Word: bultmann
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...Jewish sources, providing precious little corroborating data. Even if the standard for authenticity were agreement between the Gospels, there is less of that than one might imagine: the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan are just two of several parables that appear in only one version. By 1926, Rudolf Bultmann of Germany's University of Marburg, the foremost Protestant scholar in the field, threw up his hands: he called for a halt to inquiries regarding the Jesus of history. So unreliable were the Gospel accounts that "we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus...
...disgusted is Johnson, in fact, that he, like Bultmann before him, counsels believers to ignore the search for the historical Jesus altogether. Does the Seminar condemn the Resurrection as unprovable? Rather than trying to assert the authenticity of the story of the empty crypt or backing up John's tale of Doubting Thomas, Johnson maintains that the Resurrection that has always mattered to Christians is the ongoing miracle, the "transforming, transcendent personal power" that marks the moving of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and among the communities of believers. "Christianity," he writes, "has never been able to 'prove...
Among the latter is Peter Stuhlmacher of Tubingen, who was trained by one of Bultmann's followers. Says he: "As a Western Scripture scholar, I am inclined to doubt these ((Gospel)) stories, but as a historian I am obliged to take them as reliable." He now tells his own students, "The biblical texts as they stand are the best hypothesis we have until now to explain what really happened...
Wide differences over how to see the historical Jesus cause considerable friction in the academic world. The sniping often focuses on methodology. A favorite criterion for critics who try to sort out the supposed actual words of Jesus from the inauthentic is "dissimilarity," a principle canonized by Bultmann and widely used by the Jesus Seminar, the controversial group that puts the authenticity of Gospel sayings to the vote...
...does the search for the Jesus of history have any relevance for believers? Some thinkers, like Bultmann before them, are content to distinguish between a Christ of faith, who is knowable, and a historical Jesus, who is not. Other liberals, however, are searching fervently for a real-life Jesus, whether sage or prophet, to fill what they see as an urgent need for spiritual nourishment and a renewed impetus for social reform. "Jesus may be one of the finest persons who ever lived, but the average person doesn't have any access to him," says Robinson of Claremont. He believes...