Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FAITH AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS §2
achievement of German theology'. 7 That is an overblown estimate, expressive of
the high self-confidence of German biblical scholarship of the time 8 — a selfconfidence
which, ironically, Schweitzer himself was about to puncture; and its
almost exclusive focus on the German 'quest' did too little justice to the interest
in such questions in scholarly circles outside Germany. Nevertheless, the estimate
did express the sense of intellectual excitement which the quest generated
within German scholarship. And the fact remains, for better or worse, that for
many decades it was the German questers who drew the scholars of other countries
along in their train.
Since Schweitzer's great study, the quest as such has been further analysed
and summarised on countless occasions, and there is no need to retrace in detail
the paths so familiar to most students of the NT and of previous research into the
life of Jesus. 9 However, 'the quest of the historical Jesus' as described by
7. Schweitzer, Quest' 1, Quest 2 3.
8. The opening words (in the preceding paragraph) are: 'When, at some future day, our
period of civilisation lies closed and completed before the eyes of later generations, German
theology will stand out as a great, a unique phenomenon in the mental and spiritual life of our
time' (Quest 2 3).
9. Beyond dictionary articles and popular accounts, however, the roots of the quest and
its embeddedness in the broader streams of philosophical thought need to be appreciated — as
in C. Brown, Jesus in European Protestant Thought, 1778-1860 (Durham, NC: Labyrinth,
1985); see also W. Baird, History of New Testament Research. Vol. One: From Deism to
Tubingen (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992). J. Riches, A Century of New Testament Study (Valley
Forge: Trinity, 1993) chs. 1, 2, 6, and R. Morgan (with J. Barton), Biblical Interpretation (Oxford:
Oxford University, 1988) contain many relevant insights. C. Allen, The Human Christ:
The Search for the Historical Jesus (Oxford: Lion, 1998) provides a well-informed and easyto-read
account. W. Weaver, E. Baasland and J. H. Charlesworth are attempting to 'do a
Schweitzer' on the twentieth century, of which only the first volume has been thus far produced:
W. Weaver, The Historical Jesus in the Twentieth Century, 1900-1950 (Harrisburg: Trinity,
1999). For a review of the most recent phase of the quest see especially B. Witherington,
The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth (Downers Grove: InterVarsity,
1995); M. A. Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from
Galilee (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1998); B. B. Scott, 'New Options in an Old
Quest', in B. F. LeBeau, et al., eds., The Historical Jesus through Catholic and Jewish Eyes
(Harrisburg: Trinity, 2000) 1-49; D. A. Hagner, 'An Analysis of Recent "Historical Jesus"
Studies', in D. Cohn-Sherbok and J. M. Court, Religious Diversity in the Graeco-Roman
World: A Survey of Recent Scholarship (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001) 81-106; D. S. Du
Toit, 'Redefining Jesus: Current Trends in Jesus Research', in M. Labahn and A. Schmidt, eds.,
Jesus, Mark and Q: The Teaching of Jesus and Its Earliest Records (JSNTS 214; Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic, 2001) 82-124. The fullest and most recent bibliographical surveys are
W. R. Telford, 'Major Trends and Interpretive Issues in the Study of Jesus', in B. Chilton and
C. A. Evans, eds., Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research
(NTTS 19; Leiden: Brill, 1994) 33-74; C. A. Evans, Life of Jesus Research: An Annotated Bibliography
(NTTS 24; Leiden: Brill, revised 1996); S. E. Porter, The Criteria for Authenticity in
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