Recent Research on the Historical Jesus

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Over the past two hundred years, several have ventured towrite a history of Jesus, but few have discussed their method ofwriting about the past in any depth. Unspoken assumptions orbias often dictate what the historian will find. The fact thatthere are so many conflicting pictures of Jesus compounds theproblem. In the last thirty years of Jesus research, which havebeen identified as the Third Quest for the historical Jesus, historianshave agreed that Jesus makes the most sense within a Jewish context, a setting that allows historians to write about Jesus from various historical perspectives.Simpson addresses the issue of method in historical Jesus researchby looking at two prominent historians of the ThirdQuest-John Meier and James Dunn. Both Meier and Dunntypify distinct approaches to the historical Jesus, and both claimto be a part of the Third Quest. Simpson analyses their philosophyof history and historical method. In the second part of thebook, Simpson looks at how Meier and Dunn handle certainkey events in the life of Jesus. The treatment of these eventsserves as a way of highlighting the drawbacks and advantages ofeach method.These distinct approaches point to the tensions that make upthe Third Quest and illustrate how the concerns of recent research, evolving over a short period of time, have brought oldquestions to the surface in new ways. By describing the currentsituation of historical Jesus research as evidenced by Meier andDunn, Simpson maps out some promising lines of future research.