the historical Jesus 1: Introduction

We had our first gathering of the Pretoria Emerging Cohort (for lack of any better and more local name at this stage) tonight. I’ll skip on saying much bout that, you’d probably find more voices here in future. Mynhardt asked when I’ll blog about what I thought of the Historical Jesus debate which happened a few days ago… well, I did touch on it, but not much I guess. So I decided to write some more on it. Actually, I decided to a series! I’ve never been very good with blogging a series of posts, but I’m gonna try:-)

Works on the Historical Jesus is of importance in my own thoughts, so this series I write for Mynhardt, in response to the question, but also for myself, to actually just think through some of these things again. I’m gonna try and give some background to the quest for the historical Jesus in a few posts, and do it in such a way that the reader without knowledge of the quest can understand (I hope). Understanding the long history of the quest is of absolute importance in order to understand both the value as well as the limitations of the quest.

OK, another thing. I’m not into doing research on the historical Jesus. Firstly my Greek is way too bad, secondly, I’m much too impatiant to do that kind of detailed research. Rather, I’m a theologian, so I read books on the historical Jesus with the eyes of a theologian, thus asking what the theological implications of something would be, not that of a historian asking what could possibly be known.

I’ll try and keep posts short and to the point. Please ask questions, it would help me see where to go in the series.

If I write anything of worth, you probably have to thank professor Ernest van Eck at the department of New Testament Studies at TUKS. His classes on the historical Jesus not only opened my eyes for towards the research, it formed my faith in Jesus, and provided a place of comfort for my own theological thinking. He was the one lecturer that said we could miss his classes… and the one who’s classes I never missed. If ever you take his module on the historical Jesus: Pay attention!

OK, the series will start tomorrow…

Advertisement