The Quest of the Historical Jesus

by Albert Schweitzer

Groundbreaking study that established the reputation of the famed theologian traces the search for the historical person of Jesus. Schweitzer examines works of more than fifty 18th- and 19th-century authors and scholars and concludes that many of the earlier historical reconstructions of Christ were largely fantasies. The criterion for all subsequent studies.

Genres: Religion, History, Christianity, Theology, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Christian

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1905

About the author

Albert Schweitzer, M.D., OM, was an Alsatian theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician. He was born in Kaisersberg in Alsace-Lorraine, a Germanophone region which the German Empire returned to France after World War I. Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of historical Jesus current at his time and the traditional Christian view, depicting a Jesus who expected the imminent end of the world. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 for his philosophy of "reverence for life", expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Lambaréné Hospital in Gabon, west central Africa.

Reviews

[Tony Sunderland · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the 18th and 19th centuries, European academics not only tried to flesh out the historical Jesus, they also attempted to make sense of the Gospels as documents that at some level described natural events. Given that Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels are composed from much of Mark’s text and John’s Gospel portrays a purely divine incarnation of Christ, the rationalist theologians concentrated their efforts with events as they occurred in the Gospel of Mark. This pioneering research was inspired by the triumph of the rationalist enlightenment and culminated in the publication of The Quest of the Historical Jesus in 1906. Authored by Nobel Prize winner, Albert Schweitzer, this landmark work consolidated decades of investigation into finding some sort of coherent vision of the human Jesus based on fact rather than faith. Schweitzer concurred with the idea that Marks gospel is the only document that can give some degree of independent and original illumination to this quest. He states:

‘The Gospel of Mark is not an epitome; it is an original Gospel. What the others have, and he has not, has been added by them, not omitted by him. Consequently Mark is a witness to an original, shorter Gospel-scheme, to which the additional matter of the others ought properly to be regarded as a supplement. Mark is the unornamented central column, or plain foundation stone, on which the others rest.’

For Schweitzer, Jesus is very much a man of his time and that any attempt to understand him or his motives must be seen through the social /cultural context of first century sectoral Judaism. Jesus lived and died as a rebellious Jew who firmly believed that the end of days was imminent. Therefore, if some real historical truth about the life of Jesus can be gained from Mark, then the Gospel should be analysed holistically and from the context and perspective from which it was written. In the first century, miraculous cures, exorcisms and even bodily resurrection of the dead were seen as a natural part of history. For example, a person of this time would have not understood our modern distinctions between the conscious and sub conscious mind. They would view this idea simply as a type of demonic possession. Even sicknesses were attributed to divine or demonic forces. There was a complete blurring between the material and divine. Schweitzer puts this idea forward in his analysis of Mark:

‘A division between the natural and supernatural in Mark is purely arbitrary, because the supernatural is an essential part of the history. The mere fact that he has not adopted the mythical material of the childhood stories and the post-resurrection scenes ought to have been accepted as evidence that the supernatural material which he does embody belongs to a category of its own and cannot be simply rejected as due to the invention of the primitive Christian community. It must belong in some way to the original tradition.’

Schweitzer also acknowledges the dilemma with making Mark’s gospel the only historical reference point for anyone seeking to find a glimpse of Jesus as a real person. The fragmented narrative of Mark at best only sketches a rough and incomplete picture of Jesus. For example, the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem poses more questions than answers concerning both the man and his place in history. This is the moment of truth for Jesus and his followers; but there is no framing story behind it. The ending of Mark: 10 places Jesus in Jericho where he restores the sight of a blind man. The Gospel then jumps to his entry into Jerusalem where it is openly proclaimed that Jesus has divine authority and kingly aspirations. The triumphant entry has Jesus as the chosen man of the people. His popularity obviously disturbs the Jewish priestly authorities but we are not given any explanation as to how he lost the support of the people who had thrown their clothes for him. It also provides other concerns about the logical progression of the Gospel’s story. As Schweitzer concludes:

‘How did the Messianic entry come about? How was it possible without provoking the interference of the Roman garrison of occupation? Why is it as completely ignored in the subsequent controversies as if had never taken place? Why was it not brought up at the trial of Jesus? ‘The Messianic acclamation at the entry into Jerusalem.’

For Albert Schweitzer, any attempt to find the historical Jesus through the books of the New Testament is more like looking into a mirror rather than a window into the past. We are more likely to see a reflection of how we see him through our own lens of belief and perspective. For example, it is almost certain that convicted criminals who were crucified by the Romans would have been placed naked on the cross. However, there are few (if any) modern depictions of a naked Jesus. Our Western sensibilities can give us a Crown of thorns and even the bloodied piercing of his side, feet and hands; but we are unable to see the humiliated saviour naked. If we see any vision of the Jesus of history through our own personal gaze, then that perspective should be open and honest. Schweitzer concedes that the Gospel narratives are disjointed and inconsistent. They are told from a perspective of confusion that relies more on faith that logical expression. The quest to find an historical Jesus that fits modern sensibilities becomes a futile task. As Schweitzer again concludes:

‘But who could possibly have had in early times a clear conception of the Life of Jesus? Even its most critical moments were totally unintelligible to the disciples who had themselves shared in the experiences, and who were the only sources for the tradition. They were simply swept through these events by the momentum of the purpose of Jesus. That is why the tradition is incoherent.’

The actions of Jesus are those of an apocalyptic prophet embedded in his own time and culture. The life of the historical Jesus cannot be transposed to meet complex agendas set by modern theologians. It is for this reason that Mark’s Gospel has diminished in importance and relevant for many contemporary Christian churches. The modern theologian prefers the more abstract and high Christianity given to us in John’s Gospel. The other Synoptic Gospels of Luke and even Matthew are also preferred above Mark because they diminish the essential Jewishness of the historical Jesus. Like the famed explorer, James Cook, the rationalist theologians became more famous for what they did not find; they could not construct a Jesus of history that could survive the scrutiny of a modern world that craved objective truth above faith. Albert Schweitzer was an ordained minister and Physician. His ‘Quest of the Historical Jesus’ may reflect his own need to reconcile the duality of a material world of indifference and suffering with the spiritual promise of salvation and light.
In a final cry for hope Schweitzer tells us:

'But the truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our time and can help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from Him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that which overcomes the world.’

This book was not published fully in English until 2001!

[Quo · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been said that Dr. Albert Schweitzer was a deeply religious non-believer. In reading The Quest of the Historical Jesus, we are confronted with Schweitzer's exhaustive study of scholarly research that occurred in 19th century Europe, with the aim of understanding who Jesus was in the historical context of his life.



The book does not attempt to explain Dr. Schweitzer's own religious belief but in appraising the work of other scholars, the conclusion is ultimately that the author's views were quite secular with regard to Christianity, preferring to focus on what he considered the ethical lessons of Christ's life on earth rather than his divinity.

In considering Schweitzer's own life, it must be noted that his father was a distinguished Lutheran minister and that Dr. Schweitzer himself served at a church as both an organist & a preacher prior to seeking a medical degree.

Interestingly, the church where Schweitzer served, offered services to both Roman-Catholics and to Lutherans at different times but using the same pulpit & altar, perhaps a key to Dr. Schweitzer eclectic religious stance & his lifelong interest in comparative religions, including his later study of beliefs that developed within India.

Schweitzer considered the greatest achievement of German theology the critical investigation of the life of Jesus, something that "cleared the site of a new edifice of religious thought, describing how the ideas of Jesus were taken possession of by the Greek spirit, tracing a growth that must necessarily become strange to us & has become strange to us."



It is Schweitzer's contention that "early Christianity focused on the Christ who was to come & to preserve the historic Jesus, included only detached sayings, a few miracles, His death & resurrection, handing down not biographies of Jesus but only gospels, an Idea & a Person with a minimum of historical & contemporary limitations."

Albert Schweitzer begins with a study of Hermann Samuel Reimarus, suggesting that prior to him, the only history of any interest was composed by a Jesuit in the Persian language. Much of The Quest of the Historical Jesus examines research by Reimarus & others in the 19th century that attempted to discern the nature of deism vs. theism, belief based on deductive reasoning rather than on divine revelation, with the latter coming up as insufficient. Schweitzer contends that:

This being so, the only way of arriving at a conclusion of any value is to experiment, to test, by working them out, two hypotheses--that Jesus felt Himself to be the Messiah, as the sources assert, or that He did not feel himself to be so, as His conduct implies; or else to try to conjecture what kind of Messianic consciousness His must have been, if it left His conduct & his discourses unaffected. The conclusion is that we possess no psychology of the Messiah.

Later, Schweitzer examines the research of two other scholars, Bahrdt & Venturini & comments that "from a historical point of view, testimony by the disciples on the life of Jesus offers no real explanations for the series of occurrences surrounding the life of Jesus, seeming to make Him subservient to a secret society, not acting with a perfect freedom but as showing a certain passivity, rather than someone who purposed to found a kingdom."



In effect, Jesus is explained as "the non-supernatural history of the Great Prophet of Nazareth." Beyond that, Schweitzer sees the story of the rise of Christianity as a "pastoral play" & Jesus as a "winsome teacher who offered forgiveness to all on the sole condition of loving Him".

According to the research of Renan, the French scholar, when in the midst of his ministry, Jesus returns to Galilee, "he had entirely abandoned his Jewish beliefs & a revolutionary ardor glowed in His heart." The moralist has become a "wonder worker" and "against His will, He is compelled to found his work upon a miracle." When He sets out for Jerusalem,

a strange longing for persecution & martyrdom had taken possession of Him. He has turned aside from His true path. The gentle, faithful, long-eyelashed mule bears Him amidst the acclamation of the multitude, through the gate of the capital.

The stage is dark & becomes constantly darker, until at last, through the darkness of the scene, there is faintly visible the figure of a woman--of her who in her deep grief beside the grave was by her vision to call to life again Him whom she loved. There is darkness too in the disciples & in that of the master. Did He regret His too exalted nature? Did He, a martyr to his own greatness, weep that he had not remained the simple carpenter of Nazareth? We do not know.

There is also a commentary on the fact that three languages met in Galilee in the time of Jesus--Hebrew, Aramaic & Greek, with the relation that each stood to each other, not completely known but perhaps the inherent cause of different & even contradictory translations of religious writings & religious instruction.

Aramaic was the language of ordinary people & Hebrew the "sacred language". Did the ordinary man learn a few verses, prayers & psalms? Or was Hebrew, as the language of religious worship, also current in wider circles? Scholars contend that it was not likely that synagogue discourses intended for the people can have been delivered in Hebrew or that Jesus taught other than in Aramaic.

The preface to The Quest for the Historical Jesus by F.C. Burkitt (Cambridge, 1910) suggests that: "we are bidden to choose between the Jesus of history & the Christ of dogma and that only a few scholars know what a protean & kaleidoscopic figure the Jesus is, for He has appeared in different forms to different minds. Thus, it may well be that absolute truth cannot be embodied in human thought & that its expression must always be clothed in symbols."



Albert Schweitzer is perhaps best known for his work at the hospital he founded at Lambarene in Gabon (West Africa) but he was a gifted organist who possessed both a PhD in philosophy as well as theology and a medical degree. Late in his long life, Albert Schweitzer fought for nuclear disarmament. Throughout his life, Dr. Schweitzer sought to comprehend the nature of theological belief, retaining a strong faith in humanity but without the formality of a specific religious creed.

The Quest of the Historical Jesus represents Dr. Schweitzer's long investigation into the nature of Jesus, his humanity and the claim that he was a Messiah & the Son of God. The book is not easy reading to be sure but it stands as a kind of case study of one man's deeply-considered personal quest to comprehend the nature of his own belief.

[Onyango Makagutu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am more convinced than I was before I started reading this book that the Jesus of the gospels did not exist. Albert Schweitzer does a good job outlining the critical lifes of Jesus that have been written and arrives at the conclusion that the Jesus of history is a fiction but he has a message of hope for the believer. He tells them not to lose their belief, but to find in the words of Jesus a reason to continue believing.

This is a great read

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume had been sitting around on the shelves for years, but only read years after the completion of seminary.

Albert Schweitzer was a hero to my family. During his years as a medical missionary in Gabon, Schweitzer would do annual tours as an organist, raising money for his work. Mother and her family would attend his concerts in Oslo. By the time I was born Schweitzer was an old man and, as I recall, occasional guest on The Tonight Show, hosted then by Jack Paar. I remember him because Mom and Dad thought his appearances there so important that I was allowed to stay up to see the great man. Indeed, such was his influence that sometime during grade school I read his childhood reminiscences for a book report requirement.

The Quest for the Historical Jesus is a book of monumental importance to biblical scholarship. Today it is a bit dated so far as research is concerned, but as a general overview of the state of such research up until the time of its publication in 1906, the book was quite relevant. Even now it is a salutory exercise to follow with the author the varying interpretations of the historic Jesus, if only to give one pause before getting too wed to one picture oneself. Schweitzer himself eschewed much certainty on the matter but did pronounce his belief that Jesus was an eschatologist--and therefore, interestingly, wrong. Schweitzer remained a Christian despite this conviction.

[Prickle]

Always interesting to read a historical work written before the First World War. I would honestly not recommend this book to about 99% of people, as even for its time it was really written for only a very select and specialized set of readers and not people who seek to be "entertained", but the historicity of Jesus is a topic that's long interested me and I thought I would go to one of the foundational texts on the subject. It certainly did not disappoint, even just for some meta-observations I made about the text. Most people may not pick up on it, but it is pretty amusing to see someone who would later be renowned as somewhat of an internationalist and arch-humanist taking underhanded swipes at the French and Catholics every time he's forced to bring them up. In fairness Schweitzer does point out their less than stellar track record as of 1905 of being unable to separate history and religious dogma. He does also in the very first pages make it clear that the project of historical inquiry into Jesus of Nazareth has almost exclusively been a German affair (that and he was born in a town called Kaiserberg in Elsass-Lothringen in 1875, so I do wonder what his thoughts were at eventually becoming a French citizen after WWI).

One can almost see the first part of this book as an Nietzschean exercise wherein Schweitzer reviews the prejudices, motives, and errors of earlier generations of researchers into the historical Jesus and calls them out appropriately. The conclusions drawn about Jesus from each school of inquiry from the post-Enlightenment rationalists to the later skeptics to the writers of the "liberal" lives of Jesus all invariably expose their own life and times in the process. It makes a sort of On the Genealogy of Historical Jesii so to speak. But similarly as Schweitzer points out the unconscious influences of the times on the portraits of Jesus, so one can indeed tell some of the influences of his time on Schweitzer as well. Indeed, was Nietzsche not a very current topic in the German intelligentsia in 1905? Much is made too on the contradictory "life-affirming" vs "life-denying" messages of Jesus which also seems have been a timely talking point of which Nietzsche would inevitably be associated with, though as Schweitzer points out that notion should rather extend more to Bruno Bauer instead who influenced and was an early supporter of Nietzsche.

Still, there is something interesting to be said of Schweitzer's high level of historical awareness, with on the one hand his blistering denunciation of the trend of "contemporizing" Jesus into something he never was and especially of trying to create a "German Jesus" for Germans, and on the other recognizing how up until 1905 almost no religious sect other than German Protestants have dared to touch the historical Jesus at such length and in such detail. Schweitzer is obviously proud of the German Protestant tradition but was highly dissatisfied at the contemporary state of investigations in Germany about Jesus in his own time which seems to have partly prompted his book. It is says a lot about the author I think that throughout his history he is sympathetic to the errors of past authors who are long dead and is willing to give them some leeway due to their historical circumstances, but is absolutely merciless in criticizing his own contemporaries who are still alive. Now there's someone who is not afraid of getting into the fray himself.

As I doubt many many people will ever pick up this book to read in full, I think he is worth quoting at length in this review, especially the excellent passage as follows:

"Since the [1860s] the critical study of the Life of Jesus in Germany has been unconsciously under the influence of an imposing modern-religious nationalism in art. It was been deflected by it as by an underground magnetic current. It was in vain that a few purely historical investigators uplifted their voices in protest. The process had to work itself out. [...] As of old Jacob wrested with the angel, so German theology wrestles with Jesus of Nazareth and will not let Him go until He bless it—that is, until He will consent to serve it and will suffer Himself to be drawn by the German spirit into the midst of our time and our civilisation. But when the day breaks, the wrestler must let Him go. He will not cross the ford with us. Jesus of Nazareth will not suffer Himself to be modernised. As an historical figure He refuses to be detached from His own time. He has no answer for the question 'Tell us Thy name in our speech and for our day!' But he does bless those who have wrestled with Him, so that, though they cannot take Him with them, yet, like men who have seen God face to face and received strength in their souls, they go on their way with renewed courage, ready to do battle with the world and its powers.

A time will come when our theology, with its pride in its historical character, will get rid of its rationalistic bias. This bias leads it to project back into history what belongs to our own time [...] The consequence is that it creates the historical Jesus in its own image, so that it is not the modern spirit influenced by the Spirit of Jesus, but the Jesus of Nazareth constructed by modern historical theology, that is set to work upon our race." -pgs. 310-311

As an aside it is quite charming to find period-appropriate metaphors about trains and telegrams and such in this work that add a bit of historical flavor. Indeed one amusing metaphor advanced was that Jesus, a deeply religious man, died upon the cross with a despairing cry of "My God, why hast thou abandoned me?" because he was futilely awaiting a "telegram from heaven" that never came.

Some textual criticism I found interesting was when previous investigators hypothesized that the writers of the Gospels may have several times inadvertently let something approaching the historical truth slip through when they contradicted themselves. This is why the knowledge of the Messiahship plays such a large part in this book, as if Jesus was declaring himself the Messiah the entire time and any Jew of that time could have made the inference, then why have that whole passage with the confession of Peter where Jesus is forced to reveal himself as the Messiah to his disciples at Caesarea Philippi? Shouldn't it have been obvious if he was really saying up and down Palestine that he was the "Son of Man", which could have been interpreted no other way to those who know their Bible? Thus the Messianic secret and the revelation of the Messiahship at Caesarea Philippi bear the mark of historical authenticity, as there would be no reason to invent such a story if Jesus was really making it obvious he was the Messiah the entire time. Further supporting evidence is that no mention of the supposed Messianic entry into Jerusalem was made in Jesus's trial when that obviously should have been a huge deal and red flag to the authorities if it happened. The High Priest then should have had no problem calling up witnesses then to denounce him as a false Messiah, but it is instead Jesus who condemns himself. The above examples struck me as very comprehensible results of exegesis and historical inquiry, even if they are not air-tight and there are still heated disagreements about Messianic knowledge and the Messianic secret to this day.

If the first part formed a history of the Quests for the historical Jesus, the last 70 or so pages formed Schweitzer's own view. Much of it was formed on the basis of the changing Messianic consciousness of Jesus and how he viewed the Parousia to be imminent. Schweitzer’s interpretation of the historicity of the gospel is not without merit and is at least very thought provoking. By the end of his theory I was half expecting him to turn around and start criticizing himself and the errors in his own reasoning, but I guess he would leave that to future pedants. To put it simply, he believes that the whole narrative and history hinges on eschatology which he views as the only authentic part of first-century Jewish and early Christian tradition not later invented by the Church, which goes a long way in explaining unexplained occurrences in the Gospels such as the confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi and why Jesus felt he needed to keep the Messianic secret: he felt the Parousia would be occurring in his own lifetime and doubted the people would believe him to be the Messiah, in fact Schweitzer argues it would be inconceivable to a first-century Jew to believe Jesus to be the Messiah, maybe a knowledgeable prophet or rabbi, but not the Messiah. Schweitzer views then that any teachings not associated with the eschatological view can be considered unhistorical, which explains also why Jesus sent out his 12 disciples with so little instruction in the way of teaching as he did not intend to teach spirituality to the people as such, but wanted them instead to spread the news that everyone must “Repent, because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” When this didn’t happen is when Jesus decided to head to Jerusalem, solely to die—solely in order to bring about the Parousia himself and take the cross from those not strong enough to bear it and redeem the sins of the many.

"Soon after [the Baptist] comes Jesus, and in the knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, He has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is His victory and His reign." -pgs. 368-369

It’s not an inelegant solution, especially compared to some of the utterly crazy ones proposed earlier in the Quest (Jesus was "acquainted with the art of treading water" and all that). Certainly Schweitzer’s explanation of Judas’s betrayal too is ingenious, as he argues that what he really betrayed was the Messianic secret to the Sanhedrin, thus allowing for Jesus's prosecution on charges of heresy.

Just for example, some of the previous historical theories often involved a conspiracy of an apocalyptic Essene sect or rationalistic explanations of miracles that in their mental gymnastics were almost as absurd as the miracles themselves. Even so one still somehow gets the impression that Jesus was a stage manager par excellence and a bit of an improvisor, who believed in at least one thing extremely strongly enough to die to prove it, but did not really intend to found a religion. In the end perhaps Reimarus, the first theorizer mentioned in the Quest, put it best when saying “No miracle would prove that two and two make five, or that a circle has four angles; and no miracles, however numerous, could remove a contradiction which lies on the surface of the teachings and records of Christianity", referring to Jesus’s saying that the current generation would not die out before his Second Coming, which obviously did not come. Thus perhaps from a modern point of view, if I can digress a bit, many of the Quests for the historical Jesus and even Christianity itself exist as little more as a feeding of dead and continuously delayed hopes with the unwillingness to acknowledge the inevitable, that Jesus's prediction of the end times was a tragic mistake. It's no surprise then that there was a gradual evolution away from the eschatological origins of Jesus instead to one emphasizing spirituality by the early Church which made something like the Gospel of John possible. But then again, that expectant waiting is not so different to what the Jews have also been doing for many thousands of years without an explicit promise from an earthly Christ. I'm reminded of that one Walter Benjamin quote, that for Jews the future was by no means empty, "For every second of time was the strait gate through which Messiah might enter."

In any case the recounting of the many attempts at finding the historical Jesus were not without purpose, as Schweitzer shows how each iteration provided useful historical information and theories to be dissected and passed down to the next, from the rejection of miracles as historical to the Marcan priority to his own "thoroughgoing eschatology" from a position of almost total ignorance of the historical Jesus of just a century and a half prior.

He also goes to great length to show how past authors like David Strauss were determined to get their Lives of Jesus published, often to the personal and professional detriment of the authors themselves who swam against the tide of Church dogma and contemporary theology. Nothing was lost however, and no one struggled in vain. Even just as an afterthought it provided for an excellent opportunity for an eisegesis of Biblical exegesis.

It’s worth it to read the whole book through just to understand the last seven or so pages that make up the final chapter. They are so clear, well reasoned, and indeed still just the right level of controversial on the issues facing historical scholarship that one is surprised it was written so long ago, but not surprised that the same man went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize about 50 years later. One will have to wade through dense debunked theological exercises in the middle section I'm afraid, but I can't help but feel that Schweitzer was onto something and closely approaches the current consensus when observing about Jesus that:

"He will not be a Jesus Christ to whom the religion of the present can ascribe, according to its long-cherished custom, its own thoughts and ideas, as it did with the Jesus of its own making. Nor will He be a figure which can be made by a popular historical treatment so sympathetic and universally intelligible to the multitude. The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma." -pgs. 396-397

And what are my personal views on the subject? I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait until my own 400 page treatise is published since obviously after reading this one book I consider myself now to be an authoritative expert on the subject.

[Ellie P. Hale · Rating 3 out of 5]

December 2024:

I don’t believe I was the target audience.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Albert the Alsatian looked very similar to that other Albert, the Einstein. Did anyone ever see them in the same room? Schweitzer's 'Quest' is an authoritative journey through European eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century studies on the historical Jesus. Schweitzer cuts a swathe through more than fifty authors and their ideas. The further I read into this book the more I enjoyed Schweitzer's writing style. Unfortunately, I've travelled backwards in time through this genre, which doesn't help. However, I found this 'quest' to really come on strong in it's later chapters, when the author reveals the eschatalogical nature of Jesus's agenda to initiate the end of times with his parousia. He puts strong points to highlight where the Baptist stood in this introduction of 'The Kingdom'.
My only crit is I'm never satisfied with all the post Easter treatments of the Historical Jesus. The back cover of this book states, 'The Quest of the Historical Jesus is essential reading for biblical scholars, theologians, pastors and serious Christians.' No mention of the historian.

[Caleb Burkhart · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've never been more ready to finish a book in my life. Yet with that being said, this book is invaluable for understanding the development of the historical Jesus project. Though outdated, Schweitzer's work is thorough and comprehensive in scope. He gives a panoramic view of the historical Jesus scholarship up until his time, along with critiques and his own proposal. For Schweitzer, Jesus was really nothing more than a thoroughgoing eschatologist that got, well, pretty much everything wrong. He finds no hope in reconstructing the historical Jesus, arguing that what Scripture gives us is (to use a Bultmannian term) the kerygma. Essentially, "The abiding and eternal in Jesus is absolutely independent of historical knowledge and can only be understood by contact with His spirit which is still at work in the world. In proportion as we have the Spirit of Jesus we have the true knowledge of Jesus" (395). That sounds all nice and pious, but in the end, without Jesus taking on human flesh in history, obeying the will of the Father, and pouring out his Spirit onto the church for the purpose of preaching the historical event and work of his passion, then as the apostle Paul says, "your faith is in vain" (1 Cor 15:14).

[Pierre E. Loignon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le protestantisme est un mouvement chrétien qui s’est formé en réaction aux abus de la tradition catholique, qui avait pratiquement remplacé les enseignements du Christ par l’établissement d’un système hiérarchique et d’une panoplie d’activités rituelles. En forçant le trait, on peut dire que la religion céleste était alors mise de côté aux profits d’une religion temporelle qui menaçait les populations et dirigeants sous son emprise de toutes les horreurs de l’enfer en cas d’insoumission.
Avec l’avènement de la réforme, c’est désormais la Bible qui servira d’autorité aux protestants, au lieu des traditions et de la hiérarchie chez les catholiques.
Mais, très vite, les développement de la science qui ont accompagnés la plus grande liberté d’esprit rendue possible par la réforme (aussi bien en territoire protestant que catholique (car il a bien fallu procéder à quelques ajustements)) et l’interprétation littérale de la Bible, qui imposait un joug encore plus sévère sur le quotidien que ne le faisait le catholicisme ont entraîné plusieurs à remettre en question la légitimité absolue de l’autorité spirituelle du livre sacré des chrétiens. Le protestantisme s’est ainsi développé vers une application toujours plus conséquente de ses principes.
Et si la Bible était elle-même le fruit d’une tradition et non pas la parole directement issue de la bouche du Christ? Ne doit-on pas écouter uniquement la voix de l’Esprit Saint et non celle des traditions et des hiérarchies? Jusqu’à quel point trouve-t-on le Jésus historique dans les Évangiles? Voilà le genre questions qu’on s’est alors posées.
Et Schweitzer fait ici, la synthèse des recherches les plus importantes qui ont été faites sur le sujet jusqu’en 1906, date de publication de ce classique incontournable pour quiconque prétend étudier sérieusement la Bible. Bien que les cent-six années de recherches bibliques qui se sont déroulées depuis constituent un trou important à combler, on ne peut trouver mieux comme point de départ.
Selon Schweitzer, les doctrines ecclésiastiques voilent bien l’histoire authentique de Jésus, mais les investigations historiques en font le prêcheur d’un royaume éthique terrestre qui n’a pas plus d’authenticité. Le seul moyen, selon Schweitzer, d’arriver à une conception juste du Christ consiste à croire en la possibilité de participer de manière spirituelle à l’essentiel de son message : « La personnalité historique concrète de Jésus demeure une inconnue pour notre époque, mais Son esprit, qui demeure caché derrière Sa parole, est compris dans la simplicité, et son influence est directe. »(399(ma trad.)) Il arrive ainsi bien près d’une herméneutique divinatrice à la Schleiermacher.
Pour ma part, il me semble que ce n’est donc ni la tradition, ni la hiérarchie, ni la lettre littérale, ni la critique historique qui compte vraiment pour Schweitzer, mais la participation vivante à la foi qui ressort de tout cela, peu importe la forme que cela doit prendre chez diverses individualités. Après tout, pour tout croyant véritable, n’est-ce pas à Dieu seul qu’il revient d’en juger?

[Chris Little · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book famous for being 'important' - make of that what you will - but not a straightforward read. It's a self-assured survey of mostly self-assured enlightenment thinkers whose self-assured positions extremely clever-dumb.

The people Schweitzer surveys are no intellectual midgets, but all hold to starting positions and interpretive shibboleths that are frequently flimsy in the extreme.

For example of an assumed starting position is the facile division between 'the Christ of faith' and 'the Jesus of history'. This seems to be pursuing 'neutral' historical truth - but no one is neutral, everyone is committed. There's no justification in the method of argument that a theological or doctrinal claim is automatically non-historical. Especially if the claim of the whole Bible, including gospels, is that they relate God's actions in history.

And example of an interpretive shibboleth is the way the theme of the so-called messianic secret is assumed to mean no-one anywhere thought of Jesus as the Christ, even as a possibility (exceptions to Peter, and later the other members of the Twelve). On this basis, other positions follow: there must not have been messianic thought on Palm Sunday's entrance, because none thought of Jesus that way; John the baptist did not ask about Jesus being the Christ, because he would not have used that term; etc. Again and again, these 'histories' explain away the only real evidence they have - the texts - in favour of their accepted agendas.

In many ways, the 'history' Schweitzer describes exemplifies the awful dead end of seeing sources as the 'real deal'. It's seen in 19th and 20th century literary criticism of the Bible, as well as this historical reconstructionism. It says, texts are only hints to the blurred reality behind them, which we can reconstruct! Hooray for us!

If that seems a harsh judgement, here are two things to say. Firstly, of course there are many fascinating and insightful things written in the histories referenced by Schweitzer. But secondly, pick up the tone of this survey as given in the very first paragraph, and expressed throughout:

When, at some future day, our period of civilisation shall lie, closed and completed, before the eyes of later generations, German theology will stand out as a great, a unique phenomenon in the mental and spiritual life of our time. For nowhere save in the German temperament can there be found in the same perfection the living complex of conditions and factors-of philosophic thought, critical acumen, historical insight, and religious feeling-without which no deep theology is possible.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want to read a thorough overview and critique of the literature of the "historical Jesus" during the 1800's this is your book. Schweitzer's knowledge of those who came before him in this field is impressive. He introduces each author and their attempt at writing about a historical Jesus. He then tears apart each argument in turn, while cherry-picking those ideas that agree with his own ideas.

I found this very interesting, though occasionally tedious, reading. As a stickler for logic, I have to point out that Schweitzer makes the same fatal mistake as those he criticizes, which is overstating the certainty of his conclusions. Really, what all these theologians demonstrate most clearly is how ultimately fruitless it is to chase ones own tail.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty heavy sledding.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE MAGISTERIAL HISTORICAL WORK WHICH SETS THE STANDARD FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) was a German theologian, preeminent "Historical Jesus" scholar, a concert organist (specializing in Bach), a philosopher, and a physician and profound humanitarian who became a medical missionary in Africa. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 413-page Macmillan paperback edition.]

He begins this 1906 book with the statement, “When, at some future day, our period of civilization shall lie, closed and completed, before the eyes of later generations, German theology will stand out as a great, a unique phenomenon in the mental and spiritual life of our time. For nowhere save in the German temperament can there be found in the same perfection the living complex of conditions and factors---of philosophic thought, critical acumen, historical insight, and religious feeling---without which no deep theology is possible. And the greatest achievement of German theology is the critical investigation of the life of Jesus. What it has accomplished here has laid down the conditions and determined the course of the religious thinking of the future.” (Pg. 1)

He suggests, “There is room for an attempt to bring order into the chaos of the Lives of Jesus… now, when the literary and eschatological methods of solution have led to complementary results, when the post-Straussian period of investigation seems to have reached a provisional close, and the goal to which it has been tending has become clear, the time seems ripe for the attempt to trace genetically in the successive works the shaping of the problem as it now confronts us, and to give a systematic historical account of the critical study of the life of Jesus.” (Pg. 12)

He first deals with Hermann Samuel Reimarus ['Reimarus: Fragments'], noting, “Before Reimarus, no one had attempted to form a historical conception of the life of Jesus… Thus there had been nothing to prepare the world for a work of such power as that of Reimarus.” (Pg. 13-14) He recounts how Reimarus speculated that Jesus’ disciples after his crucifixion thought, “Why not, then, continue this mode of life? They would surely find a sufficient number of faithful souls who would join them in directing their hopes toward a second coming of the Messiah, and while awaiting the future glory, would share their possessions with them. So they stole the body of Jesus and hid it, and proclaimed to all the world that He would soon return. They prudently waited, however, for fifty days before making this announcement, in order that the body, if it should be found, might be unrecognizable.” (Pg. 21)

Turning to the “fully developed rationalist” Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus, Schweitzer notes that “His limitation was that… he had an unconquerable distrust of anything that went outside the boundaries of logical thought.” (Pg. 48) He continues, noting that for Paulus, “The main interest centers in the explanation of the miracles… The Evangelists intended to relate miracles; of that there can be no doubt… in view of the advance in intellectual culture of the nations which have been led to accept Christianity, the understanding must be satisfied if the success of the cause is to be maintained. Since that which is produced by the laws of nature is really produced by God, the Biblical miracles consist merely in the fact that eyewitnesses report events of which they did not know the secondary causes. Their knowledge of the laws of nature was insufficient to enable them to understand what actually happened…

“With the miracles of healing… the case is very simple. Sometimes Jesus worked through His spiritual power upon the nervous system of the sufferer; sometimes, He used medicines known to Him alone… The nature miracles suggest their own explanation. The walking on the water was an illusion of the disciples. Jesus walked along the shore, and in the mist was taken for a ghost by the alarmed and excited occupants of the boat. When Jesus called to them, Peter threw himself into the water, and was drawn to shore by Jesus just as he was sinking… The feeding of the five thousand is explained… [Jesus] said to His disciples, ‘We will set the rich people among them a good example, that they may share their supplies with the others.’” (Pg. 51-52)

He considers in detail David Friedrich Strauss, suggesting, “In order to understand Strauss one muse love him. He was not the greatest, and not the deepest, of theologians, but he was the most absolutely sincere. His insight and his errors were alike the insight and the errors of a prophet. And he had a prophet’s fate. Disappointment and suffering gave his life its consecration… which, in the end, the gloom is lightened by the mild radiance which shines forth from the nobility of its sufferer.” (Pg. 68) He continues, “Considered as a literary work, Strauss’s first Life of Jesus ['The Life of Jesus Critically Examined'] is one of the most perfect things in the whole range of learned literature. In over fourteen hundred pages he has not a superfluous phrase; his analysis descends to the minutest details, but he does not lose his way among them…” (Pg. 78)

Schweitzer explains, “The principal obstacle, Strauss [says]… consisted in the supposition that two of our Gospels, Matthew and John, were reports of eyewitnesses; and a further difficulty was the offence caused by the word myth, owing to its association with heathen mythology. But that any of our Evangelists was an eyewitness, or stood in such relations with eyewitnesses as to make the intrusion of myth unthinkable, is a thesis which there is no extant evidence sufficient to prove… the offence of the word myth disappears for anyone who has gained an insight into the essential character of religious myth. It is nothing else than the clothing in historic form of religious ideas… embodied in a historical personality.” (Pg. 78-79)

Strauss argues, “From the triumphal entry to the resurrection, the differences between the Synoptic and Johannine narratives is so great that all attempts to harmonize them are sure to be rejected… But [for] the decision between John and the Synoptists… the decisive consideration is found in the ideas by which they are respectively dominated. John represents a more advanced stage of the mythopoeic process…” (Pg. 86) He continues, “The eschatological passages are therefore the most authentic of all. If there is anything historic about Jesus, it is His assertions of the claim that in the coming Kingdom He would be manifested as the Son of Man.” (Pg. 94)

Moving on to “The First Skeptical Life of Jesus” by Bruno Bauer, Schweitzer notes, “It was… a remarkable achievement on Bauer’s part to have thus set forth clearly the historical difficulties on the life of Jesus… Bauer pitilessly exposes the difficulties of the journey of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, and exults over the perplexities of the ‘apologists.’ … ‘Through the midst of Galilee and Samaria---and at the same time, for Matthew also claims a hearing, through Judea on the farther side of the Jordan!’” (Pg. 151) He notes, “Bruno Bauer hates not only the theologians, but Christianity, and hates it because it expresses a truth in a wrong way. It is a religion which has become petrified in a transitional form… and in this petrified form it held prisoner all the real forces of religion.” (Pg. 153-154)

Of Renan ['The Life of Jesus'], Schweitzer observes, “He offered his readers a Jesus who was alive, whom he, with his artistic imagination, had met under the blue heaven of Galilee, and whose lineaments his inspired pencil had seized… Renan had the skill to make them see blue skies, seas of waving corn, distant mountains… in a landscape with the Lake of Gennesareth for its center, and to hear him whispering of the reeds the eternal melody of the Sermon on the Mount.” (Pg. 181)

He concludes this study, “There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah… and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb. This image… has fallen to pieces … the historical Jesus of whom the criticism of the future… will draw the portrait… will not be a Jesus Christ to whom the religion of the present can ascribe… its own thoughts and ideas, as it did with the Jesus of its own making… The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma. The study of the Life of Jesus… set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Saviour… But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own.

“What surprised and dismayed the theology of the last forty years was that… it would not keep Him in our time, but had to let Him go… The historical foundation of Christianity as built up by rationalistic, by liberal, and by modern theology no longer exists; but that does not mean that Christianity has lost its historical foundation… Jesus means something to our world because a mighty spiritual force streams forth from Him and flows through our time also. This fact can never be shaken nor confirmed by any historical discovery. It is the solid foundation of Christianity.” (Pg. 398-399)

It should go without saying that this book is “must reading” for anyone interested in the study of the “historical Jesus,” as well as the corresponding development of German theology up through the early 20th century.

[Timothy Crouch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boy, while I would have numerous substantive disagreements with the portrait of the “historical” Jesus which Schweitzer eventually sketches, this is an extraordinary work of criticism and seems essential for grasping the atmosphere of German theology at the turn of the century. Schweitzer demonstrates, at tremendous length but with great elegance (and often laugh-out-loud hilarious wit) how profoundly and purely self-referential was the liberal critical quest for the Historical Jesus. More thoughts at my microblog, perhaps coming soon.

[Cincylitigator · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not think I have ever felt so much satisfaction at having completed a book. I took a very long time with this book as it sat beside my bed buried deep within my oft battery drained nook. Still something pushed me to the end persisting throughout the deep weeds of German theology. The more I read the more rewarded I was even to the 45 pages of footnotes I perused at the end. In the meantime I picked up a biography on the amazing Schweitzer, a fantastic tome of itself, and read a historical perspective on Quest by a brilliant biographer up to the task of handling a Gibraltar of a person like Schweitzer. So what is so moving and impactful about Quest? Is it Schweitzer’s novel theory that Jesus was wholly mistaken in the view he held of his own ministry as an eschatological mission to bring the kingdom to fruition immediately? Largely yes, this stunning theory is unveiled at the end of the book only after the cataloguing of all German thought on the life of Jesus for the better part of two centuries during which the critical method evolved and then flourished. All of that material along with Schweitzer’s book are written in German and so otherwise inaccessible to the English speaker if not for this wonderful work. So where does that leave faith knowing that Jesus lacked the self awareness of his own mission, did not view his death as a sacrifice for the world let alone generations living millennia from the events?. The answer is one’s faith is provided a beautiful harbor large enough to accommodate Schweitzer himself who in addition to establishing a thriving African medical mission still expanding to this day, continued in his role as pastor to his congregation in west Africa to his dying breath. The details of that harbor I will refrain spoiling beyond any damage I have already sown. For me the rewards along the journey consisted of Schweitzer’s own brilliant exegetical insights which are scattered throughout, some of which involve rearranging the text to better replicate the underlying purposes of the oral tradition on which the gospels were based from the apostles and to eliminate the biases of the anonymous annotators. Some involve the prioritizing of the cannon itself to counteract the expansion of the story that manifested in later writing. These insights could only come from a learned and eminent mind such as Schweitzer’s that yield treasures that are sound. Now I look forward to revisiting the gospels equipped with some new insight into the mind of Jesus thanks to Schweitzer and the entire school of German higher criticism. I expect it will be a visit in which Jesus may cut a more three dimensional frame rather than the two dimensional flannelgram cut out i had previously superimposed based on theological supposition.

[Miles Nilsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Albert Schweitzer must be read carefully because he is a quintessential German scholar who takes a subject and explores every single aspect of it that he can think of and does not end his own quest until he has finished with each question raised by his subject. Schweitzer explores several dozen attempts to write biographies of Jesus going back further than the eighteenth century. He takes each one on its own terms, presenting what the original author thought, and only when he has presented their case for them does he begin his own critique of their methods and conclusions. In the final chapters, he presents his own solutions to the problems posed by the attempt to find the historical Jesus.

The basic problem he finds is that Jesus is a man of his own time. Whatever is timeless about him (Always “Him” with a capital “H” because that is the traditional way to speak of Jesus, and Schweitzer accepts that tradition.), comes out of the context of his belief that the world is about to come to an end, which is what Schweitzer means when he refers to the importance of “eschatology” for all of Jesus' teachings. One of Schweitzer’s most trenchant criticisms of “modern theology” is that it revels in finding sayings and lessons in Jesus’ teaching that can be stripped of their eschatological context. Paradoxically, Schweitzer believes that a modern Christian learns from Jesus how to be in the world precisely by understanding and feeling the tension between the original eschatological context of each of Jesus’ teachings and its application to the modern world by the modern Christian.

Schweitzer interprets several points in the narrative in unique ways that most Christians probably don’t see, but Schweitzer’s “thoroughgoing eschatological” approach and his acceptance of the idea of the “messianic secret” lead him to fresh insights into Mark’s narrative.

The messianic secret—the idea most on display in the Gospel of Mark that Jesus avoided at all costs anyone learning that he is or conceives himself to be the Messiah, the expected savior of Israel in Jewish tradition—is belied in other gospels such as Luke where two devout strangers witness Jesus’ dedication at the Temple and openly identify him as the one who was prophesied. Indeed, between Matthew and Luke, whole Christmas pageants of characters from shepherds to wisemen know who Jesus is. And the Gospel of John portrays Jesus as telling everyone who he is incessantly.

Not so Mark. Many post-Schweitzerian commentators still claim that Mark’s portrayal of demoniacs and a blind man calling Jesus “Son (or Holy One) of God” or “Son of David” indicates that they know that Jesus is the Messiah (“Christ” in Greek), but Schweitzer doubts that anyone among the onlookers in these narratives really draws equal signs between these various designations and “Messiah.” None of those who hear these titles awarded to Jesus seems to make anything of them except that the demoniacs are madmen and the blind man is shouting annoyingly.

Moreover, when Jesus enters Jerusalem and people honor him, are they necessarily honoring the Messiah? Schweitzer thinks they have no idea. To them, Jesus is a famous healer and rabbi, perhaps a prophet, but the Messiah? To be sure, says Schweitzer, Jesus believes he is the Messiah and for this reason he fulfills the prophecies, riding into Jerusalem on an ass and so on. But if anyone else knew that he claimed to be the Messiah, he would have been arrested and condemned by the priests sooner than he was.

Schweitzer believes that the betrayal of Jesus by Judas was not merely a matter of where and when Jesus could be captured but that Judas knew—and told the priests—that Jesus believed himself to be the Messiah. This would have raised a problem for the council that was later to try Jesus, because Jewish law required more than one witness to accuse someone of such blasphemy. Judas alone could not have made the case against Jesus. And this is why the council tries to bring testimony for numerous other crimes before the High Priest Caiaphas asks Jesus out of the blue whether he is the Messiah, at which point Jesus proves that they need not have tried to bring so many other charges against him, since all they had to do was ask this one question and he would have accommodated them. Thus, Jesus condemns himself in the eyes of the council.

But notice how the messianic secret gets out, according to Schweitzer’s reconstruction of Mark. At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks a fateful question: “Who do people say I am?” And the even more dangerous question, “Who do you say I am?” that leads Peter to say that Jesus is the Messiah. Here Schweitzer makes an interesting literary adjustment, believing that Mark has made a serious error in his sequence of events, having rearranged them so that Peter makes his confession before he, James, and John witness the transfiguration of Jesus in his divine state. Schweitzer argues that it makes better sense if the transfiguration takes place before the confession, demonstrating the source of Peter’s insight. If so, this has perilous implications for Peter because, immediately after the transfiguration, Jesus told Peter and the other two apostles not to tell anyone about what they have seen, and yet, according to Schweitzer’s reconstruction of the sequence of events, Peter blabs the secret at the next disciples’ meeting. (One does wonder why Jesus asked the question if he did not want to risk it being answered.) Whereupon Jesus repeats the command not to tell anyone, but now including all of the apostles, especially Judas, who has now learned the secret and is able to repeat it to Caiaphas or one of the high priest’s minions. But notice that Peter’s own betrayal of Jesus is compounded by his confession of Jesus’ identity.

Another fascinating insight has to do with John the Baptist, who vaguely speaks of one who will come after him, but does not actually mention that individual’s title, and is not clearly saying that it is Jesus across all of the gospel accounts. Indeed, it is curious that the Baptist is shown to be implicitly identifying Jesus as his successor at one point, and yet, when he is in prison, the Baptist sends followers with questions as to Jesus’ identity. To understand these identifications and their significance, it is necessary to recognize that one of the most important figures in Judaism is Elijah. He was an ancient prophet who was noted for his performance of miracles, especially healings, and Jewish eschatology had it that Elijah would precede the Messiah at the end of this world. (It was not that Elijah would be reincarnated or resurrected, but rather that the one who came just before the end would fit the description and fulfill the function of Elijah.) The Christian assumption has long been that the Baptist was Elijah to Jesus’ Messiah, but Schweitzer shows that not only is this not made explicit in John the Baptist's own testimony, but there are reasons to doubt that the narrative is telling us that everyone was on the same page about who was who. So, when John’s disciples ask Jesus whether he is Elijah, Jesus tells them that John is Elijah. Apparently, this is news to John.

Connections between Jesus and Elijah come up more than once as when the three disciples witness the transfigured Jesus meeting with Moses and Elijah, and when Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is, and they tell him that some say he is Elijah. This makes sense because, like Elijah (whom Schweitzer calls “Elias,” which is the Greek version of the Hebrew name), Jesus performs miracles whereas John the Baptist does not. Like a bad running gag, reference to Elijah even comes up during the crucifixion when some onlookers hear Jesus quote the 22nd Psalm with its opening words “Eloi, Eloi (My God, My God)” and say to each other that they think Jesus is calling upon Elijah to save him.

It took me over a year to read this book. Schweitzer’s encyclopedic knowledge and thorough methodology make this book a difficult read, even if there are moments of levity as when Schweitzer notes that it is a good thing that one scholar knows exactly what Jesus was thinking at a particular moment because none of the gospels is able to tell us.

For anyone interested in the search for the historical Jesus, this is still, after more than a century, the indispensable book on the subject.

[Lu Tsun · Rating 3 out of 5]

REVIEW AND CRITIQUE Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede. Translated by W. Montgomery. New York, MacMillan, 1968.

The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1968) is the English translation of Schweitzer’s original work in German, Von Reimarus zu Wrede (1906).

While the ecclesiastical doctrines had veiled the authentic history of Jesus the Nazareth, in Schweitzer’s view, the historical investigation of Jesus’s life throughout the nineteenth century had further disintegrated and distorted the image of Jesus into a preacher of an ethical earthly kingdom conforming to the expectations of modern interpreters. Such a “Jesus,” as Schweitzer concluded, “never had any existence (398).”

Schweitzer’s genius insight was that the life of Jesus, not just his preaching, could not be reconstructed coherently unless we accepted the apparent “mythical” elements in Jesus’s own mind, i.e., the belief that Jesus himself would be the Messiah who should immediately inaugurate the celestial Kingdom of God through his consecration unto death and triumphant resurrection and the Parousia. Following this new thread of historical investigation, Schweitzer believed that the more genuine Jesus “will not be a Jesus Christ to whom the religion of the present can ascribe…nor will he be a figure which can be made by a popular historical treatment;” “the historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma (398).” In conclusion, “the whole history of Christianity down to the present day…is based on the ‘delay of the parousia’, i.e., the fact that it did not take place, hence the abandonment of eschatology, and the resultant progressive de-eschatologizing of religion (360).”

Critiques:

The weaknesses of Schweitzer’s arguments become obvious from the retrospective hindsight of the twenty-first century: 1) Schweitzer’s understanding of Jesus’s eschatology and the eschatological expectations of Jesus’s Jewish backgrounds was unsophisticated and not nuanced. But his lack of use of early Judaism materials in historical reconstruction is now complemented by the “third quest.” 2) Schweitzer overlooked the significance of the OT in shaping the life of Jesus and the theologized presentation of his life in the NT. 3) Schweitzer was uncritical in the orientation of modern skepticism and operated too many speculative reasoning based on the “impossibility” of the biblical testimony about Jesus.

The eschatological orientation of Jesus, Paul, and the whole NT is no longer a novelty to scholars. But Schweitzer was not radical enough to see the fact that not only the life of Jesus, but the whole Christian religion that streams forth from the historical Jesus cannot be coherently explained unless we accept Jesus’s thoroughgoing supernaturalistic and eschatological orientation.

[Kenneth Schmidt]

One cannot discern Jesus by simple intellect. The only way to discern the historical as well as divine Jesus is by grace given by God the Father; for Jesus' deity and humanity are inseparable. It's always been mans' downfall to take the prideful route and believe they know better than God. God asks nothing for this special relationship other than to believe in Jesus as God and man One and the same and all He did for wretched mans' salvation.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really just about as good as had been told. Some of the endless accounting for previous scholarship was a little boring, but his conclusions and interactions with them are often witty and intriguing. I'd give it 5 stars, but I think his general reaction against this scholarship is a little myopic. Thoroughgoing eschatology is the answer to all...? Eh.

[G0thamite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great review of the "historical Jesus studies movement" from the Enlightenment till Schweitzer's time. A must read for anyone interested in how the major figures of this movement interpreted the text - their presuppositions and conclusions. Goes into great detail on the main interpreters.

[WT Sharpe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely informative, well-researched, and dry as a desert after a ten-year drought.

[Leew49 · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If a difficulty arises in regard to the Holy Scripture and we cannot solve it, we must just let it alone." --Martin Luther

Schweitzer and more than a century of German theological thought disagree emphatically. Written in 1910, Schweitzer's book is an ambitious attempt to reconcile Christian dogma with what was known about the historical Jesus. This reader was reminded almost from the first page that scholars write for other scholars, and that there are in any work of this nature certain built-in assumptions about the knowledge and even the vocabulary of the audience. Nevertheless, what I could bring away from Schweitzer's work was worth the effort.

Examinations of Jesus's life have had to address a number of questions, often answered in radically different ways, depending on the assumptions and method of the writer. Among the problems that have been examined are the apparent discredited eschatology of the early Christians, the relation of the Synoptic Gospels to that of John, and Jesus's own self-awareness. Did He think of himself as the Messiah? If so, when did He arrive at that opinion? What kind of Messiah: an earthly successor to David, or something on a more supernatural plane? Was the Kingdom of God believed to be imminent on earth, or a reference to an afterlife? What about the opinions of the disciples and the general populace? Does the expression "Son of Man" indicate mortality or is a reference to the Book of Daniel? Why did Jesus sometimes seem to obscure His meanings and caution the disciples to silence about his real purpose? Is Mark the earliest of the Gospels and therefore more historically accurate? Why does the sequence of key events, such as the cleansing of the temple, vary so drastically between Mark and John? What if any was the influence of the Jewish religion at the time on Jesus's thinking, and on the interpretation put on it by the early Christians? Are the miracles real events, symbolic representations of deeper truths, or something that can be explained by rational analysis? In this last instance I got the distinct impression that "rationalism" can at times become so highly speculative in its search for mundane explanation as to become almost its own mythology, as in the many suppositions regarding Jesus as part of an Essene conspiracy or a sort of magician who was able to convince the masses of his special powers. A related question is this: Did the actions of Jesus and the events of His life fulfill Biblical prophecy, or were they contrived to seem that way?

Schweitzer, translated by W Montgomery, was a gifted writer with a real talent for metaphor and understated irony. By its very nature this book must raise more questions than it answers, but that does not make it any less stimulating and enjoyable

[فؤاد · Rating 3 out of 5]

در دوران مدرن، گروه‌های مختلف تلاش‌های مختلفی کردن برای مطالعهٔ علمی و بی‌طرف انجیل. مسیحی‌های مدرن (مثل اشلایرماخر و هارناک) معتقد بودن مسیحی‌های اولیه به خاطر شیفتگی نسبت به مسیح، در موردش غلوهایی کردن و حولش افسانه‌پردزای کردن. در واقع عیسای تاریخی معلّم اخلاق بود که محبت به همنوع رو تعلیم می‌داد و با مطالعهٔ تاریخی دقیق روی انجیل و جدا کردن بخش‌های تاریخی از افسانه‌هایی که بعداً ساخته شده، می‌شه چهرهٔ حقیقی عیسای تاریخی رو پیدا کرد. عیسای تاریخی یعنی اون عیسایی که واقعاً وجود داشته، در مقابل عیسای ایمانی یعنی اون شخصیت افسانه‌گونه‌ای که در اناجیل و ایمان مسیحی شکل گرفته.

آلبرت شوایتزر بعد از یک قرن مطالعات تاریخی بر روی انجیل اومد و کتاب «در جستجوی عیسای تاریخی» رو نوشت. توی این کتاب شوایتزر ابتدا نظریات محقق‌های مختلف راجع به عیسای تاریخی رو نقل می‌کنه و نشون می‌ده که این محقق‌ها بیشتر از اون که بخوان عیسای واقعی رو بشناسن، می‌خوان باورها و گرایش‌های خودشون رو به عیسا تحمیل کنن و عیسا رو «مدرن» کنن. عیسای تاریخی این محقق‌ها درست همون حرف‌هایی رو می‌زنه که انسان مدرن بعد از اعلامیهٔ حقوق بشر و جنبش‌های برابری می‌زنه.

شوایتزر می‌گه برای تحقیق تاریخی واقعی «گشودگی» مهم‌ترین شرطه. نباید خواسته‌های خودمون رو بر وقایع تاریخی تحمیل کنیم. بلکه باید پیشفرض‌های خودمون رو کنار بذاریم و بذاریم اون وقایع خودشون حرف بزنن، حتی اگه این حرف با خواسته‌های ما خیلی فاصله داشته باشه. حتی اگر این حرف برای ما نامعقول و حتی تضعیف‌کنندهٔ ایمان مسیحی باشه. تحقیق تاریخی قرار نیست به نفع ایمان دینی عمل کنه.

برای تحقیق تاریخی در مورد انجیل باید در محیط تاریخی اون دوره خوب تحقیق کنیم تا ببینیم یهودی‌های اون عصر چطور فکر می‌کردن و چه مسائلی براشون مطرح بوده. بعد بریم سراغ اناجیل و ببینیم عیسای یهودی در پس‌زمینهٔ دوران خودش چی کار می‌خواسته بکنه.

بعد شوایتزر با استفاده از انجیل مرقس (که تحقیقات تاریخی نشون داده قدیمی‌ترین انجیله) نشون می‌ده عیسای تاریخی پیامبری آخرالزمان‌باور بوده. یعنی معتقد بوده که به زودی جهان پایان خواهد یافت و برای همین مردم رو به توبه تشویق می‌کرد، قبل از اون که فرصت از دست بره. شوایتزر قبول داره که این چنین عیسایی با این چنین پیامی هیچ فایده‌ای برای مسیحیان مدرن نداره، نه بهشون معنویت می‌ده نه کمک می‌کنه اخلاقی‌تر باشن، اگه تازه ایمانشون رو تخریب نکنه. اما می‌گه نمی‌شه به بهانهٔ تقویت ایمان یه شخصیت رو تحریف کنیم و معتقد باشیم اون شخصیت برای ما محترم و مقدسه. احترام واقعی به یه شخصیت اینه که بذاری خودش باشه و حرف خودش رو بزنه.

[Gerald Jerome · Rating 2 out of 5]

Man I'm glad I'm done with this one. You can thank the author's infatuation with his own writing for the endlessly long-winded and sentimental sentences. Yet another work of watching theologians creatively interpret things by cherry-picking elements to deconstruct and forcing their own meaning into it ("exegesis" is a convenient blanket term to conceal "eisegesis"). Then, by the next paragraph we're already treating these new postulates as axiomatic for our continued embellishments of theory.

If you want to disagree with the miracles of Jesus from a rational naturalistic perspective and disagree with the Biblical story of Jesus for good evidence of contradiction, go for it. But when you have to resort to picking something you don't like and saying "No Jew of the time would have said/done this." then it just reeks of desperation. For some reason, the very existence of books like these will continue to convince the layman that the case is settled, but I suppose we're all guilty of finding our biases wherever we can.

Two stars because the man at least did his research and put effort into writing about it.

[Murray Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I plucked this book off my parents’ bookshelf and started reading, I didn’t realize it was more than 100 years old. I expected a modern take on “the historical Jesus,” sorting through the limited biographical evidence to present the outline of a life, and probably either explanations or dismissals of the miracles. Instead, I found a deep theological debate of questions which never occurred to me. Judging from this book, the number one questions about Jesus, at least in 19th century Germany, was whether he believed himself to be The Messiah. That was a question which not only had never occurred to me, but one in which I had zero interest. I still struggled through close to a hundred pages fine-tuning this argument before I gave up. I did skip to the end, which basically said, we can’t try to update Jesus to our time, we must understand him in the context of his time. I don’t consider reading this book to have been a waste of time, for it introduced me to many concepts I was not aware of, but it was a struggle, and I’m not sure I would have tackled it if I had known its contents.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was astounded! Schweitzer concludes, “The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence.” Published in 1911, this book is critically out-of-date with modern scholarship regarding the bible and Christianity. And yet, it is fascinating because it documents [beginning in the mid 1700’s] the history of critical German scholarship that led us to the place where we are today. It gave me an in depth looks at the roots of the scholarship in the books I have been reading lately.
It is a CHALLENGING book to read. Schweitzer is writing for scholars who are thoroughly familiar with the New Testament. As such there are many words and phrases in Hebrew, Greek and Latin without any translations. The vocab is academic and the style contains long, complex sentences that often required me to go back and reread. It has been a challenge, but it was worth it.

[Ron Badgerow III · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. I don't really like using that phrase, emotion, or whatever you call it. However, that is precisely how I felt about Albert Schweitzer's delve into the foremost critical Biblical German scholars of the mid-19th century and the problems they identified within the Gospels. Some of their perceptions were enlightening, while others left something to be desired. Schweitzer's own extremely biased assessment at the end felt a little too trite and not nearly comprehensive enough for my taste. I rated this 3 stars, but really wish I could rate it 2.5 stars.

[Dennis Gunnarson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Schweitzer shares some valuable information about the history of rationalism’s attempt to understand the mechanics of Jesus’ life in a non-miraculous context. However the long sentences, switch-backs and conflicting stories make the content hard to follow. He reviews a large number of authors ands thinkers. This would have been better to have been written as an encyclopedic resource than a history.

My take away is that these thinkers stumbled across the awareness that history does not serve the scientific world well. The agenda of historic works hold to values very different from our own.

[Jeanetta A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A stretch for understanding

This book was difficult to read, let alone understand. I could see some parallels common in today's arguments that confine Christ to a box and making Him less than He is. It was difficult getting into the minds of nineteenth century German theologians. The final chapter cleared 1hings up for me quite a bit. At least Schweizer's understanding was more in keeping with my own.

[Marlene M. Oaks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating

This book probably gets too far in the weeds for most people. I found the attempts over 100+ years to identify the actual historical Jesus fascinating. In the end it seems impossible, with the writings we have, with all of their contradictory and confusing points. So we come to feel the impact of his words just as they impacted his followers, who, like us, didn't know about him either. We feel him. We get him.