The Historical Jesus

The Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith

The majority of scholars hold the belief that Jesus was merely human. They reject the idea of Gospels being eyewitness accounts, but rather they were elaborately story-telling. This manner of thinking developed over decades in both intellectual and social environments. In The Marginal Jew, John P. Meier states, "Modest data dictate modest questions and claims," (Meier, 517)", hinting that only verified data can determine the factual information about the historical Jesus. There has been an ongoing search for the truth regarding the historical Jesus, which resulted in the initiation multiple quests. These quests attempt to raise and answer questions about what can and cannot be definitively said about

Stimulated by the works of previous scholars such as J. Weiss, Martin Kahler, and D. F. Strauss, Bultmann was unable to settle for accepting the “prescientific worldview of the biblical writers, a worldview presupposed the reality of miracles, spirit beings, and a three-storied universe” (Zondervan, 355). He believed the Gospels were filled with fiction as a result of the early Church’s method of preaching, focusing on a Christ of faith, rather than a Jesus of history. The Gospels were created for the purpose of spreading the beliefs of the community, not for developing a historical biography. Bultmann claimed that in removing all sense of falsification and myth from the New Testament, one is able to grasp the true, authentic message of Jesus, “to live a life of ‘authentic existence’” (Bultmann,

Jesus the Cynic-like philosopher was an individual who challenged the social and religious ideals through parables and sayings. The second portrait of Jesus, the spirt-endowed man, depicts a man who had the ability to perform supernatural acts with the intercession of God. The social revolutionary was pushing the overthrow of the Romans with the help of the Zealots. Jesus the eschatological prophet taught others that God’s primary job in the world is to save and to judge. The final, most traditional portrait of Jesus is the Messiah; he is described as one “who not only announces God’s salvation, but also accomplishes it” (Zondervan, 377). It is unknown which role Jesus considered himself to fill, yet he presented himself as a prophet and teacher with extraordinary authority and ability to perform mighty deeds. These five portraits each emphasize Jesus as a leader for the hopes of those upset with the current