THE DEBATE OVER THE HISTORICAL JESUS AND THE CHRIST OF FAITH

By Ira Rifkin


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THE DEBATE OVER THE HISTORICAL JESUS AND THE CHRIST OF FAITH
                                               By Ira Rifkin
 
Christianity is the largest religious movement the world has
ever known, claiming at least 1.7 billion  followers  around
the  globe.  On  every  continent  in hundreds of languages,
believers proclaim their faith in the man known  to  history
as  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and  to  the church as Jesus Christ
(Greek for Jesus the Anointed One). But just who is it  that
Christians worship?
 
 
Was Jesus the Son of God, the promised Messiah of the Hebrew
Bible (commonly referred to as the  Old  Testament)  who  is
portrayed  in  the New Testament as having died on the cross
to redeem human  sin,  only  to  rise  from  the  grave  and
reappear  to  his  disciples?  Or  was  he  simply a man, an
extraordinary one perhaps, but a man  nonetheless,  who  was
proclaimed  to  be something more than that by others acting
out of their own subjective faith experiences?
 
Scholars and  clergy  have  long  debated  these  compelling
questions,  which  go  to the core of Christian beliefs. But
never before has the debate --commonly referred  to  as  the
quest  to  separate  the Jesus of history from the Christ of
faith-- caught the attention of so many ordinary  people  as
it has today.
 
The  degree of popular interest the subject now commands was
underscored just  prior  to  Easter  1996,  when  the  three
leading  weekly  news magazines in the United States --Time,
Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report-- all featured  cover
stories  documenting  the  increasingly contentious argument
over scholarly efforts to paint a portrait of the historical
Jesus.  Fueling  the  interest  are the dozens of books that
theologically liberal scholars and clergy have published  in
recent years taking a critical look at the life of the Jesus
of the Gospels. That has prompted  their  more  conservative
academic  colleagues  to  publish  a  like  number  of books
defending the Jesus of tradition.
 
THE JESUS SEMINAR AND THE MODERN QUEST
 
Much of the current impetus for this public  discussion  can
be  traced to the group that calls itself the Jesus Seminar,
an iconoclastic array of  some  200  biblical  and  religion
scholars who for more than a decade have met twice yearly to
pass judgment on the words and deeds of Jesus as  stated  in
the New Testament. With its flair for garnering publicity in
a media age, the Jesus Seminar has  arguably  done  more  to
bring the debate to the public's attention than any previous
attempt to shed critical light on the person of Jesus.
 
But to understand the popular media's fascination  with  the
workings  of  the  Jesus  Seminar  and why the quest for the
historical Jesus has become so compelling to so many  today,
one  cannot  overlook  the cultural setting in which this is
occurring. Seen in its cultural context, the debate over the
historical  Jesus reflects the larger religious currents and
conflicts sweeping the Christian world today.
 
Large numbers of people  have  rejected  traditional  church
doctrine  and  authority. Their preference for a scientific,
verifiable understanding of the world makes it difficult, if
not  impossible,  for  them  to  unquestioningly  accept  as
factual truth what for hundreds of years after Jesus'  death
was  accepted  on  faith  by  the  vast majority of ordinary
Christians.
 
At the same time, a segment of Christianity --fundamentalist
and evangelical Protestant and traditionalist Roman Catholic
and  Eastern  Orthodox  believers--  has  responded  to  the
challenge   posed  by  the  increasingly  secular,  dominant
culture by becoming more firm in its belief that the Gospels
and  the  Jesus  contained  therein  are to be understood as
presented.  It  is,  in  effect,  a  conservative   backlash
directed  against  scholars  who  are  seen  as  threatening
long-cherished beliefs. The result is a theological argument
that  underscores  the  conflict that exists at the close of
the  20th  century  between  the  worldview  put  forth   by
scientific  inquiry  and  the  competing  one  proclaimed by
religious faith.
 
That Jesus lived in the 1st century BC in Palestine, that he
was  a  Jew and that he stirred a segment of the Roman-ruled
Jewish society and was  crucified  --a  mode  of  punishment
reserved  for common criminals in his time-- is agreed to by
both these camps. But beyond that, almost  everything  about
Jesus has become a matter of dispute.
 
HISTORY OF THE QUEST
 
Debates  over  who  Jesus was developed early in the life of
the nascent Christian church as  its  leaders  struggled  to
establish  a  core  set  of  common,  correct beliefs. These
debates, however, did not involve the historical details  of
Jesus'  life.  Instead,  these early controversies generally
centered on Jesus' nature, his divinity versus his humanity.
Christology  is  the  term  applied  to  the study of Jesus'
divine and human aspects.
 
For example, the Gnostics --members of a variety of  related
movements  that  surfaced  in  the  first  centuries  of the
Christian era and who claimed to possess a secret gnosis, or
knowledge  of God-- generally rejected the notion that Jesus
had an ordinary human body. This rejection of the  body  was
part of the Gnostic belief that the body was impure and that
spiritual salvation required breaking loose from  the  bonds
of material existence.
 
Elsewhere,  the  priest  Arius of Alexandria postulated that
Jesus, although the Son of God, was not equal in status,  or
nature,  with  God  the  Father. And the religious patriarch
Nestorius taught that  within  Jesus  existed  two  separate
natures, one divine and one human.
 
In AD 451, this debate over Jesus' nature was largely put to
rest for believers when  leaders  of  the  Christian  church
meeting  at  the  Council of Chalcedon --not far from modern
Istanbul, Turkey-- declared that united  within  Jesus  were
both  a  fully  human  nature and a fully divine nature. All
other notions of Jesus'  nature  were  declared  unorthodox,
heresies to be avoided at peril to the soul, as they largely
were by the general population of Western Christians.
 
However, the bonds of orthodoxy began  to  loosen  with  the
16th-century  Protestant  Reformation,  in  which the German
theologian and religious  reformer  Martin  Luther  stressed
that  every  Christian  needed  to  establish his or her own
relationship with Jesus by studying the Bible. Study led  to
reflection  and,  for  some,  a  questioning  attitude.  The
18th-century move toward rational thought, known as the  Age
of Enlightenment, further accelerated biblical criticism. In
1778 the publishing of The Aims of Jesus and  His  Disciples
by  Hermann  Samuel  Reimarus, a German biblical scholar and
philosopher, caused a stir by presenting Jesus  as  entirely
human and the authors of the Gospels as deceivers.
 
Not   long  after,  in  the  19th  century,  several  German
Protestant and French Catholic writers also published  books
challenging  the  historical  accuracy  of  the Gospels. The
appearance of  these  books  gave  birth  to  what  scholars
generally  consider  the  start  of the modern quest for the
historical Jesus.
 
Friedrich Schleiermacher,  a  German  theologian  who  lived
during  the  late  18th and early 19th centuries, postulated
Jesus  as  having  been  divinely  inspired,  but  not   God
incarnate   as  tradition  held.  David  Friedrich  Strauss,
another 19th-century German theologian,  in  his  1835  book
Life   of   Jesus  Critically  Examined,  called  the  Jesus
presented in the Gospels little more than myth  intended  to
further   a  religious  viewpoint.  Joseph  Ernst  Renan,  a
19th-century French historian and biblical scholar, added to
this  radical  redefinition  of Jesus by describing him as a
gifted preacher, but nothing more.
 
But the scholar  who  is  generally  thought  of  as  having
brought the 19th-century quest for the historical Jesus to a
close was, in fact, more a man of the 20th  century.  Albert
Schweitzer,  perhaps  more popularly known for his work as a
medical missionary in French Equatorial Africa  (present-day
Gabon), was also a theologian who wrote in The Quest for the
Historical Jesus (1906) that Jesus was an apocalyptic-minded
1st-century  BC  Jew  who  preached  the imminent arrival of
God's kingdom within a wholly Jewish context --that  is,  he
was   someone   who   believed  fully  in  Jewish  messianic
prophecies and who did not intend to launch a new  religion.
However, Schweitzer also concluded that it was impossible to
say with certainty what is  and  what  is  not  historically
accurate  about  Jesus  and  that  all  efforts  to  do  so,
including Schweitzer's own, ultimately say  more  about  the
author's  beliefs than the life of the subject. Despite that
judgment about the impossibility of  scholarly  objectivity,
the  quest  for the historical Jesus has continued to excite
scholars.
 
Rudolf Bultmann,  another  German  theologian  and  biblical
scholar,  reignited  the  debate laid temporarily to rest by
Schweitzer and two world wars with his  1953  book,  Kerygma
and  Myth.  Bultmann, as had Strauss and others, claimed the
Gospels to be sermons (kerygma in Greek)  that  were  by  no
means historically accurate. But Bultmann did not reject the
idea  that  God  had  acted  through  Jesus.   Instead,   he
maintained  that  mere  humans  wrote the Gospels, employing
mythic  language  in  a  vain  attempt  to   express   their
experience of God.
 
HISTORICAL JESUS SEEKERS VS. THE CHRIST OF FAITH
 
Twice  yearly, in the spring and fall, several dozen liberal
theologians,  biblical   scholars,   conservative   critics,
journalists,  and  other  interested  onlookers  gather in a
ballroom at the Flamingo Hotel in Santa Rosa, California, to
debate  what  Jesus said and did. Retired religion professor
Robert W. Funk, founder of the  Jesus  Seminar  and  a  past
president   of   the   Society   of   Biblical   Literature,
acknowledges that, given the long history of the  quest  for
the  historical  Jesus,  the  group  has  made few startling
revelations in its conclusions. What sets the seminar  apart
from  past scholarly looks at the Jesus of the New Testament
is the manner in which it operates.
 
The  Jesus  Seminar  broke  the  mold   of   past   academic
investigation  by  using the mass media to draw attention to
the findings they had arrived at  by  consensus.  Funk  says
this  direct  assault  on  tradition  was  intended to force
universities, churches, and  seminaries  to  deal  with  the
seminar's  findings. His stated desire was to stir up public
discussion about the historical Jesus to such a degree  that
even   the  ordinary  churchgoer  with  little  interest  in
biblical scholarship would be compelled to pay attention  to
the debate.
 
In addition to Funk, some other more prominent Jesus Seminar
participants  --who   refer   to   themselves   as   seminar
"fellows"--  include  John  Dominic  Crossan, a former Roman
Catholic priest who now  teaches  at  DePaul  University  in
Chicago,  and  Marcus  Borg,  a  professor  at  Oregon State
University   in   Corvallis.   Crossan's   most   irritating
conclusion  for traditionalists is that Jesus could not have
physically risen from the dead because his body  was  likely
thrown  to  the  dogs after being taken down from the cross.
Borg has depicted Jesus as a kind of charismatic shaman  (an
expert  in  the  spiritual  world  who practices healing and
magic) who attempted to heal the sick and  wounded  just  as
the shamans of many traditional societies have tried.
 
In  its early years, the Jesus Seminar used colored beads to
vote on whether the Bible's claims about what Jesus said and
did  were  historically accurate. More recently, the seminar
has switched to less dramatic but more easily counted  paper
ballots.  In  voting on what Jesus said according to the New
Testament, for example, a red bead meant Jesus  said  it  or
something  very  similar;  pink  meant  Jesus  probably said
something like this; gray  meant  Jesus  did  not  say  this
although  the ideas conveyed are close to his own; and black
meant Jesus did not  say  this  and  the  ideas  or  content
represent  a  later  or  different  religious tradition. The
Gospel's language about Jesus was accepted  or  rejected  as
historical  truth  based  on the consensus of the balloting.
Before voting, the fellows of the  Jesus  Seminar  say  they
examine   the   many  historical  factors  that  might  have
influenced Jesus and those who wrote the Gospels  after  his
death.
 
Voting  in this manner, the Jesus Seminar has concluded that
only about 18 percent of the words attributed  to  Jesus  in
the  Gospels  can accurately be assumed to be his own. Other
votes rejected the virgin birth,  biblical  statements  that
have  Jesus  proclaim  himself  the Son of God or the Jewish
Messiah, and --the cornerstone of the Christian faith--
 Jesus' physical Resurrection from the dead.
 
In his latest book, Honest to Jesus (1996), Funk sums up the
conclusions of the Jesus Seminar. Funk writes that Jesus was
probably born in Nazareth, not  Bethlehem  as  the  biblical
tradition  claims;  that  Jesus  was  baptized  by  John the
Baptist who, writes Funk, "was almost certainly a historical
figure";  that  Jesus  apparently  had four brothers and may
also have had sisters but no father named Joseph;  that  his
public  career as a preacher lasted from one to three years;
and that he was crucified in Jerusalem.
 
The  story  of  Jesus'  arrest,  trial,  and  execution   as
recounted  in  the New Testament, states Funk, was suggested
by prophecies in the  Hebrew  Bible  "that  early  Christian
storytellers  arranged  to  have  fulfilled as they told and
retold the story." What broadly emerges from Funk's book and
the  writing  of other Jesus Seminar participants is a Jesus
who was an itinerant social critic and sage  in  the  Jewish
wisdom  tradition  that  concerned  itself  with ethical and
philosophical matters. He was, they believe, a rebel who led
an  egalitarian  revolution against a repressive established
social order but who harbored no divine pretensions.
 
The fellows of the Jesus Seminar say they  arrive  at  their
conclusions    by   scrutinizing   the   social,   literary,
linguistic, political, and religious  environment  in  which
Jesus  lived, as well as that of the decades after his death
during which the Gospels were written. Rather  than  relying
solely  upon  the  Bible,  they also cite the so-called Lost
Gospel Q, a hypothetical source for material common  to  the
Gospels  of Matthew and Luke but which has never been found.
Q comes from the German  quelle,  meaning  source.  Scholars
such  as Marcus Borg believe Q to exist. They think it is an
early compilation of Jesus' sayings,  as  well  as  some  of
those  of John the Baptist, which the writers of Matthew and
Luke  independently  drew  upon  decades  later.   Rejecting
supernatural explanations, the Jesus Seminar fellows instead
subscribe to psychological ones  --such  as  explaining  the
Resurrection  as the internal experience of Jesus' disciples
that was later misunderstood to be historical truth.
 
Gerd Leudemann, a German New Testament  scholar,  summed  up
the  Jesus  Seminar's  approach  to  the  Resurrection  at a
meeting of the group in 1995 when he said: "The Resurrection
happened  in the hearts and minds of the first disciples. It
was an ecstatic event that did not involve the body."
 
THE JESUS SEMINAR'S RATIONALE
 
In pressing their case, Jesus Seminar fellows say that  what
is  at  stake  is  the  "honesty"  of the Christian message.
Crossan believes that the church needs to admit that what it
teaches  as  historical  fact  is really an act of faith and
that writings taught to be understood literally were  really
meant  to  be  read  metaphorically.  He  and  other seminar
fellows  maintain  that  given  Western  culture's   current
disposition   toward  critical  thinking,  such  honesty  is
required  to  keep  the  church  from  becoming   completely
irrelevant to the majority of contemporary Christians.
 
As   evidence,  the  Jesus  Seminar  fellows  point  to  the
continued numerical decline  of  long-established,  mainline
Protestant     churches    --such    as    the    Methodist,
Anglican/Episcopal,     Lutheran,      and      Presbyterian
denominations--   in  Europe  and  North  America,  and  the
widespread disregard within  the  Roman  Catholic  world  of
Vatican  dictates  and pronouncements. It is a case, seminar
fellows say, of salvaging something of  Christianity  before
all  of  it  is  lost  to the modern mind-set. Theologically
conservative, or traditional, critics of the  Jesus  Seminar
dismiss the group's conclusions as the misguided rantings of
secular humanists (supporters of a philosophy that advocates
secular  rather  than  religious values) whose lack of faith
and cynicism renders them incapable of comprehending the New
Testament's  emotional,  nonrational  message and account of
Jesus.
 
SEMINAR CRITICS SAY BELIEVERS MUST HAVE FAITH
 
Some of these traditional Christian  critics  of  the  Jesus
Seminar  scholarship agree that the Gospels do not represent
a  strictly  historical  account.  Nevertheless,  they  also
criticize  the  seminar  for  what  they  regard as its bias
toward naturalistic explanations that categorically  dismiss
belief  in  the  mystical  --the  power  of  God  to perform
unexplained miracles.
 
James R. Edwards, a religion professor at Jamestown  College
in  Jamestown,  North  Dakota, indicts the Jesus Seminar for
its  "lack  of  openness  to,  or  even  interest  in,   the
possibility  that  Jesus  was  God incarnate." He chides the
seminar  fellows  for  only  accepting  as  admissible  that
evidence  deriving from sources other than the Bible, and of
which there is little, while evidence "from  above,"  as  he
refers  to  the  church's  Apostles'  Creed  and  other such
statements of faith, is rejected out of hand.
 
Although modern scholarship has  correctly  shown  that  the
Gospels  are  not  historically  accurate  in  all  aspects,
Edwards says,  it  does  not  necessarily  follow  that  the
Gospels   have   distorted   the   historical   Jesus.  Many
eyewitnesses to the life  of  Jesus  still  lived  when  the
Gospels  were  composed  in the decades that followed Jesus'
death.  These  witnesses,  say  Edwards  and  other  seminar
critics,  would have served to ensure that Jesus' life story
was accurately retold, particularly since the  word-for-word
transmission  of  information,  or  oral  tradition,  was  a
hallmark of the time in which Jesus lived.
 
Critics such as Edwards agree that  looking  at  the  social
conditions  of  Jesus'  day  and his place in 1st century AD
Palestinian Jewish culture can add important insights to the
Gospel story of Jesus. But those factors can also be said to
bolster the traditional Christian view of Jesus, he argues.
 
Jesus, for  example,  came  out  of  a  monotheistic  Jewish
religious   tradition,  as  did  his  early  followers,  who
comprised the membership of the  nascent  Christian  church.
For his followers to claim that Jesus was divine flew in the
face of the Jewish monotheism that so  influenced  them  and
their  fellow  Jews,  who  they  sought  to  convince of the
rightness of their religious cause.
 
Edwards points to this as an example of  historical  inquiry
and social context strengthening, rather than weakening, the
church's claim to Jesus'  divine  status.  "It  is  hard  to
imagine  the  early church knowingly creating such a tension
(between itself and Palestinian Jewish society) by elevating
Jesus  to divine status --unless that status was inherent in
who Jesus was," Edwards wrote in  the  American  evangelical
Protestant magazine Christianity Today.
 
Similarly,  the  Dead  Sea  Scrolls --written, most scholars
agree, by members of the Essene sect of Jewish ascetics  who
lived  in  the  Judean Desert roughly between the end of the
3rd  century  BC  and   AD   70--   have   been   cited   by
traditionalists  to  undercut  the  seminar's  argument that
Jesus never spoke of himself as being the Messiah or  having
any  other  similar  exalted  status.  The Dead Sea Scrolls,
first discovered in 1947 in a series  of  caves  at  Qumran,
Jordan,  on  the  western  edge  of the Dead Sea, refer to a
leader known as the Teacher of Righteousness who  singularly
pointed  out  his  status  as  the  one  member of the group
through whom God spoke --setting a precedent  for  Jesus  to
regard himself in similar tones.
 
But Edwards and others --such as Luke Timothy Johnson, a New
Testament professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia,
and one of the more celebrated critics of the Jesus Seminar;
Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong of  Newark,  New  Jersey;
and  the Rev. John P. Meier, a Roman Catholic priest and New
Testament professor at Catholic  University  of  America  in
Washington,  D.C.  --also  take issue with the Jesus Seminar
from yet another perspective.
 
For these critics, what is most important about Jesus is not
the  details  of his life but the impact of that life. While
historical research can assemble bits and pieces  of  Jesus'
life,  the  "real  Jesus,"  they  say,  cannot be discovered
through speculating about the whole person on the  basis  of
these disparate fragments.
 
Jesus,  they maintain, could not have had the huge impact on
humanity that he undeniably has had unless he was more  than
the  social  critic,  sorcerer,  charismatic  preacher,  and
rabble-rouser that Jesus Seminar fellows claim him to be.
 
To Meier, this is the "real Jesus." Referring to the central
event  of the Christian claim to Jesus' divinity, Meier says
what is most important about the New Testament's account  of
the  Resurrection,  to which the Gospel names no eyewitness,
is not whether Jesus rose from the dead in a physical sense.
Rather,  it  is that through God, Jesus came to a "different
life" from what human beings know as earthly life.
 
From this perspective, the entire debate over the historical
Jesus is an ultimately futile intellectual pursuit. All that
is important, Meier and others would argue, is how the  life
of  Jesus  transforms  the lives of those who believe in the
Jesus of religious faith.
 
Outlook for the Debate
 
Under  the  best  of  circumstances,  as  Schweitzer   said,
historical  biography  is  an  imperfect art, subject to the
availability of sources that are difficult to separate  from
their human biases because of the passage of time. To engage
in historical biography when the subject  lived  2000  years
ago in a premodern culture is far more difficult. Even Jesus
Seminar representatives will admit that the  group  is  more
about raising questions than providing definitive answers.
 
Religious  faith,  on the other hand, is a deep-seated human
trait  known  to  virtually  every  culture  that  has  ever
existed.  Such  belief,  religious philosophers say, springs
from an innate longing for connection with and understanding
of the power that creates and sustains life. Fed by cultural
memory and familial ties, such faith is not easily shed over
the near term.
 
In  short,  the  current  argument over the Jesus of history
versus the Jesus of faith is not about to  radically  change
minds  in  the  near future. Those inclined to doubt will do
so; those inclined to believe are also likely to follow  the
dictates  of  their  hearts and minds. Only over the broader
sweep of history does one see a change in  religious  belief
impact the millions of ordinary souls born into a particular
faith, be it Christianity or otherwise.
 
More susceptible to  short-term  change,  however,  are  the
closely  related  worlds  of  scholarship and publishing. It
remains to be seen whether the current stage of inquiry into
the  historical  Jesus  and the movement's leading edge, the
Jesus Seminar, will continue to  command  the  broad  public
attention  they  now  receive.  But  there  are  signs,  say
publishing experts, that their current popularity  may  well
soon  dissipate, just as the "God is Dead" phenomenon of the
1960s ran its course.
 
Part of the reason for this, goes the thinking, is the  glut
of  books  produced  in  recent  years on the subject. Henry
Carrigan,  religious  book  review  editor  for   Publishers
Weekly, the industry trade publication, says interest in the
debate has leveled off among general readers who have become
satiated.  The  Jesus Seminar's The Five Gospels: The Search
for the Authentic Words of Jesus, published in  1993  and  a
religion  book bestseller for more than nine months, selling
more than 60,000 hardcover copies, may well  have  been  the
high point of public interest, says Carrigan.
 
Part  of  the reason also lies with the material having been
pretty  well  exhausted.  Having  scrutinized   Jesus'   New
Testament  sayings and activities, even the Jesus Seminar is
now looking for new  fields  to  plow.  At  its  meeting  in
October  1996,  seminar  fellows  decided to formally extend
their joint endeavor to a  study  of  the  life  and  Gospel
letters of Paul, the history of early Christian communities,
the development of the Christian creeds, and  the  decisions
that  led  to  the  inclusion  of  particular  texts  in the
church's official  biblical  canon.  By  the  end  of  1999,
seminar  fellows  say they will produce a new work that will
amount to a rewriting of the New Testament.
 
As compelling as all this may be to  scholars,  theologians,
and  church  authorities,  Carrigan,  for  one, believes the
general public will not share that  interest  and  that  the
current  phase  of  the search for the historical Jesus will
wane.
 
"Nothing for Christians, or non-Christians, for that matter,
is  as  interesting  about  Christianity  as  the  person of
Jesus," he says.
 
Ira Rifkin is a national  correspondent  for  Religion  News
Service based in Washington, D.C.
 
The  Institute  for  Christian  Leadership's  Guide to Early
Church Documents contains the text of dozens  of  documents,
canonical  information,  and  other  writings  of  the early
church.
 
The publisher HarperCollins  recently  sponsored  an  E-mail
debate  entitled  "Jesus  at  2000:  E-mail  Debate  on  the
Historical Jesus," transcripts of which include  entries  by
John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and Luke Timothy Johnson.
 
A  privately  maintained  site  contains  articles and links
relating to the Jesus Seminar and its critics,  as  well  as
other topics relating to the historical Jesus.
 
For further reading:
 
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus
and  the  Heart  of  Contemporary  Faith,  Marcus  J.   Borg
(Harper San Francisco, 1994)
 
The  Historical  Jesus:  The  Life of a Mediterranean Jewish
Peasant, John Dominic Crossan (Harper San Francisco, 1991)
 
Jesus:  A  Revolutionary  Biography,  John  Dominic  Crossan
(Harper San Francisco, 1994)
 
The  Essential  Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images,
John Dominic Crossan (Harper San Francisco, 1994)
 
Honest to Jesus, Robert Funk (Harper San Francisco, 1996)
 
The Five Gospels: The Search  for  the  Authentic  Words  of
Jesus,  Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar
(Macmillan, 1993)
 
Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in  Christology,  Elizabeth
A. Johnson (Crossroad, 1990)
 
The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus
and the Truth  of  the  Traditional  Gospels,  Luke  Timothy
Johnson (Harper San Francisco, 1996)
 
The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins, Burton
L. Mack (Harper San Francisco, 1993)
 
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the  Historical  Jesus,  John  P.
Meier (Doubleday, 1991)
 
The  Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its
Progress  from  Reimarus   to   Wrede,   Albert   Schweitzer
(Macmillan Co., 1948)
 
Resurrection:  Myth  or  Reality:  A Bishop's Search for the
Origins    of    Christianity,     John     Shelby     Spong
(Harper San Francisco, 1994)
 
The  Jesus  Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth,
Ben Witherington III (InterVarsity Press, 1995)


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