The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906)

[struggle4progress]

The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede
By Albert Schweitzer, D THEOL, D PHIL, D MED
Translated by W. Montgomery from the First German Edition Von Reimarus zu Wrede 1906 ...
First English Edition 1910 ...

I:THE PROBLEM

... It is only at first sight that the absolute indifference of early Christianity towards the life of the historical Jesus is disconcerting ... Greek theology was as indifferent in regard to the historical Jesus who lives concealed in the Gospels as was the early eschatological theology ... That the historic Jesus is something different from the Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures seems to us now self-evident ... The historical investigation of the life of Jesus did not take its rise from a purely historical interest; it turned to the Jesus of history as an ally in the struggle against the tyranny of dogma ...

There is really no common standard by which to judge the works with which we have to do. It is not the most orderly narratives, those which weave in conscientiously every detail of the text, which have advanced the study of the subject, but precisely the eccentric ones, those that take the greatest liberties with the text ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter1.html

II: HERMANN SAMUEL REIMARUS < c. 1760? >

... Luther had not so much as felt that he cared to gain a clear idea of the order of the recorded events. Speaking of the chronology of the cleansing of the Temple, which in John falls at the beginning, in the Synoptists near the close, of Jesus' public life, he remarks: "The Gospels follow no order in recording the acts and miracles of Jesus, and the matter is not, after all, of much importance. If a difficulty arises in regard to the Holy Scripture and we cannot solve it, we must just let it alone." When the Lutheran theologians began to consider the question of harmonising the events, things were still worse ...

More often, ... the way in which erudition seeks to serve history is by suppressing historical discoveries as long as possible, and leading out into the field to oppose the one true view an army of possibilities ... This obstructive erudition is the special prerogative of theology ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter2.html

III: THE LIVES OF JESUS OF THE EARLIER RATIONALISM <1774 - 1816>

... But miracle no longer plays a part of any importance; it is a firmly established principle that the teaching of Jesus, and religion in general, hold their place solely in virtue of their inner reasonableness, not by the support of outward evidence ... All of them make it a principle to lose no opportunity of reducing the number of miracles; where they can explain a miracle by natural causes, they do not hesitate for a moment ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter3.html

IV: THE EARLIEST FICTITIOUS LIVES OF JESUS <1782 - 1806>

...<summarizing Bahrdt:> Nicodemus, Haram, and Luke met in a cave in order to take counsel how they might bring about the death of Jesus in a way favourable to their plans. Luke guaranteed that by the aid of powerful drugs which he would give Him the Lord should be enabled to endure the utmost pain and suffering and yet resist death for a long time. Nicodemus undertook so to work matters in the Sanhedrin that the execution should follow immediately upon the sentence, and the crucified remain only a short time upon the cross. At this moment Jesus rushed into the cave. He had scarcely had time to replace the stone which concealed the entrance, so closely had He been pursued over the rocks by hired assassins. He Himself is firmly resolved to die, but care must be taken that He shall not be simply assassinated, or the whole plan fails. If He falls by the assassin's knife, no resurrection will be possible ...

...<summarizing Venturini:> Many miracle stories rest on obvious misunderstandings. Nothing could be simpler than the explanation of the miracle at Cana. Jesus had brought with Him as a wedding-gift some jars of good wine and had put them aside in another room. When the wine was finished and His mother became anxious, He still allowed the guests to wait a little, as the stone vessels for purification had not yet been filled with water. When that had been done He ordered the servants to pour out some of his wine, but to tell no one whence it came. When John, as an old man, wrote his Gospel, he got all this rather mixed up ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter4.html

V:FULLY DEVELOPED RATIONALISM — PAULUS <1828>

... The feeding of the five thousand is explained in the following way. When Jesus saw the multitude an hungered. He said to His disciples, "We will set the rich people among them a good example, that they may share their supplies with the others," and he began to distribute His own provisions, and those of the disciples, to the people who were sitting near them. The example had its effect, and soon there was plenty for every one ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter5.html

VI: THE LAST PHASE OF RATIONALISM - HASE AND SCHLEIERMACHER <1832 - 1865>

... On these premises it is possible to write a Life of Christ; it is not possible to write a Life of Jesus. It is, therefore, not by accident that Schleiermacher regularly speaks, not of Jesus, but of Christ ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter6.html

VII: DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS - THE MAN AND HIS FATE

... The point to which Strauss applies his criticism is the way in which the Christian theology which grew out of the ideas of the ancient world has been brought into harmony with the Christianity of rationalism and of speculative philosophy ... Either .. both are so finely pulverised in the process .. that it needs a sharp eye to rediscover the elements of the mixture; or the two are shaken together like water and oil, in which case the semblance of combination is only maintained so long as the shaking continues. For this .. he desires to substitute a better method, based upon a preliminary historical criticism of dogma, in order that thought may .. deal with .. the ideas which worked as living forces in its formation ... The result is .. a negative Hegelian theology. Religion is not concerned with supra-mundane beings and a divinely glorious future, but with present spiritual realities which appear as "moments" in the eternal being and becoming of Absolute Spirit ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter7.html

VIII: STRAUSS'S FIRST "LIFE OF JESUS" <1835>

... The supernaturalistic explanation of the events of the life of Jesus had been followed by the rationalistic, the one making everything supernatural, the other setting itself to make all the events intelligible as natural occurrences. Each had said all that it had to say. From their opposition now arises a new solution —- the mythological interpretation. This is a characteristic example of the Hegelian method ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter8.html

IX: STRAUSS'S OPPONENTS AND SUPPORTERS <1836-1855>

... The only thing that they clearly see is that Strauss altogether denies the miracles; the full scope of the mythological explanation as applied to the traditional records of the life of Jesus, and the extent of the historical material which Strauss is prepared to accept, is still a riddle to them ...

The "pilgrim" Clement Brentano .. ascribed to these visions the most strictly historical character .. so that .. the life of Jesus is given .. as in a mirror ... When Judas Iscariot became a disciple of Jesus he was twenty-five years old. He had black hair and a red beard, but could not be called really ugly. He had had a stormy past. His mother had been a dancing-woman, and Judas had been born out of wedlock, his father being a military tribune in Damascus. As an infant he had been exposed, but had been saved, and later had been taken charge of by his uncle, a tanner at Iscariot. At the time when he joined the company of Jesus' disciples he had squandered all his possessions. The disciples at first liked him well enough because of his readiness to make himself useful; he even cleaned the shoes ...

That does not mean that the problem of miracle is solved ... What has been gained is only that the exclusion of miracle from our view of history has been universally recognised as a principle of criticism, so that miracle no longer concerns the historian either positively or negatively ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter9.html

X:THE MARCAN HYPOTHESIS <1838 - 1856>

... The idea that Mark's Gospel might be the earliest of the four, first occurred to Weisse ... The decisive argument for the priority of Mark is, even more than his graphic detail, the composition and arrangement of the whole ...

What, then, is the historical fact in the resurrection? "The historical fact," replies Weisse, "is only the existence of a belief -— not the belief of the later Christian Church in the myth of the bodily resurrection of the Lord —- but the personal belief of the Apostles and their companions in the miraculous presence of the risen Christ in the visions and appearances which they experienced." ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter10.html

XI: THE FIRST SCEPTICAL LIFE OF JESUS <1840 - 1877>

... The Marcan hypothesis was no longer on its trial. But its bearing upon the history of Jesus had still to be determined ... The separate stories of which each of these two histories of the childhood consists could not have been formed independently of one another ... If we go on to examine the discourse and narrative material, additional to that of Mark, which is found in Matthew and Luke, a similar result appears ... These developments, as is shown by the accounts of the Sermon on the Mount and the charge to the Twelve, are not carried as far in Luke as in Matthew. The additional material in the latter seems indeed to be worked up from suggestions in the former. Luke thus forms the transition stage between Mark and Matthew ... Consequently there is no tradition of the Gospel history, but only a single literary source ...

The mission of the Twelve .. is, as an historical occurrence, simply inconceivable. It would have been different if Jesus had given them a definite teaching .. to take with them as this message. .. What the disciples needed to learn, ... what and how they were to teach, they are not told; and the discourse which Matthew has composed, working on the basis of Luke, implies quite a different set of circumstances. It is concerned with the struggles of the Church with the world and the sufferings which it must endure. This is the explanation of the references to suffering which constantly recur in the discourses of Jesus, in spite of the fact that His disciples were not enduring any sufferings ... All this is just and acute criticism ...

... These conditions came into being with the rise of the Roman Empire, in which the individual suddenly found himself helpless ... The self-conscious ego .. found itself faced by the necessity of breaking loose from the world and standing alone, in order in this way to overcome the world ... The Son of Man of religion, even though His mission be to reconcile, is man as alienated from himself. This Christ of the Gospel history, the ego exalted to heaven and become God, overthrew antiquity, and conquered the world ... Even when the Roman world was no more, and a new world had come into being, the Christ so created did not die ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter11.html

XII: FURTHER IMAGINATIVE LIVES OF JESUS <1831 - 1876>

... <summarizing Gfrorer:> Mark is the earliest witness to doubts within the primitive Christian community regarding the credibility of his predecessors. Luke and Matthew are for him not yet sacred books; he desires to reconcile their inconsistencies, and at the same time to produce "a Gospel composed of materials of which the authenticity could be maintained even against the doubters." For this reason he omits most of the discourses, ignores the birth-story, and of the miracles retains only those which were most deeply embedded in the tradition. His Gospel was probably produced between 110 and 120. The "non-genuine" conclusion was a later addition, but by the Evangelist himself. Thus Mark proves that the Synoptists contain legendary matter even though they are separated from the events which they relate only by a generation and a half, or at most two generations ...

... <summarizing Ghillany:> The whole Eastern world was at that time impregnated with Gnostic ideas, which centred in the revelation of the Divine in the human. In this way there arose, for example, a Samaritan Gnosis, independent of the Christian. Christianity itself is a species of Gnosis. In any case the metaphysical conception of the Divine Sonship of Jesus is of secondary origin ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter12.html

XIII: RENAN <1863>

... With a kind of effortless ease he makes his readers acquainted with the criticism of Strauss, of Baur, of Reuss, of Colani. He does not argue, but simply sets the result vividly before the reader, who finds himself at once at home in the new world of ideas. He avoids any hard or glaring effects; by means of that skilful transition from point to point which Wagner in one of his letters praises as the highest art, everything is surrounded with atmosphere. But how much trickery and illusion there is in this art! In a few strokes he indicates the relation of John to the Synoptists; the dilemma is made clear, it seems as if one horn or the other must be chosen. Then he begins by artful touches to soften down the contrast. The discourses of John are not authentic; the historical Jesus cannot have spoken thus. But what about the statements of fact? Here Renan declares himself convinced by the graphic presentment of the passion story. Touches like "it was night," "they had lighted a fire of coals," "the coat was without seam," cannot have been invented. Therefore the Gospel must in some way go back to the disciple whom Jesus loved. It is possible, nay certain, that when as an old man he read the other Gospels, he was displeased by certain inaccuracies, and perhaps vexed that he was given so small a place in the history. He began to dictate a number of things which he had better means of knowing than the others ...

Jesus had been living in Galilee before He came to the Baptist; when He heard of the latter's success He went to him with His little company of followers. They were both young, and Jesus became the imitator of the Baptist. Fortunately the latter soon disappeared from the scene, for his influence on Jesus was in some respects injurious. The Galilaean teacher was on the verge of losing the sunny religion which He had learned from His only teacher, the glorious natural scenery which surrounded His home ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter13.html

XIV: THE "LIBERAL" LIVES OF JESUS <1863 - 1885>

... This want of insight into the largeness, the startling originality, the self-contradictoriness, and the terrible irony in the thought of Jesus, is ... characteristic of all the liberal Lives of Jesus from Strauss's down ... How could it be otherwise? They had to transpose a way of envisaging the world which belonged to a hero and a dreamer to the plane of thought of a rational bourgeois religion ...

When the Charakterbild Jesu appeared, friend and foe were alike surprised at the thoroughness with which Schenkel advocated the more liberal views ... The agitation against him was engineered from Berlin ... That was the last time that any popular excitement was aroused in connexion with the critical study of the life of Jesus; and it was a mere storm in a tea-cup ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter14.html

XV: THE ESCHATOLOGICAL QUESTION

... In the next place, in the course of his critical examination of the eschatological material, Weiffenbach stumbles upon the discourse at the sending forth of the Twelve in Matt. X, and finds himself face to face with the fact that the discourse which he was expected to regard as a discourse of instruction was really nothing of the kind, but a collection of eschatological sayings. As he had taken over along with the Marcan hypothesis the closely connected view of the composite character of the Synoptic discourses, he does not allow himself to be misled, but regards this inappropriate charge to the Twelve as nothing else than an impossible anticipation and a bold anachronism. He knows that he is at one in this with Holtzmann, Colani, Bleek, Scholten, Meyer, and Keim, who also made the discourse of instruction end at the point beyond which they find it impossible to explain it, and regard the predictions of persecution as only possible in the later period of the life of Jesus ... It was a good thing that Bruno Bauer did not hear this chorus. If he had, he would have asked Weiffenbach and his allies whether the poor fragment that remained after the critical dissection of the "charge to the Twelve" was "a discourse of instruction," and if in view of these difficulties they could not realise why he had refused, thirty years before, to believe in the "discourse of instruction." But Bruno Bauer heard nothing; and so their blissful unconsciousness lasted ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter15.html

XVI: THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ESCHATOLOGY <1888 - 1904>

... It is, indeed, not the least service of the eschatological school that it compels modern theology, which is so much preoccupied with history, to reveal what is its own as its own. Eschatology makes it impossible to attribute modern ideas to Jesus and then by way of "New Testament Theology" take them back from Him as a loan ...

If we are to speak of the present it must be fully admitted that even historical science, when it desires to continue the history of Christianity beyond the life of Jesus, cannot help protesting against the one-sidedness of the eschatological world of thought of the "Founder." It finds itself obliged to distinguish in the thought of Jesus "permanent elements and transitory elements" which, being interpreted, means eschatological and not essentially eschatological materials; otherwise it can get no farther. For if Jesus' world of thought was wholly and exclusively eschatological, there can only have arisen out of it, as Reimarus long ago maintained, an exclusively eschatological primitive Christianity. But how a community of that kind could give birth to the Greek non-eschatological theology no Church history and no history of dogma has so far shown ...

But the problem which became most prominent of all the new problems raised by eschatology, was the question concerning the Son of Man. It had become a dogma of theology that Jesus used the term Son of Man to veil His Messiahship; that is to say, every theologian found in this term whatever meaning he attached to the Messiahship of Jesus, the human, humble, ethical, unpolitical, unapocalyptic, or whatever other character was held to be appropriate to the orthodox "transformed" Messiahship. The Danielic Son of Man entered into the conception only so far as it could do so without endangering the other characteristics. Confronted with the Similitudes of Enoch, theologians fell back upon the expedient of assuming them to be spurious, or at least worked-over in a Christian sense in the Son of Man passages, just as the older history of dogma got rid of the Ignatian letters, of which it could make nothing, by denying their genuineness. But once the Jewish eschatology was seriously applied to the explanation of the Son of Man conception, all was changed. A new dilemma presented itself; either Jesus used the expression, and used it in a purely Jewish apocalyptic sense, or He did not use it at all ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter16.html

XVII: QUESTIONS REGARDING THE ARAMAIC LANGUAGE, RABBINIC PARALLELS, AND BUDDHISTIC INFLUENCE <1878 - 1897>

... The question regarding the language spoken by Jesus had been rigorously discussed in the sixteenth century ... The growing knowledge of the distinction between Hebrew and Aramaic did not prevent the Vienna Jesuit Inchofer (l648) from maintaining that Jesus spoke -- Latin! The Lord cannot have used any other language upon earth, since this is the language of the saints in heaven ... The certainly original Greek of the Epistles and the Johannine literature was a strong argument against the attempt to recognise no language save Aramaic as known to Jesus and His disciples. Paulus the rationalist, therefore, sought a middle path, and explained that while the Aramaic dialect was indeed the native language of Jesus, Greek had become .. generally current among the population of Galilee ... Neubauer .., Reader in Rabbinical Hebrew at Oxford,... thought, that in the time of Jesus Aramaic was spoken throughout Palestine; but whereas in Galilee this language had an exclusive dominance, and the knowledge of Hebrew was confined to texts learned by heart, in Jerusalem Hebrew had renewed itself by the adoption of Aramaic elements, and a kind of Neo-Hebraic language had arisen ... That Jesus spoke Aramaic, Meyer has shown by collecting all the Aramaic expressions which occur in His preaching ...

Broadly speaking, therefore, the Son-of-Man problem is both historically solvable and has been solved. The authentic passages are those in which the expression is used in that apocalyptic sense which goes back to Daniel. But we have to distinguish two different uses of the term according to the degree of knowledge assumed in the hearers. If the secret of Jesus is unknown to them, then in that case they understand simply that Jesus is speaking of the "Son of Man" and His coming without having any suspicion that He and the Son of Man have any connexion. It would be thus, for instance, when in sending out the disciples in Matt. x. 23 He announced the imminence of the appearing of the Son of Man; or when He pictured the judgment which the Son of Man would hold (Matt. xxv. 31-46), if we may imagine it to have been spoken to the people at Jerusalem. Or, on the other hand, the secret is known to the hearers. In that case they understand that the term Son of Man points to the position to which He Himself is to be exalted when the present era passes into the age to come. It was thus, no doubt, in the case of the disciples at Caesarea Philippi, and of the High Priest to whom Jesus, after answering his demand with the simple "Yea" (Mark xiv. 62), goes on immediately to speak of the exaltation of the Son of Man to the right hand of God, and of His coming upon the clouds of heaven ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter17.html

XVIII: THE POSITION OF THE SUBJECT AT THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY <1885 - 1906>

... Modern historical theology, therefore, with its three-quarters scepticism, is left at last with only a torn and tattered Gospel of Mark in its hands ...

Kalthoff, recognising that the origin of popular Christianity constitutes the main question, takes as his starting-point the social movements of the time. In the Roman Empire, so runs his argument, among the oppressed masses of the slaves and the populace, eruptive forces were concentrated under high tension. A communistic movement arose, to which the influence of the Jewish element in the proletariat gave a Messianic-Apocalyptic colouring. The Jewish synagogue influenced Roman social conditions so that "the crude social ferment at work in the Roman Empire amalgamated itself with the religious and philosophical forces of the time to form the new Christian social movement." Early Christian writers had learned in the synagogue to construct "personifications." ... Thus "the Christ" became the ideal hero of the Christian community, "from the socio-religious standpoint the figure of Christ is the sublimated religious expression for the sum of the social and ethical forces which were at work at a certain period." The Lord's Supper was the memorial feast of this ideal hero ...

In Dulk the story of the fate of Jesus is also the story of the fate of religion. The Galilaean teacher, whose true character was marked by deep religious inwardness, was doomed to destruction from the moment when He set Himself upon the dizzy heights of the divine sonship and the eschatological expectation. He died in despair, having vainly expected, down to the very last, a "telegram from heaven." Religion as a whole can only avoid the same fate by renouncing all transcendental elements ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter18.html

XIX: THOROUGHGOING SCEPTICISM AND THOROUGHGOING ESCHATOLOGY <1901>

... The .. literary and the eschatological view, which have hitherto been marching parallel, on either flank, to the advance of modern theology, have now united their forces, brought theology to a halt, surrounded it, and compelled it to give battle ... Its whole territory is threatened. It must either reconquer it step by step or else surrender it. It has no longer the right to advance a single assertion until it has taken up a definite position in regard to the fundamental questions raised by the new criticism ... To vary the metaphor, theology comes home to find the broker's marks on all the furniture and goes on as before quite comfortably, ignoring the fact it will lose everything if it does not pay its debts ...

In order to find in Mark the Life of Jesus of which it is in search modern theology is obliged to read between the lines a whole host of things, and those often the most important, and then to foist them upon the text by means of psychological conjecture. It is determined to find evidence in Mark of a development of Jesus, a development of the disciples, and a development of the outer circumstances; and professes in so doing to be only reproducing the views and indications of the Evangelist. In reality, however, there is not a word of all this in the Evangelist, and when his interpreters are asked what are the hints and indications on which they base their assertions they have nothing to offer save argumenta e silentio.

Mark knows nothing of any development in Jesus, he knows nothing of any paedagogic considerations which are supposed to have determined the conduct of Jesus towards the disciples and the people; he knows nothing of any conflict in the mind of Jesus between a spiritual and a popular, political Messianic ideal; he does not know, either, that in this respect there was any difference between the view of Jesus and that of the people; he knows nothing of the idea that the use of the ass at the triumphal entry symbolised a non-political Messiahship; he knows nothing of the idea that the question about the Messiah's being the Son of David had something to do with this alternative between political and non-political ... And there is a great deal in the Marcan narrative which is inexplicable and even self-contradictory ...

That is to say, the Gnostics, who were the first to assert the Messiahship of the historical Jesus, and who were obliged to assert it precisely because they denied the eschatological conceptions, forced this view upon the theology of the Early Church, and compelled it to create in the Logos Christology an un-Gnostic mould in which to cast the speculative conception of the historical Messiahship of Jesus; and that is what we find in the Fourth Gospel. Prior to the anti-Gnostic controversies we find in the early Christian literature no conscious dating back of the Messiahship of Jesus to His earthly life, and no theological interest at work upon the dogmatic recasting of His history ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter19.html

XX: RESULTS

Those who are fond of talking about negative theology can find their account here. There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus.

The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb ...

The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma ...

The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Saviour. It loosed the bands by which He had been riveted for centuries to the stony rocks of ecclesiastical doctrine, and rejoiced to see life and movement coming into the figure once more, and the historical Jesus advancing, as it seemed, to meet it. But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own ...

The mistake was to suppose that Jesus could come to mean more to our time by entering into it as a man like ourselves. That is not possible. First because such a Jesus never existed. Secondly because, although historical knowledge can no doubt introduce greater clearness into an existing spiritual life, it cannot call spiritual life into existence. History can destroy the present; it can reconcile the present with the past; can even to a certain extent transport the present into the past; but to contribute to the making of the present is not given unto it ...

But the truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our time and can help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from Him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that which overcomes the world ...

For that reason it is a good thing that the true historical Jesus should overthrow the modern Jesus, should rise up against the modern spirit ... He was an imperious ruler ... The names in which men expressed their recognition of Him as such, Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God, have become for us historical parables. We can find no designation which expresses what He is for us ... He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time ...

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter20.html

[aquart]

1. I can back up the loaves and fishes and lots of wine theory.

A thousand years or so ago, I went to Yale for the Undergraduate Drama Festival weekend. On the way up, I stopped and bought three dozen daffodils because they were only a dollar a bunch. 36 daffodils. At the opening reception I handed them out until they were gone. An hour later, nearly everyone, and that was hundreds of students, was wearing a daffodil. Unless I'm a deity, other people found a florist and got their own to give away.

[cliss]

2. Thanks for posting, struggle4progress.

Very nice article.

It's been a long interest of mine; to find out the real Jesus. Not the one promoted by the church, but the genuine one.

nice.

[BurtWorm]

3. "The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma"

Another way of saying that the Jesus Christians worship is almost purely mythological. Always has been. Always will be.

[struggle4progress]

4. Agree in part and disagree in part. Schweitzer was a thoroughly religious

man, who in his early career served as a Lutheran pastor and whose still-available work on Bach was motivated by his conviction that Bach's organ music can only be appreciated in terms of religious content.

The Quest is a careful attempt to determine the status of Jesus as a subject of historical inquiry as of 1900, and Schweitzer studies in some detail how the scholarship intertwined with theological perspectives: in particular, he finds it essential to distinguish between Christology and any search for a defensible biography and psychology of Jesus of Nazareth.

Schweitzer's view is clearly that Jesus the Christ, described by any widely-held theology, is a creation of the church. But when he says that the historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma, I do not not think he is saying that Christianity is founded on a myth. I think he is saying instead that we really cannot know any of the required personalities, with enough specific time and place context, to claim any adequate understanding. Schweitzer seems to believe (perhaps correctly) that even exactly what the early Christians believed is difficult or impossible for us to determine. The earliest tradition (in fact) suggests that purported eyewitnesses themselves were unable to agree about what had happened or exactly what it meant.

So his Christology cannot be rooted in a historical Jesus. But Schweitzer concludes that it is entirely irrelevant. His religious convictions simply do not depend on extracting any figure from a long-vanished world: they concern the present day. With a thoroughly modern attitude, he takes his medical degree and heads to Africa, financing his work there in part by returning now and again to give Bach recitals

[BurtWorm]

5. In other words, Schweitzer's Jesus is not a real person, whether or not he is based on a real person

Furthermore, he implies that no modern Christian's Jesus is a real person, whether or not he is based on a real person. It is as though their Jesus is purely mythological. There would be no way to tell the difference between a modern church whose beliefs are rooted in the totally-lost-to-history Jesus Schweitzer's researches led him to and a church whose beliefs are rooted in pure mythology.

[grantcart]

6. It has been 30 years since I read this outstand work

and I was pleasantly surprised to find people in here still studying him. It is so hard to find people who are even superficially aware of his great life story.

[struggle4progress]

7. There is some of that flavor in it, but so to summarize the work is misleading

But what Schweitzer actually considers are the motives and methods of those who attempted to reconstruct Jesus-as-history and the question What real conclusions should be drawn from their work?, whatever their original motives may have been. His attitude is scholarly:

Even so the traveller on the plain sees from afar the distant range of mountains. Then he loses sight of them again. His way winds slowly upwards through the valleys, drawing ever nearer to the peaks, until at last, at a turn of the path, they stand before him, not in the shapes which they had seemed to take from the distant plain, but in their actual forms

The following conclusion is typical of what he says about many prior scholars:

It was fortunate for these men that their sympathies sometimes obscured their critical vision, so that, without becoming insincere, they were able to take white clouds for distant mountains

To Schweitzer, this fact seemed rather constant and independent of the particular investigators' starting points or motives -- and (at least in that respect) perhaps the search for a historical Jesus must remain approximately where it was when Schweitzer concluded

That is not quite the same as saying Jesus is mythological. Schweitzer devotes several chapters to the systematic excavation of Jesus-mythology. And, as usual, his conclusions seem to be that the scholars who labored in that field did good and important work -- but the lasting value of their work lies in places they themselves did not suspect

Schweitzer certainly takes aim at particular versions of Jesus-as-history. A striking example is his dismissal of a then-popular genre represented by titles such as "The Life of the Saviour portrayed according to German research as the basis for a spiritual re-birth of the German nation":

this Jesus who "racks His brains and shapes His plans" .. to bring about a re-birth of the German people .. is .. only a phantom created by the Germanic mind in pursuit of a religious will-o'-the-wisp

But if he had not taken Jesus-as-person seriously or had believed something like Jesus has been decisively reduced to a myth, then it is very hard to imagine any reason for Schweitzer to remark on

the startling originality, the self-contradictoriness, and the terrible irony in the thought of Jesus

That, in fact, is precisely where Schweitzer decides to concentrate his attention, because he concludes a purely historical approach is a cul-de-sac:

Jesus of Nazareth will not suffer Himself to be modernised. As an historic figure He refuses to be detached from His own time. He has no answer for the question, "Tell us Thy name in our speech and for our day!

This is entirely consistent with

the absolute indifference of early Christianity towards the life of the historical Jesus