Note: TQOTHJ is an academic book and as such, takes a different approach to Jesus than one encounters in church. If you are not interested in or willing to try looking from a different perspective, then it’s probably best to skip this article.
I have heard Albert Schweitzer and his book The Quest of the Historical Jesus referenced more than any other by Biblical scholars. My impression is that it is one of the most influential books in the field. So I wanted to read it in order to learn its content.
The book was originally published in 1906 in German, and the English edition I read is just over four hundred pages. The original audience must have been other scholars of the time, especially those reading in German.
In the book, Schweitzer reviews the history of historical Jesus scholarship from the late eighteenth century through the dawn of the twentieth. This is now apparently known as the First Quest. It’s a bit hard to believe now, but no one had really attempted to piece together the historical Jesus until the Enlightenment. And for whatever reason, this movement apparently took place almost entirely in German.
The term “historical Jesus” will no doubt be confusing to many; Christians believe Jesus was real as described in the Gospels. So what is the “historical” Jesus and how is this different from any other Jesus? Up to the Enlightenment, virtually all theology and Christianity presumed the accuracy of the Gospels. For Christians, the questions they ask regarding Jesus are generally about what he taught. They approach the Jesus of faith, the Jesus taught in church. Again, people are generally interested in questions of how to live and encouragement they take from faith. Congregants are not technically analyzing texts, attempting to determine if there are inconsistencies between texts and even within a text. The ideas and beliefs which under pin scholarship didn’t develop until the Enlightenment. So no one had really taken a scholarly look into Jesus and the Bible prior to this. The historical Jesus is the best attempt scholars have made, using all available sources, to understand who Jesus actually was. A scholarly approach (ideally) seeks support for any belief as opposed to simply believing the Bible by faith.
Most of the chapters in the book consist of Schweitzer reviewing the position taken by one or more scholars in one to a handful of publications which are listed at the beginning of the chapter. The first scholar he examines was Reimarus. But his ideas weren’t published until after his death, and anonymously at that. Reimarus was ahead of his time and didn’t have much impact at the time.
The first wave of historical Jesus scholarship was that of rationalism. Ironically, many Christians today would likely think of the work of scholars like this as attacking Christianity. But these scholars, especially early on, were mostly believers attempting to defend Christianity. The scientific revolution brought forth the beliefs that things didn’t just happen by magic or chance but rather could be studied and factual knowledge achieved. It was only natural in this context for some people to question portions of the Bible. Understandably, they wondered if the miracles recorded in the life of Jesus actually had natural explanations which were simply misunderstood by the disciples. The rationalist also focused on Jesus as a teacher of universal, timeless and rational ethics and morals. Some held that “dogmatic” elements were later additions by Jesus’ followers. The rationalist position was ultimately found to be untenable, but it had to be attempted in order to make this determination. (Scholars include Hess, Reinhard, Opitz, Herder, Jakobi, Paulus, Hase, and Schleiermacher.)
During the period covered in this book, some scholars wrote what Schweitzer calls “imaginative lives of Jesus”. These authors attempted to write biographies of Jesus based on the gospels. However they read in a lot between the lines. They tried to understand Jesus’ thoughts, motivations, and to create a narrative which explained his intent and actions. However in doing so, they brought in numerous ideas and even put words in Jesus’ mouth which were not found in the gospel nor any other writing. The tend to imagine Jesus as misunderstood and that the supernatural and religious/dogmatic elements ascribed to him were imposed on him by his followers. (Scholars include Bahrdt, Venturini, Gfrörer, Ghillany, Noack, and Hennell.) Schweitzer also devotes a chapter to the Life of Jesus by French author Ernest Renan whose work was quite popular among the public though not highly regarded by academics.
In 1835 and 1836, the Life of Jesus Critically Examined was published. Schweitzer considers this such a landmark book that he devotes three entire chapters to the book and its author, David Friedrich Strauss. From what I understand, this work highlighted some of the significant problems with the rationalist take on Jesus. Instead, Strauss proposed that the gospels were mythologic, theologic, and literary works of early Christians. Rather than assuming that the gospels were recording literal history, he asked why the authors wrote what they did when they composed the gospels. He explained miracles as not literally true, but instead as literary devices used to communicate theologic truths. Strauss understood the need to examine the context in order to understand the gospels as best as possible. He thus paved the way for the analysis of sources, genres, editing, authorship, literary and narrative elements in the gospels.
Another break through was achieved just a couple of years later, that of the “Marcan Hypothesis”. Christian Hermann Weisse was the first scholar to propose that Mark was the first of the four canonical gospels to be written. (Prior to this, apparently most had believed Matthew to be first.) Along with this, he suggested that Matthew and Luke based their gospels on a combination of Mark and a no longer extant document which came to be known as “Q” (from the first letter of the German word for “source”). This hypothesis is largely accepted today by academics and theologians alike, so it was interesting to learn that it was a new idea at this time.
After this, Schweitzer devotes a chapter to Bruno Bauer. He was the first scholar to propose that there was actually no historical Jesus at all. Instead, he held that the Jesus found in the New Testament was a pure invention. Thus he was the first in a movement known as Jesus mythicism. This theory is not widely held even today, though there are a couple of scholars who continue to hold this position as most likely.
Schweitzer next examines a group of works he calls the “liberal lives of Jesus”. As with the rationalists, many Christians today would look at these works as undermining the beliefs of Christianity. Yet in contrast, these scholars were actually trying to preserve Jesus and reconcile him with the modern ideas of the time. Strauss had undermined rationalism. He also thought that the gospels reflected the beliefs of the early church to the point that it was difficult to say anything about the actual historical Jesus. In contrast, the “liberal lives” painted Jesus as a religious genius who taught timeless moral and ethical truths. In this way they attempted to keep Jesus and Christian teachings relevant to the times of the eighteenth century.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, scholars were trying to work through many different questions. Did the Jews of the first century have a messianic expectation? If so, what expectations did they have for a messiah? To what degree did Jesus fulfill these expectations or differ from them? Did Jesus even claim to be the messiah? Was there an apocalyptic expectation at the time?1 If so, to what degree was Jesus influenced by this? Were ideas Jesus as a messiah or an apocalyptic figure imposed on him by the disciples or later additions by the early church? How did the gospels relate to one another? Were they historical? If they can’t be reconciled, what in them reflected the actual Jesus (as opposed to ideas added later)? Was it possible to get an idea of who Jesus had actually been and an idea of what he had taught or was the historical Jesus unrecoverable? What did Jesus have in mind when he talked about the kingdom of God? Did he believe it to be an earthly kingdom which was imminent in accord with messianic and apocalyptic expectations? Or did he know that it was spiritual in nature and further in the future in contrast with the common Jewish expectations of the time? Had Jesus been primarily a wise teacher of morality and ethics as many early scholars believed? A religious reformer? A spiritual sage?
That’s a lot of questions obviously. Most scholars up to Schweitzer had held that the “dogmatic” claims such as Jesus being God were later beliefs developed by the early church. Scholars did this because these types of claims were embarrassing in the age of reason. So out of a love for and belief in Jesus, they tried to make him reasonable. Schweitzer critiqued this view as not being true to the gospels. In order to hold that view, one has to dismiss significant portions of the gospels and numerous difficulties arise in explaining why the were written as they are.
The final chapter could have been divided into two. In the first section, Schweitzer talks about the “thoroughgoing scepticism” of Wrede. The latter wrote an analysis of Mark in which he concludes that even this first gospel was a result of the theological beliefs of the early church. As such, Wrede concluded that it wasn’t really possible to know the historical Jesus. Schweitzer respects Wrede’s careful and rigorous analysis, but he comes to a different conclusion.
Though he has hinted at it prior to this, it’s in the latter part of the final chapter that Schweitzer finally lays out his whole view. He argues for an almost complete flip from what the majority of scholars had suggested up to this point. He suggests that, instead of the “dogmatic” claims being imposed on Jesus later, that these were actually core to the real historical Jesus’ beliefs and claims. Schweitzer argues that all of the difficulties faced by other views are fairly easily resolved.
To unpack Schweitzer’s narrative further, he suggests that Jesus was absolutely convicted of the imminent coming of the apocalypse/kingdom of God. In fact, he believed that this would happen by that year’s harvest. The seeds had already been sown by John’s ministry of repentance. Due to the urgency, he had sent out his disciples merely weeks after beginning his own ministry.
Part of the apocalyptic expectation was that certain events or actions had to take place in due course before God would finally bring about the kingdom. One of these was that enough Jews had to be living righteously, hence his call for repentance. Jesus also expected his disciples to suffer and for the Spirit to be poured out as predicted in Joel. Yet the disciples returned, the Son of Man had not yet come, the disciples had not faced persecution, and the Spirit had not yet come. This led to a turning point in Jesus’ ministry.
Schweitzer spends some time discussing how a prophet like Elijah was expected to proceed the Son of Man. John wasn’t the miracle working prophet expected. Instead, Jesus fit this description and the people, if anything, suspected that he was the Elijah. In contrast, no one could imagine that Jesus was messiah. The outpouring of the Spirit and Elijah were to proceed the messiah, so until these “signs” had taken place, no one expected the messiah.
However, Jesus had believed himself to be the Son of Man / messiah from his baptism by John. (It seems from the context that Schweitzer uses these interchangeably.) Since he himself was messiah, and since the the Son of Man must be proceeded by Elijah, then John must necessarily be Elijah even if he did not fit the expectation. Jesus hadn’t intended to reveal that he was messiah even to his disciples. Instead, it was Peter who “spilled the beans” despite being told to keep it secret after learning this himself at the transfiguration.
Jesus had believed and warned of the tribulations which the righteous would face. But these trials had not come. But Jesus now began to believe that he would be the suffering servant of Isaiah, taking on this suffering alone so that others wouldn’t have to face and potentially fail their trials. So he goes to Jerusalem to confront the authorities, to suffer and die. The Son of Man was to be a figure who came down from heaven, so Jesus may have already suspected his own death in the tribulation in order that he could return and be revealed as such. Additionally, the Jews expected resurrection at the apocalypse and final judgement proceeding the kingdom. Jesus believed that the end had yet to come because the tribulation had yet to occur. He believed that by going to Jerusalem, suffering and dying, he would set in motion the final events which certainly would bring about the kingdom. So his own death wasn’t a hurdle since he would soon after be revealed as the Son of Man, the messiah. Schweitzer states that Judas’ betrayal was in revealing to the religious authorities Jesus’ claim to be the messiah. (This doesn’t entirely make sense with the rest of the narrative; since Jesus was intending to die, why wouldn’t he want his messianic claim to be known if it brought about it’s fulfillment?)
Schweitzer pointed to Strauss’ Life of Jesus Critically Examined as the most important book in the field. Yet The Quest of the Historical Jesus arguably shatters the record in terms of importance. It was such a bombshell that, from what I understand, no scholar felt able to add to the subject for nearly a half century. As I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve heard Schweitzer and this book referenced more than any other book in the field. Regardless of whether I agree with the position any of the scholars reviewed in the book have taken, I am pleased to have a better understanding of the subject.
- The expectation for a messiah was a man who would be a descendant of David, defeat those ruling over Israel, would lead the nation as a king, and would restore proper worship. The apocalyptic expectation was slightly different and based primarily on Daniel as well as other apocryphal writings. The belief was that God would soon bring about a major change in the world which would involve judgement and turmoil but which would result in vindication of righteous Jews. Though slightly different concepts, it’s easy to see how they can be combined by imagining that the messiah will usher in the apocalypse and subsequently rule in the new order. ↩︎
