The Quest of the Historical Jesus
by Albert Schweitzer
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Book Summary Information
Author: Albert SchweitzerTranslator: W. Montgomery
Preface: F. C. Burkitt
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-02-11
ISBN: 0486440273
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Dover Publications
Book Reviews of The Quest of the Historical Jesus
Book Review: Heroic Scholars
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Summary of The Quest of the Historical Jesus
Groundbreaking study that established the reputation of the famed theologian traces the search for the historical person of Jesus. Schweitzer examines works of more than fifty 18th- and 19th-century authors and scholars and concludes that many of the earlier historical reconstructions of Christ were largely fantasies. The criterion for all subsequent studies.
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