Word: modernes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...attempt by modern scholars to ferret out the real, historical Nazarene from the supposedly embellished accounts in the Bible -- a process known as the historical-critical method, or "higher criticism" -- has resulted in some rather unorthodox notions. A current sampling...
...variation on the sage theme comes from Claremont Scholar Burton Mack, who sees Jesus as a "rather normal cynic-type figure," using the term not in the modern sense but referring to a particular school of ancient Greek philosophers, Diogenes among them, who advocated virtue and self-control. Like them, he made ample use of a biting sense of humor ("Let the dead bury their dead"). "Jesus wasn't reforming Judaism," Mack insists. "He was just taking up a Hellenistic kind of social criticism...
What has emerged from this modern diversity of views of Scripture is, not surprisingly, a diversity of Jesuses. One can almost take one's pick...
...stress on Jewish studies among modern New Testament scholars has produced a striking vision of Jesus as a rabbinical genius whose teachings were very much in keeping with the liberal Jewish scholarship of his day. "He represented a humanistic trend in Judaism that was then developing out of the liberal wing of the School of Hillel," argues Israeli Historian David Flusser of the Jerusalem School for the Study of the Synoptic Gospels, a group of 15 Jewish and Christian scholars. What Jesus sought, says Flusser, was a Judaism purified of resentments and hatred. "He wanted a feeling of love...
Ominously, bright young scholars are not coming into the system: in all of Britain, only six university historians are under 30. "It's a failure to recruit a whole generation or two of talent," says Patrick Collinson, professor of modern history at the University of Sheffield. "And those generations will have been lost...