Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Jesus Creed Historical Jesus Series: Bultmann

Scot McKnight is running an excellent series on the Historical Jesus over on the Jesus Creed blog. Part 2 is headed Bultmann to the Jesus Seminar but focuses on Rudolf Bultmann. There is one comment I'd like to question:
If the days of Reimarus to Schweitzer were the old quest, the period of Bultmann is the “no” quest.
Dale Allison argues in "The Secularizing of the Historical Jesus" (which used to be available online, and which you can still grab from the archive.org if you don't have access to his recent book in which it appears) that the period of "no quest" or "non quest" is a phantom, and I think he makes his case effectively. As Allison points out, many books about the historical Jesus were produced during that period, e.g. most famously by Joachim Jeremias. The idea of a "no quest" really only comes from a particular reading of Bultmann's students' supposed relaunching of the quest in the 1950s and 1960s.

While on the topic, it is worth pointing out that one can read some Bultmann online; I've lifted the following from the relevant lists on the New Testament Gateway:
Rudolf Bultmann & Five Critics, Kerygma and Myth
Full version from Religion On-Line of the English edition of a famous book featuring Bultmann's essay "New Testament and Mythology", answers by five critics (Julius Schniewind, Ernst Lohmeyer, Helmut Thielicke, Friedrich K. Schumann & Austin Farrer) and Bultmann's responses.

Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word
Full reproduction of the English translation of Bultmann's classic book of 1926, prepared for Religion On-Line by Ted & Winnie Brock.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Repeating the "period of no quest" mistake?! As well as Jeremias' contributions to the continuing traditional quest and Bultmann, there is the Anglican Bishop A C Hedlam in 1923, the French scholars Guingenebert in 1933 and then Maurice Goguel. What about the Nazi influence and the Aryan Jesus: Chamberlain, Fiebig and Grundmann? See Casey "Who's Afraid of Jesus Christ?" in Crossley and Karner.