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The Quest of the Historical Jesus

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This book is a turning point in the history of Jesus studies. Schweitzer demonstrates how previous research was really an (unwitting) attempt by liberal and rationalist theologians to proof-text a Jesus who would embarrass orthodox Protestantism and serve as a figurehead for liberal ("Fatherhood of God, Brotherhood of Man") Christianity. Schweitzer showed how each historical reconstruction of Jesus uncannily matched the beliefs and agenda of the scholar in question. But Schweitzer knew the Christ of orthodoxy was not the historical Jesus either. One could only discover the latter by being willing to find the unexpected, and Schweitzer thought he found a Jesus who was a prophet of the end of the world, who expected to judge the earth as the Son of Man, and who died tragically mistaken. Even so, he still serves as a beacon of spiritual force for the ages. As does Schweitzer's great book!

This landmark classic demonstrates the cliche of "the painting telling more about the painter than the subject being painted". People use the gospels as a mirror for their own beliefs and reconstruct Jesus accordingly in their self-images. Schweitzer's Jesus, by contrast, stands on a foreign landscape of apocalyptic fanaticism -- a deluded prophet who thought he was God's instrument sent to announce the end of history; burning with apocalyptic zeal, marching to Jerusalem, confident he could force God's hand and usher in the kingdom through a voluntary death. But it didn't happen. Jesus was crushed by the system he defied, and the drama ended on the cross.

Even if Schweitzer's portrait of Jesus is a bit extreme, he got the basics right -- Jesus the eschatological prophet -- and closed the curtains on the liberal quest for Jesus. He was a prophet himself, for we have another liberal quest today in the work of the Jesus Seminar. Instead of Jesus the liberal Protestant, the Seminar gives us Jesus the liberal humanist, disguised as a non-apocalyptic sage. For more up-to-date works which follow Schweitzer's apocalyptic prophet, see E.P. Sanders' "The Historical Figure of Jesus", Paula Fredriksen's "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews", and Dale Allison's "Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet". Allison's book, in particular, is worth its weight in gold.

I don't think the above review understood the central theme or the historical importance of this monumental work. Fortunately, Mr. Price's eloquent review (below) explains Dr. Schweitzer's theme well: that most theologians who attempt to reconstruct the Gospels & the life of Jesus are simply projecting their own values onto the subject. The result is a normative portrayal of a "Christ of Faith," NOT a "historical Jesus." In fact, the "real" Jesus recedes into historical background as the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John also project their own values & interpretation onto Jesus' life. Who is Jesus, then? That is a question of faith, not a question of history.

This is the greatest book ever written about the historical Jesus, and it should be required reading for every college student. It is brilliant, profound, thrilling, and fairly easy to read (no Greek quotations to puzzle over, and lots of colorful phrases). The book is an intellectual detective story embedded in the solid framework of a chronological survey, vividly illuminating the theories of dozens of courageous New Testament scholars from about 1750 to 1900.

Schweitzer spends little time on supernaturalist theologians, Catholic or Protestant, and their ancient mythological god, "Jesus Christ." Instead he focuses on pioneering, critical, inquiring scholars such as Reimarus, Bahrdt, Venturini, Paulus, Hase, Schleiermacher, Strauss, Weisse, Bauer, Renan, Ghillany, and others, who sincerely sought the real Jesus of history, long covered up with magic and metaphysics.

Conservative and/or supernaturalist Christians often like to claim that Schweitzer's book shows how previous Jesus researchers mistakenly depicted a Jesus who merely reflected themselves and their own soft modern times - a "gentle Jesus meek and mild," or such like. That generalization is partly true, but mostly very misleading. The "liberalism" of those 18th and 19th century scholars actually consisted of their common naturalism, their search for natural explanations for the bizarre stories in the gospels. They were not so much mistaken as they were correct (or at least more correct than their supernaturalist opponents). They were not so much failures as they were successes, even heroes. Schweitzer emphasizes their collective heroism on the first page of his book. And his own naturalistic understanding of the man Jesus as a stark and mistaken prophet of apocalypse certainly has more in common with the other naturalistic views he surveys than with the entrenched supernaturalist camp.

By way of preparation, anyone not very familiar with the four gospels should first spend several days carefully reading all of them (or at the very least Mark and John) and taking good notes before beginning to read Schweitzer's dense book. That preparation will vividly reveal some of the glaring differences (and similarities) among the gospels. The historical reality behind those largely fictional gospels is the major focus of the scholars whom Schweitzer discusses. He makes it clear that the different versions of the mind of Jesus and the course of his career depicted in each of the four gospels are as much to blame for the many different scholarly "lives" of Jesus as are those scholars and their times.

After reading Schweitzer's "Quest," or at least a sizeable portion of it, please share it with friends or family members and ask them to do likewise for others. Spread the good word. Discuss it at length. We Americans especially, given our gullibility and inclination to extremes, urgently need to know the sobering facts behind our ancient religious legends.

THE QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS is Albert Schweitzer's monumental attempt to review and comment on the research done on the historical Jesus mostly in the nineteenth century. The book covers the work of Herman Samuel Reimarus, Paulus, David Friedrich Strauss, Bruno Bauer and many others.

Strauss was particularly important since his analysis of the Gospels' miraculous stories was that they were mythical. For this he was attacked by other scholars of his time although his basic idea about the mythical character of the biblical miracles has steadily gained popularity among academics. Schweitzer, on the other hand, saw Jesus as a prophet who had a strong apocalyptic message for the world. Everything Jesus said and did was influenced by his belief that the end was near, according to Schweitzer.

Schweitzer's work helped to lay the groundwork for future research on the historical Jesus. All subsequent research, including that of the Jesus Seminar, has owed a debt to Albert Schweitzer.

Though it could benefit from 20th-century discoveries about the nature of Jewish apocalyptic, Schweitzer's majestically written, often devastating analysis of the covert theology-as-history of German academia is timeless. He gives all a fair shake, particularly Strauss, certainly the 19th century's boldest and most original quester, and finally shows that all are insufficient to account for the (apparently quite embarrassing) fact of Jesus' intense eschatology. His work is still applicable to the innumerable "liberal" portraits we're treated to nowadays (one thinks especially of John Dominic Crossan, though I find much of his work laudatory for other reasons), to say nothing of the televangelist's Jesus or the nauseating, "your best friend" youth-group Jesus. Indispensable.

The writing is a little thick at times, surely due to a combination of a century-old writing style together with the translation from German. However, the translation ends up being brilliant and captures the heart and soul of what Schweitzer was trying to say. I got caught up in the book. For anyone interested in the history behind the "Quest," or its current roots and currents, this book is a "must." For some Christians, parts of its contents may be troubling -- I believe in a way that challenges faith in a positive way, and ultimately, deepens it for many people.

Of all the books that were published in the 20th century on the subject of the historical Jesus, none have been as influential nor as widely read as Schweitzer's book. Almost every current book on the historical Jesus from the most conservative to the most liberal references this book as a starting point. As well, most seminaries and graduate programs in New Testament have this listed as required reading.

The book flows very well. The first half of the book is largely a summary of the 18th and 19th century biographies of Jesus. Schweitzer details their methodology and the author's social situation and also provides his own commentary on the matter. The second half of the book is his own ideas and thoughts on the situation.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with Schweitzer, this is a good starting point for the issue, whether or not you end up reading John Dominic Crossan or N.T. Wright on the subject.

We know Dr. Schweitzer from the bushy white hair and mustache, lost somewhere in Africa, Nobel prize winning peace activist. But here we have the young spirited seminarian for whom the quest for Jesus was a great endeavor. And great indeed is this magnificent tome, which pulls together 200 years of scholarly endeavors and tries to reach a conclusion about who Jesus was and what the quest was all about. Here are a few quotes...

"This dogma [Jesus as God/Jesus as Man] had first to be shattered before men could once more go out in quest of the historical Jesus, before they could even grasp the thought of his existence..."

"There is no historical task which so reveals a man's true self as the writing of a Life of Jesus. No vital force comes into the figure unless a man breathes into it all the hate or all the love of which he is capable..."

"He [Jesus] is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb..."

"He had been riveted for centuries to the stony rocks of ecclesiastical doctrine, and rejoiced to see life and movement coming into the figure once more, and the historical Jesus advancing, as it seemed, to meet it. But he does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to his own..."

Yes, of course it is dated. And yes, of course, it is written in that heavy Germanic style that demands more than you want to give. And yes, of course, you never heard of many of the people he talks about. etc.

And yet there is nothing in the past 100 years that really matches it, despite all the findings and all the methods and all the books since.

This is a most erudite and methodical analysis of the lives of Jesus written in the 100 years or so before and during Schweitzer's life, many of them by German writers. It's a book for those interested in delving into the thinking of that time period about Jesus, and in understanding better how we arrived at our current view of Jesus.