Historical Jesus

  • Thread starter Thread starter ICXCNIKA
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I

ICXCNIKA

Guest
The latest book in my Diaconate Formation is *A Concise History of the Catholic Church *by Thomas Bokenkotter.

Among other things (I won’t get in to how it deals with women priests) Bokenkotter says:

“To find the Jesus of history, we have to sift through the material presented in the Gospels and try to determine by internal evidence what Jesus actually did and said as distinguished from what represents later interpretation. As a general rule, scholars hold that whatever cannot be deduced or explained from the Judaism of Jesus’ time or from primitive Christianity should be ascribed to the Jesus of history. What this means specifically is that while historical criticism makes i impossible to reconstruct a biography of Jesus in the ordinary sense, it does permit us to recover a considerable amount of authentic Jesu material. I fact, by adhering to the historical critical method we can determine ‘the typical basic features and outlines of Jesus’ proclamation, behavior and fate’” (9).

Are there any Magesterial teachings about the historical Jesus or teachings that deal with whether or not Jesus indeed said or did what the gospels say he said or did?

Thanks for any help.
 
I recommend you read “Jesus of Nazareth” By Benedict XVI. He deals with the “historical Jesus” thing, and explains that although the historical-critical method is useful, it should not be used to turn Jesus into something he isn’t. In this book, the Holy Father reaffirms that the Historical Jesus is in fact the same Jesus portrayed in the Gospels, and to separate the two is illogical.
 
From Dei Verbum
  1. It is common knowledge that among all the Scriptures, even those of the New Testament, the Gospels have a special preeminence, and rightly so, for they are the principal witness for the life and teaching of the incarnate Word, our savior.
    The Church has always and everywhere held and continues to hold that the four Gospels are of apostolic origin    . For what the Apostles preached in fulfillment of the commission of Christ, afterwards they themselves and apostolic men, under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, handed on to us in writing: the foundation of faith, namely, the fourfold Gospel, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.(1)
  2. Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven (see Acts 1:1). Indeed, after the Ascension of the Lord the Apostles handed on to their hearers what He had said and done. This they did with that clearer understanding which they enjoyed (3) after they had been instructed by the glorious events of Christ’s life and taught by the light of the Spirit of truth. (2) The sacred authors wrote the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis, explaining some things in view of the situation of their churches and preserving the form of proclamation but always in such fashion that they told us the honest truth about Jesus.(4) For their intention in writing was that either from their own memory and recollections, or from the witness of those who “themselves from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word” we might know “the truth” concerning those matters about which we have been instructed (see Luke 1:2-4).
Compare that to A Concise History of the Catholic Church by Thomas Kokenkotter:

“Mathew and Luke each devote their first two chapters to an account of his infancy, but we can’t be sure how much of his is history” (7).

“The Gospels, as we’ve said, constitute—practically speaking—our only source of historical facts about Jesus, and they were written from forty to seventy years after his death. Their authors drew on an oral tradition that disseminated stories about he deeds an words of Jesus in the form of sermons and catechetical and liturgical material” (8)

“Finally, at the turn of he century, the author known as John produced the fourth Gospel…” (8).

“The Gospels were not meant to be a historical or biographical account of Jesus” (8).

“They [the Gospels] readily included material drawn from the Christian communities’ experience of he risen Jesus. **Words, for instance, were put in the mouth of Jesus and stories were told about him which, though not historical in the strict sense, **nevertheless, in the minds of the evangelists, fittingly expressed the real meaning and intent of Jesus as faith had come to perceive him” (9).

“To find the Jesus of history, we have to sift through the material presented in the Gospels and try to determine by internal evidence what Jesus actually did and said as distinguished from what represents later interpretation” (9).
 
If the Gospels were proved not to be historical, why would that affect your faith so drastically?

Do you have so little faith in the **essential **message that Jesus was crucified, resurrected and exalted to God?

This is what our faith is about. Not infancy narratives. Not miracle stories. Not even the Sermon on the Mount.
 
All this study into the historical Jesus really cracks me up. It is absurd how these modern scholars practically 2000 years later claim that they better understand the “real” Christ better than early Church Fathers and Doctors did.

Thats like me saying that I understand Jefferson better than the rest of the Founders did. Except a hundred times more absurd.
 
What’s even more absurd are the people who attempt to ignore it, thinking it will go away, while thousands of Christians either convert to Islam in the name of “the corrupted Bible” or become proud agnostics (like former evangelical Bart Ehrman) since nobody is willing to wrestle with such influential academia.

Between thesis and antithesis lies synthesis.
 
I had a question related to this topic a few months ago.
Click here to see the replies.

Hope that helps a little.
 
Epistemes;:
If the Gospels were proved not to be historical, why would that affect your faith so drastically?
Click to expand...
If the Gospels are not reliable for the beginning or intermediate part of His life, is there any logical reason to assume that they are reliable for the end of His life?
Do you have so little faith in the **essential **message that Jesus was crucified, resurrected and exalted to God?
Click to expand...
If there was no historical Jesus, there is no essential message for Christianity.

xan

jonathon
 
jblake said:
If the Gospels are not reliable for the beginning or intermediate part of His life, is there any logical reason to assume that they are reliable for the end of His life?
Click to expand...
Could you not retain belief in the glorious essence of Jesus based upon Paul’s proclamation? The Thessalonians didn’t have the luxury of Luke’s Gospel.
If there was no historical Jesus, there is no essential message for Christianity.
Click to expand...
Who said anything about no historical Jesus? Nobody, to my knowledge - not even the *Concise History *in question. Denying the historicity of the infancy narratives or the Sermon on the Mount does not affect the historicity or importance of Jesus - and it is a drop in the bucket compared to what the historical Jesus must have actually done! Or have you forgotten that “if these were to be described individually…the whole world would [not] contain the books that would be written”?
 
I would give more weight to Dei Verbum and the PBC’s Historicity of the Gospel than to Bokenkotter. His Church History book is decent in many respects, but what you quoted above is certainly not one of them (along with the “women priests” stuff, of course).

Fr. John Laux’s Church History book is much better.

I think Dei Verbum and the PBC’s Historicity of the Gospel are sufficient to refute Bokenkotter’s position. Is there any other evidence you need?
 
Epistemes;:
Denying the historicity of the infancy narratives or the Sermon on the Mount does not affect the historicity or importance of Jesus
Click to expand...
That is the starting position of the mythist position. Whilst I think that their basic premises and methodology is invalid, their conclusions do logically follow their premises and methodology.
forgotten that "if these were to be described individually.
Click to expand...
That is one of the texts that the mythists use to demolish Christianity. If He had done that much, then there should be third party eye witness accounts of His life, and His activities, instead of their deafening silence.

xan

jonathon
 
Epistemes said:
If the Gospels were proved not to be historical, why would that affect your faith so drastically?

Do you have so little faith in the **essential **message that Jesus was crucified, resurrected and exalted to God?

This is what our faith is about. Not infancy narratives. Not miracle stories. Not even the Sermon on the Mount.
Click to expand...
I think I’ll have to disagree with you. The Eucharist is a miracle, the resurrection is a miracle. They either happened or they didn’t.
 
ICXCNIKA said:
I think I’ll have to disagree with you. The Eucharist is a miracle, the resurrection is a miracle. They either happened or they didn’t.
Click to expand...
Funny, precisely by disagreeing with me…you’re agreeing with me.

I never said anything about the Eucharist or resurrection not happening…
 
Epistemes said:
Funny, precisely by disagreeing with me…you’re agreeing with me.

I never said anything about the Eucharist or resurrection not happening…
Click to expand...
The essential part of our faith does include the infancy stories because it goes to the credibility of our witnesses. Doesn’t the creed make that clear? Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate…etc?

IAC, count me as one who has reached a point of disgust with Biblical scholarship because it ends with the lunacy of the likes of Bultmann. Such people examine the Scriptures much as
Roman priests did the entrails of chickens and seeing everything but the entrails of chickens. The pope may not meet the" high" standards of this crowd, but what mere pope could?
We must take the Bible as it stands: as a historic document.
We do not and cannot know what sources the composers of the Gospels used. We do not know when they were written or much about their authors. If they were written in Greek, they may be all or in part translations from Aramaic or Hebrew, or include such translations. There is certainly no reason to rule out categorically that in a highly literate society that the very words
of Jesus and/or very close contemporary accounts of some events of his life were not available to the Gospel writers. What we have in a processes of hypothessis building upon hypothesis, if arching along after if in a manner that resembles the procgress of constitutional law until conclusions are reached which serve primarily the interests of the spinners of these threads. They claim to be strong but they have no strength at all.
 
*Ends *with the likes of Bultmann?

Obviously you’re not talking about contemporary biblical scholarship…
 
Epistemes said:
If the Gospels were proved not to be historical, why would that affect your faith so drastically?

Do you have so little faith in the **essential **message that Jesus was crucified, resurrected and exalted to God?

This is what our faith is about. Not infancy narratives. Not miracle stories. Not even the Sermon on the Mount.
Click to expand...
Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven (see Acts 1:1). Dei Verbum para 19

It’s all essential.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top