Scot McKnight on Historical Jesus Studies

http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2009/05/historical-jesus-studies-a-dea.html

Let me define historical Jesus studies as the attempt to get behind the canonical Gospels to discover what the real Jesus was like. Inherent to the historical Jesus discipline is the belief that the canonical Gospels and the Church got Jesus wrong or are biased -- or should I say that the Church believes too much about Jesus and that the real Jesus was less than the Church's Christ. In other words, historical Jesus studies attempt to construct an image of Jesus in distinction from the canonical Gospels and the Church's beliefs.

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Let me say this one more way: Yes, historical Jesus studies try to get back to what Jesus was really like but involved in that is the belief that the real Jesus and the canonical Gospel Jesus are not the same. I know some conservatives conclude that virtually everything is authentic and conclude that the canonical Gospel Jesus is the same as the historical Jesus. But I don't think such studies really are historical Jesus studies. Critique of the Church's belief about Jesus is inherent to historical Jesus studies.

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I like this book, not because I agree with Allison's own conclusions about specifics, but because I came to some similar conclusions when I wrote Jesus and His Death. When I was done I wrote an introductory chp that sketches historical method and I concluded that the historical Jesus has very little use for the Church and that, essentially, we face a choice: we either believe the Church's construal (the Gospels Jesus) or we make up a Jesus for ourselves with the methods that cannot prove certainty. The historical method can only do so much -- and I tried my best in that book -- and the one thing it cannot do is get us back to a Jesus before the Gospels. Every construction always looks like the one who writes the history.