Thus, a little while back, I went to Fuller Theological Seminary to meet up with Nick to hear Robert Morgan of Linacre College of Oxford University talk about his views on the Quest.
I'm a molecular biologist not a historian nor a New Testament scholar so I couldn't always follow what Morgan was talking about. What follows are some of my notes from that evening's presentation. If you are an expert in the field, I'd welcome corrections, clarifications and comments!
Morgan, being from the UK, spoke with the stereotypical British understated humor. Additionally, though obviously opinionated (most academics are!), he was very gracious during the talk and in Q/A when he commented on other scholars who disagreed with his point-of-view.
He began by pointing out that scholars from North America tend to have a different perspective from European ones because the USA is culturally a more religious nation compared to Europe. He also mentioned that European scholars have a history of scholarship that they are brought up with for better or worse.
Overview of the quest
It was European scholars who started the quest for the historical Jesus. These early efforts concluded that the Gospel records in the Christian Scriptures were not reliable and that Jesus was nothing more than a failed messiah. They believed the historic Jesus was not knowable and what the Bible contains is the Christ of the early church.
Albert Schweitzer wrote a major work published in 1906. He critiqued the prior works that were excessively skeptical. Schweitzer believed that the historical Jesus could be understood within the context of Jewish eschatological beliefs. However, he stopped somewhat short of endorsing the orthodox view of Christ promoted by the church through the ages. Instead, Schweitzer believed the spirit of Jesus lives on in the persistence of the moral values he espoused.
Kahler's view of the Quest is that the picture of Jesus can only be drawn by looking at history, New Testament theology and Old Testament concepts.
Analogy of 3-D glasses
3-D movies look a bit blurry because the image layers are slightly off. However, with the glasses on, you can see the image clearly. Morgan believes the same is true for our understanding of Jesus. He proposed there are three layers of our knowledge of Jesus: history, oral tradition, New Testament documents. [ed. note - I think those were the three layers? Since many in the audience were PhD students familiar with the concept, Morgan didn't elaborate.] Each layer provides an image and they don't exactly overlap so it looks blurry but with the glasses of faith, a picture of Jesus emerges.
He said intellectual honesty demands that we acknowledge that theological development occurred between the time of Jesus and when the New Testament Scriptures were written. Even within the New Testament documents there was theological development. He cited that the Gospel of John is much more theological compared to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. He pointed out that some scholars believe that theological development means historically inaccurate. Morgan challenged that assumption.
There are many possible "Jesus" one can come up with when one incorporates theological development on top of the historical Jesus. The question then becomes, is the picture a credible one given what we know? He noted that there was a body of literature (Gnostic gospels) regarding Jesus that was rejected because those imposed a theological picture that was not plausible. [ed. note - I think that was Morgan's point. I was having a hard time keeping up with his thought process!]
Why the quest?
Some will feel the task is a hopeless one. Why bother?
Non-Christian scholars will pursue the topic anyway, so Christians should join in too. There should be some credible basis for the Jesus we have faith in. Christians hold certain beliefs that are historical i.e. Jesus actually existed and Jesus resurrected.
Question and answer session
Q: How do you view the efforts of the Jesus Seminar?
RM: They are honest scholars but I think their methods are wrong headed. They assume the Christian layer on top of the historic Jesus is completely irrelevant.
Q: How much evidence is there for your 3-layer model?
RM: The Prologue of Luke is the best example.
Q: How do you distinguish the layers?
RM: The methods of text analysis can help. An example would be Matthew and Luke drawing from Mark. The common material would be a layer. We can assign a layer in light of its plausibility with the first century Jewish setting.
Q: There is diversity within New Testament theology. How do you deal with that?
RM: The essentials are the God of Israel, Jesus existence/resurrection and historicity and the community of faith. Diversity exists and is troublesome; however, I don't think the diversity is so great as to constitute another religion or is contradictory.
Q: Could you elaborate on the criteria of dissimilarity?
RM: It is a tool though not a perfect one. The idea is that something might be in a theological development layer if it shows a difference between the pre- vs. post-resurrection Jesus or is in contrast to first century Judaism. This is a situation where one can take a maximal view or a minimal view. Some will take this as fabrication while others will say it isn't. For instance, when the Gospels have Jesus quoting the Old Testament, some will say Jesus really said it while others will say the NT writers put it into Jesus mouth. [ed. note - Here was another case of "inside baseball" so I'm not sure I got the idea correct as it was a question from a specialist to a specialist.]
Q: Following up, to what extent are we sure Jesus saw himself as "the suffering servant" and "the son of man" which are OT images?
RM: There is no way to be certain if it is historical or interpretive Christian reflection. Some of these questions of theological development are hard to trace.
Q: In terms of method, do you assign priority to the sources in the quest for the historic Jesus?
RM: We do tend to draw firstly from the Gospels then from the writings of Paul and other NT writings as they generally pertain to the post-resurrection Jesus.
Q: How reliable is oral tradition?
RM: Certainly, some scholars are quite skeptical. Albert Schweitzer in this regard was much more positive compared to other scholars of his time. We do see variations within the Gospel records probably due to variation in oral tradition. However, are those variations so large as to invalidate the oral traditions? I think not.
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