2012 - Michael D. Eldridge - Whose Jewish Jesus? - Part One. The Jewish And Christian Retrievals Of The Historical Jesus Contrasted

Transcript

‘Jesus the Jew – but what sort of Jew?’ asks John P. Meier in a lecture given in 2002.1 The question is significant for two reasons. First, it reflects a relatively recent emphasis within mainstream, predominantly Christian, scholarship: scholars now take very seriously the fact that Jesus was a Jew operating in a first century Jewish culture and environment. Second, the context in which the question is put is a new endeavour – usually called the Third Quest – to find out what kind of person Jesus really was as a historical figure living, acting and meeting death on the stage of first century Galilee and Judea. This is an enterprise in which a number of eminent scholars of undoubted Christian faith have been engaged, including James Dunn (Emeritus NT Professor of Durham University and a Methodist), Tom Wright (now retired Bishop of Durham and a leading Anglican evangelical) and John P. Meier, (a prominent American Roman Catholic scholar and priest).