Historical Jesus ...

In brief, Meier wants to know what can be known about Jesus through modern techniques of historical research. The aim is a portrait of Jesus that even non-Christians could theoretically accept. The scope is narrower than it appears, because there are many things about Jesus that, given the sources we have, simply cannot be known in this way. As Meier [has observed], what we don't know, we don't know. The resulting portrait of Jesus is, hereadily concedes, a fragmentary and unstable reconstruction that cannot serveas the basis for a faith commitment. The historical Jesus is not the same as the real Jesus.It is this methodological humility that separates Meier from many other contemporary writers on the historical Jesus.

John P. Meier's The Marginal Jew is a four volume -- soon to be five – over twenty year long study of the life of Jesus.  Although a Roman Catholic priest (and now Msgr.) Meier's goal is to produce a work that would be written by, in his words, a non denominational council locked in the bowels of Harvard's Divinity School using the tools of historical criticism.  Each volume has been hundreds of pages, bristling with footnotes and rigourous review of other works of scholarship.  Each volume has received the Church's imprimatur, and at least one, maybe more, was cited approvingly by Benedict in his works on Jesus of Nazareth.

At about the same time as Meier's first volume (1991) John Dominic Crossan's The Historical Jesus was published (and I read both it and Meier's first volume at the time.)  While, unlike Meier's, it was a best seller, I recall little about it except for noise and fury, revealing among other things that Jesus was a … Zealot.  (Meier's work had its own revelations, including his conclusion that, upon review of the historical record, Jesus had woman within his circle at a level equivalent to the Apostles ... and so woman priests could well be historically justified.  Go us.)

And now we see Aslan's work, Zealot, which claims very little can be known about Jesus historically, in some ways repeating Crossan, (and others back to the First Wave of historical Jesus scholarship); ignoring real scholarship like the magisterial work of Meier, and Raymond Brown before him, and any number of legitimate scholars.  But it is a best seller too. 


Thomas Tusser was right.