Review of The Historical Figure of Jesus - Introduction

Chapter 1

Since being introduced to N. T. Wright during my 2^nd pastoral position I have become a huge fan of the so called 3^rd Historical Quest of Jesus. I had begun with reading Wright and his extensive body of literature, then I moved onto Keener and Witherington. However, all the while I kept hearing everyone mention E. P. Sanders and how he was a foundational thinker to this whole movement. Therefore, I decided it was time to read Sanders and so I begin with The Historical Figure of Jesus.

Sanders beings his Preface with qualifying what we can know about a figure in the ancient world, “knowledge can at best be partial and that certainty is seldom attained” especially when we are dealing with a figure “in a rather unimportant part of the Roman empire (xiii).” This qualification about knowledge is important and sets the key for the upcoming chapters. Sanders, as far as I have read, tries not to grab at too much information as a historian, rather he tries to make careful considerations based on the data at hand.

His Introduction starts with the crucifixion of Jesus setting it in a political context, a criminal crucified as King of the Jews, and continues with outlining the task of his work, “...to understand who he (being Jesus) was and what he did (1, parenthesis mine). However, this book is not a theology about Jesus, but will discuss some of the theology of Jesus and his followers who transmitted his ideas. This work then is akin to studying people like Thomas Jefferson or Winston Churchill, but unlike them we do not have as much access to Jesus' direct thoughts and ideas. Therefore, this quest is much closer to finding the historical Alexander the Great, but again we do not have access to Alexander's thoughts and ideas. Whereas we do at least have partial access to the thoughts of Jesus' followers and those who attempted to transmit his ideas. However, these ideas are given to us in a language that Jesus did not speak and were often quoted for the authors own theological purpose.

Finally, in clear terms Sanders tells us his purpose in this book, “...to lay out, as clearly as possible, what we can know, using the standard methods of historical research, and to distinguish this from inferences, labeling them clearly as such.”(5) This is accomplished by first looking at the historical, political, and religious context and then moving onto discussing the sources from where we access information about Jesus. Therefore, Sanders hopes to convey a historically accurate picture of what can be known about Jesus given our limited access to historical and personal information and that the Gospel writers themselves had “theological convictions and that they may have revised their accounts to support their theology.”(8)

Sanders aim then as I read him is to understand Jesus in light of the historical and theological information that we have understanding that the historical information about Jesus is also at the same time theological.  Therefore, we can not reach too far in our claims about Jesus historically, but we do have some access to them.  This positive view of the Gospels is refreshingly critical in that it makes us reflect on the Gospels not only as historical but also theological in their own right.

Question for Moving Forward

Does viewing the Gospel writers as being historians and theologians help or hurt the Gospels as accounts of the Life of Jesus?  Why or why not?