What is Bond saying?

How does a historical reading of scripture differ from a literary

reading as well as a devotional or confessional reading?

 Remiarus “gathered all these ideas [about inconsistencies in the Bible] into a
complete account of Jesus’ life, situating it firmly within a first-century Jewish
context, and transforming a story of the supernatural and revelatory into one
based on reason, natural origins and, ultimately, deception. “
 Strauss: introduced “category of myth”
 Mark identified as the earliest gospel, others (Matthew, Luke) built off of it
 Subjectivity: “There is no historical task which so reveals a man’s true self as
the writing of a Life of Jesus” -> is this really history?
 Different ways of reading the gospels – eschatological perspective = seeing
apolocalyptic elements
 Bultmann: “Fiath could not be dependent on the shifting sands of historical
inquiry” (14)
o Gospels more a reflecrtion of oral tradition than historical accounts
 “Rather than attempt to reconstruct a ‘life,’ scholars tended to study discreet
elements of the tradition”
 -> caused studies that argued Jesus was a myth; studies influenced by Nazi
ideology
 “it was methodocially possible to establish a few facts about Jesus. The New
Quest… came from this call to action” (16) [“continuity between Christ of
faith and the specific historical man [19th century]]
 “Criterion of dissimilarity” as a means of determining if Jesus’ words real
 “Criterion of coherence,” “multiple attestation”
 “The New Quest had restored credibility to Jesus studies, but its findings
were rather limited, to say the least” (19)
 Differences in New Quest perspectives (21)
 Sanders: apolocalyptic perspective
 Horsley: Jesus a social, not political, revolutionary
 Seminar: “Modern” Jesus
 Crossan: use of multiple attestation; paints Jesus as a radical egalitarian
 Flusser vs others: Jesus well-educated carpenter, not poor as others said
 Dunn: role of oral trandition and memory in the portrait of Christ
 ** 1. Sources 2. Setting: Galilee 3. How did Jesus relate to other holy men? 4.
Apocalyptic outlook? 5. Fabrications or dependable memories?
 Romans and Jews have little to say on Jesus
 Gospel of Peter and Gospel of Thomas
 Peter: “Like other apocryphal gospels, it is a work of popular piety with little
in the way of theological sophistication”
 Matthew and Luke drew on Mark and Q
 Argues that the Synoptics are largely histoprically grounded – others have
some problems
 “All of this means that we have to be particularly vigilant in inquiring
whether Gospel material really reflects the life of Jesus or perhaps more
naturally derives from a later situation” (51)
 Impossible to find an uninterpreted Jesus