again!

Gregg

Joe,

This is the same problem I had for a long time. Although I never really bought into orthodox Christianity, for a few years in my early 20's, I accepted "New Thought" (Christian Science, Divine Science, Science of Mind, etc.) teachings regarding Jesus--that he was a human being who learned how to express his divine nature, and that by following his teachings and example, others could do the same things he did. I gradually abandoned that belief because, well, I just didn't see anyone doing the same things he was supposed to have done.

I was still fascinated by the figure of Jesus and his ethical teachings, though, and I then got interested in the search for the "historical" Jesus. I read John Shelby Spong, Burton Mack, John Dominic Crossan, the 5 Gospels, articles about the Jesus Seminar in Bible Review magazine. I even read some of the more "far out" theories (Barbara Thiering's "Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls," Baigent and Leigh's "Holy Blood, Holy Grail") which held that Jesus survived the crucifixion.

Eventually, though, I found myself in the same boat you are...this "historical" Jesus just didn't feel "real" to me. Everybody was saying different things, and no solid picture, no consensus was forming at all.

That's where I was when I encountered lay scholar Earl Doherty's Web site at <a href="http://www.jesuspuzzle.org." target="_blank">www.jesuspuzzle.org.</a> Doherty's position--that Jesus never existed--isn't new, but no one has made a better argument for this view than Doherty. In dozens of well-written articles he systematically demolishes the historicist case and builds the case for a mythical Christ. In the process he draws a very convincing picture of the actual situation in the Middle East at the time you mentioned.

I encourage you to check out his Web site. Yes, Doherty is considered "radical" by most mainstream scholars, and his view is anything but the "consensus" view. But on the other hand, a consensus can only be built one person at a time.

Cheers,
Gregg

Peter Kirby

The list of twenty-four (and growing) contemporary scholarly views on Jesus can be found here:

<a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html" target="_blank">Historical Jesus Theories</a>

If you are looking for information on background history at the time of Jesus, I can recommend two books on my shelf as money well spent:

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/3110146924/InternetInfidelsA" target="_blank">Introduction to the New Testament: History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age</a> by H. Koester

Koester goes into detail on the history of the era of the Greeks, the era of the Romans, and Judaism in the Second Temple period.

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/1563382733/InternetInfidelsA" target="_blank">Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements in the Time of Jesus</a> by R. Horsley

Read this one second. Horsley tightens the focus on Second Temple Judaism and specifically the lower class Palestinian Jews, the context of any historical Jesus.

With this background, you can proceed to reading various introductions to the New Testament, such as that by Brown or Schnelle, or to reading various reconstructions of the historical Jesus, such as those by the folks listed on the page above. My suggestion is to read at least one intro to the NT before reading HJ books.

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385247672/InternetInfidelsA" target="_blank">An Introduction to the New Testament</a> by Raymond Brown

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0800629523/InternetInfidelsA" target="_blank">The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings</a> by Udo Schnelle

Enjoy!

best,
Peter Kirby

Layman

For an overview of the varied approaches to the historical Jesus, I highly recommend Ben Witherington's, The Jesus Quest. He goes through all of the leading scholars and discusses their theories and evidences.

Celsus

Hi all,

Thanks for all the links and book recommendations. It'll undoubtedly take me quite a while to get through all of it. Great site Peter, FWIW, since that's the only one I've looked at in depth so far.

I'm also quite interested in what the more orthodox views are, like Judaism, Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic Christianity see the HJ searches. Obviously, the very assumption that the Gospel pictures are innacurate are radical to mainstream Christianity. Other than just writing off these scholars wholesale, are there any more mainstream (Judeo-Christian?) writers who critically analyse their ideas?

Layman

Well, Ben Witherington is a conservative though not fundamentalist Christian scholar. And in "The Jesus Quest" he evaluates many of the leading Jesus Scholars: Crossan (liberal), Funk (liberal), Sanders (moderate), Geza Vermes (Jewish), and Meier (moderate Catholic).

aikido7

It's kind of fun to sit back and watch the "consensus" (if there be such a thing) coalesce.

What we see as the present is really the past and what we envision of the future is actually the present. Just as the starlight we now view came from the deep past, postmodernism in biblical scholarship is still slouching, struggling to be born. It actually began right after Luther grabbed the Bible from the preists, translated it into a common language and gave it to the messy public.

"Marcan Priority" and the "Q" verses left several constellations years ago. Since the church has become a bureaucratic salvation machine, it has no way to process the new paradigm. One age's magic is the next age's common sense.

We're still dealing with it: go to the nearest Christian bookstore and count how many Bibles and how many translations there are. It's like that verse from the non-canonical Thomas Gospel where a woman with a jar full of leaven accidently lets the stuff leak out all over.

Something is coming and there are a lot of birth pangs. Afterward we will clean the creature off and give it a name. In the meantime, we can take a lesson from Schweitzer, one of the orginal historical Jesus questers, who pointed out that Jesus scholars look down a deep well and describe their own reflection.

I see mine as well, but those post-Enlightenment ripples keep getting in the way!

"Walking on water wasn't built in a day"
--Kerouac

Jamie_L

Is there much written about this topic by people who don't come from Jewish or Christian backgrounds or cultures? It seems unlikely, but at the same time it seems to me that there is likely to be a bias in any researcher who's culture is predisposed to a certain view of Christ.

Jamie