The quest for the "historical" Jesus - the human figure who became Christ - has preoccupied the Christian world for centuries. Their conclusions have always revealed far more about themselves than the meaning of Jesus, and, as Charlotte Allen now shows in this book, they nearly always missed the most fundamental human reality of the man whom Christians call the Son of God: he was born of a Jewish mother into a Jewish community. The story of the search for the historical Jesus is a tour through the great and terrible ideas of modern Western civilization. The Human Christ is the first chronicle of this quest from its beginnings to the present day. In addition, Allen focuses on the huge "life-of-Christ" industry that has flourished in novels and films, revealing it to be a heady combination of piety, exotica, and even soft-core pornography. Finally, Allen explores the efforts of Jewish and Gentile scholars to locate Jesus' place in first-century Judaism, the environment in which he actually conducted his ministry. For generations, scholars, intellectuals, novelists, and filmmakers have set out to find the "real" Jesus and have come up with mirror images of themselves. Their efforts amount to an exercise in theology rather than history and one that tells more about the intellectual and popular fads of their time than it does about Jesus. While Allen debunks these rationalistic approaches to Jesus, she has not abandoned useful historical methods. Guided by an unwavering acceptance of religious mystery, she has exhaustively researched and referenced her work.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
One might think that the search for the historical Jesus--or the human Christ--is a recent phenomenon. The controversial work of the Jesus Seminar and its efforts to discover (or uncover) the "real" Jesus, the recent spate of books that include "the complete" sayings of Jesus; the ongoing efforts of theologians like John Shelby Spong to redefine the meaning of Christ for a new millennium: these are just among the latest efforts in a quest going back three hundred years to define Jesus, the man.
There is a delightfully rich cast of characters in Charlotte Allen's book The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus. Hermann Reimarus, father of German textual criticism of the Bible, who accused Jesus of deliberately deceiving his followers into thinking he was a miracle worker; Thomas Jefferson, who in 1804 decided to extract from the gospels what he considered the genuine sayings of Jesus (presaging the Jesus Seminar by some 190 years). Schweitzer, Hegel, Flaubert, Nietzsche, Scorsese--these figures and many others are shown searching for their historical Jesus, in a n informative, amiable style.
Allen argues that searchers for the "real" Jesus found what they wanted to find: liberals found a liberal Jesus; mystics a gnostic Jesus. Not surprisingly, Allen also details the passing fads over the 300-year search for the "real" Jesus--and how Jesus research usually spoke more directly to the present than the past.
If readers are interested in the ongoing premillennial controversy about Jesus the man--what he said; what he did, what it meant, and what it means--Allen's book is recommended reading. Those interested in finding out more about the men and women who quested for the human Christ will be well served by Allen's entertaining and informative volume. --Fraser Hall
From Publishers Weekly
Allen's wide-ranging survey analyzes the quest for the historical Jesus.The historical Jesus has occupied French theologian Ernest Renan, German theologians like D.F. Strauss, Rudolf Bultmann and Helmut Koester, British novelists like George Eliot and American New Testament scholars like Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar. In a breezy journalistic style, Lingua Franca contributing editor Allen blows through the last three centuries of historical Jesus scholarship to render the oft-quoted moral of the story: the Jesus-searchers of every era have found their own worldviews reflected comfortably in their portraits of Jesus. Allen opens her survey of these Jesus quests with an exploration of Jesus' Jewish world and the reception of Christianity in the Hellenic world. She then proceeds to explore the cultural contexts, from the 17th century to the 20th, in which the various Jesus quests arose. For example, in her examination of the work of the Jesus Seminar, she argues that "the non-eschatological Jesus of the New Quest is a congenial figure for many American academics who associate eschatology with snake-handling and polyester blends, or who fear that putting apocalyptic sayings into Jesus' mouth supports the political goals of the Christian coalition." In her zeal to vilify the New Quest, however, she makes insupportable generalizations such as the contention that the Jesus Seminar "implicitly claims to represent a consensus of current New Testament scholarship," a claim never made explicitly or implicitly by Funk and company. In the end, Allen prefers her Jesus as a Jew who is the divinized Christ of Catholic Christian orthodoxy. While the book might be helpful to some readers as an introduction to the quest for the historical Jesus, its superficial scholarship makes this a less than worthwhile contribution to the historical Jesus conversation.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Immensely readable, broad in scope,
By A Customer
This review is from: The HUMAN CHRIST: THE SEARCH FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS (Hardcover)
The book brings together an enormous amount of material as it describes the search for the historical Jesus, not only in serious scholarship, but in novels, and films. It is a marvelous bibliographical resource. And it traces certain fashions in perception of Jesus rather ruthlessly and deservedly. I discovered the great scholar John A.T. Robinson through this book and will always be grateful for that and much more. I very much enjoyed the discussion of the fiction writers Renan, Flaubert, and the author of Quo Vadis, whose name I can't spell, and the further discussion of Hollywood Christians versus lions movies. Excellent and very thought provoking. This is an invaluable survey for its depth and breadth. We must be reminded over and over again that what we think is brand new in Jesus research isn't new at all. It's been done and done. High recommended. Anne Rice, New Orleans, La.
14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Learned and Gripping,
By A Customer
This review is from: The HUMAN CHRIST: THE SEARCH FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS (Hardcover)
This is a rare treat. Allen combines scholarship, an excellent writing style, deep cultural insight, and fearlessnes to come to terms with the way Jesus has been understood in a huge variety of social contexts through time. Her survey of intellectual history, which debunks the debunkers from the Apostolic age to our own, has predictably raised the hackles of many. Why? Her final message urges intellectual humility, a trait not often found among those who tackle this huge subject. Few have done it so successfully.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A FASCINATING AND BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN OVERVIEW OF THE QUEST,
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This review is from: Human Christ (Hardcover)
Ms. Allen has given us a well-researched and colorfully-written survey of the (largely European) quest to discover the historical Jesus. That she is a 'journalist' and not a professional should not dissuade you from reading her excellent book. On the contrary; so many 'professional' books on this topic are marred by barely concealed prejudices it is indeed a relief to encounter Ms. Allen's ever-cheerful and appreciative study. She understands the quest's importance and its folly; its seriousness and its inanity; and that no matter what this quest proves conclusively or disproves utterly (damn little either way, to date) it is not really about Jesus anyway as much as it is about our millennial deep-bore investigation of ourselves.Christians, Jews, atheists, agnostics, jugglers and clowns - read this great book!
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