What is the study of the ‘historical Jesus’ all about?
Question 3052
You may have heard the phrase ‘the historical Jesus’ and wondered what it means. Is it different from the Jesus we read about in the Gospels? The term comes from academic scholarship and refers to attempts to reconstruct who Jesus was using historical-critical methods. For Bible-believing Christians, there is only one Jesus, the one revealed in Scripture. But understanding what scholars mean by this phrase helps us engage with objections and appreciate why the biblical witness stands firm.
The Origins of the Quest
The so-called ‘Quest for the Historical Jesus’ began in the eighteenth century during the Enlightenment, when scholars started questioning traditional Christian beliefs. The German theologian Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) is often credited with launching this quest. He argued that the Jesus of history was different from the Christ of faith preached by the Church. In his view, the disciples invented the resurrection story after Jesus’ death.
This sceptical approach gained momentum. Albert Schweitzer’s famous book The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906) surveyed these earlier attempts and concluded that most scholars had simply created a Jesus in their own image. Liberal scholars imagined a moral teacher; revolutionaries imagined a political rebel. Schweitzer himself saw Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet who was mistaken about the end of the world. None of these reconstructions matched the Jesus of the New Testament.
The Three Quests
Scholars typically speak of three ‘quests’ for the historical Jesus. The first quest, running from Reimarus to Schweitzer, ended in apparent failure because the results were so subjective. The second quest began in the 1950s with Ernst Käsemann, who argued that we could recover some authentic sayings of Jesus using careful criteria. The third quest, from the 1980s onwards, has tried to place Jesus firmly within first-century Judaism, drawing on archaeology, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other Jewish sources.
Some third-quest scholars, like N.T. Wright, have produced work that is more sympathetic to the Gospels, though even these studies often treat the biblical text with a hermeneutic of suspicion rather than trust. Others, like the notorious Jesus Seminar in America, voted with coloured beads on which sayings of Jesus were authentic, concluding that only about 18% of what the Gospels attribute to Jesus was genuine. The presuppositions of these scholars largely determined their conclusions.
The Problem with the Approach
The fundamental problem with the historical Jesus quest is its starting point. It assumes that the Gospels are not reliable historical documents but rather theological constructions that must be stripped away to find the ‘real’ Jesus underneath. This is backwards. The Gospels are our primary sources for Jesus. Without them, we would know almost nothing about him. Treating them as unreliable while claiming to reconstruct what really happened is like removing the foundation and expecting the building to stand.
The criteria used to determine authenticity are also problematic. The ‘criterion of dissimilarity,’ for instance, says that a saying is authentic only if it differs from both Judaism and early Christianity. But this creates an absurd Jesus who had nothing in common with his Jewish context or with his own followers. The ‘criterion of multiple attestation’ is more reasonable, looking for material found in multiple sources, but even this assumes the sources are independent in ways that are debatable.
What the Bible Says
Scripture presents itself as reliable testimony. Luke opens his Gospel by saying he has “followed all things closely for some time past” and is writing “an orderly account” so that Theophilus “may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught” (Luke 1:3–4). John says, “This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true” (John 21:24). Peter declares, “We did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).
The apostles were willing to die for their testimony. People do not die for what they know to be a lie. The consistent witness of the New Testament is that Jesus is exactly who the Gospels say he is: the eternal Son of God who became man, lived a sinless life, died for our sins, rose from the dead, and ascended to the Father’s right hand.
Conclusion
The study of the ‘historical Jesus’ is an academic discipline that attempts to reconstruct Jesus using methods that often presuppose the Gospels are unreliable. While some insights from archaeology and Jewish backgrounds can illuminate the text, the fundamental approach is flawed. For believers, there is no gap between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. The Jesus revealed in Scripture is the real Jesus. We do not need to get behind the text; we need to trust it. The eyewitnesses who walked with him, saw him risen, and were transformed by the Spirit have given us a reliable account. Our task is not to reconstruct Jesus but to receive him.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14
Bibliography
- Bock, Darrell L. Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods. Baker Academic, 2002.
- Blomberg, Craig L. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. 2nd ed. IVP Academic, 2007.
- Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Translated by W. Montgomery. Adam and Charles Black, 1910.
- Wilkins, Michael J., and J.P. Moreland, eds. Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus. Zondervan, 1995.
