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Quest For The Historical Jesus
The quest for the historical Jesus consists of academic efforts to determine what words and actions, if any, may be attributed to Jesus, and to use the findings to provide portraits of the historical Jesus.. Since the 18th century, three scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and based on different research criteria, which were often developed during each specific phase.''The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth''. by Ben Witherington III, InterVersity Press, 1997 (second expanded edition), pp. 9–13 These quests are distinguished from earlier approaches because they rely on the historical method to study biblical narratives. While textual analysis of biblical sources had taken place for centuries, these quests introduced new methods and specific techniques to establish the historical validity of their conclusions. The enthusiasm shown during the first quest diminished after Albert Schweitzer's critique of ...
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Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader; he is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most Christians believe he is the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah (the Christ) prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically. Research into the historical Jesus has yielded some uncertainty on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament reflects the historical Jesus, as the only detailed records of Jesus' life are contained in the Gospels. Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was circumcised, was baptized by John the Baptist, began his own ministry and was often referred to as "rabbi". Jesus debated with fellow Jews on ho ...
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Gotthold Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (, ; 22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781) was a philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and a representative of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature. He is widely considered by theatre historians to be the first dramaturg in his role at Abel Seyler's Hamburg National Theatre. Life Lessing was born in Kamenz, a small town in Saxony, to Johann Gottfried Lessing and Justine Salome Feller. His father was a Lutheran minister and wrote on theology. Young Lessing studied at the Latin School in Kamenz from 1737 to 1741. With a father who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, Lessing next attended the Fürstenschule St. Afra in Meissen. After completing his education at St. Afra's, he enrolled at the University of Leipzig where he pursued a degree in theology, medicine, philosophy, and philology (1746–1748). It was here that his relationship with Karoline Neube ...
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Two-source Hypothesis
The two-source hypothesis (or 2SH) is an explanation for the synoptic problem, the pattern of similarities and differences between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke were based on the Gospel of Mark and a hypothetical sayings collection from the Christian oral tradition called Q. The two-source hypothesis emerged in the 19th century. B. H. Streeter definitively stated the case in 1924, adding that two other sources, referred to as M and L, lie behind the material in Matthew and Luke respectively. The strengths of the hypothesis are its explanatory power regarding the shared and non-shared material in the three gospels; its weaknesses lie in the exceptions to those patterns, and in the hypothetical nature of its proposed collection of Jesus-sayings. Later scholars have advanced numerous elaborations and variations on the basic hypothesis, and even completely alternative hypotheses. Nevertheless, "the ...
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Albert Kalthoff
Albert Kalthoff (5 March 1850, Barmen – 11 May 1906, Bremen) was a German Protestant theologian, who along with Emil Felden (1874–1959), Oscar Mauritz (1867–1959), Moritz Schwalb (1833–1916) and Friedrich Steudel (1866–1939) formed a group in Bremen, named the Deutscher Monistenbund (German Monists League), who no longer believed in Jesus as a historical figure. Biography Kalthoff criticized what he regarded as the romanticist and sentimental image of Jesus as a "great personality" of history developed by German liberal theologians, including Albert Schweitzer who noted Kalthoff in his work '' The Quest of the Historical Jesus''. In Kalthoff's views, it was the early church that created the New Testament, not the reverse; the early Jesus movement was socialist, expecting a social reform and a better world, which was combined with the Jewish apocalyptic belief in a Messiah. Kalthoff saw Christianity as a social psychosis. (Per Arthur Drews, '' The Denial of the His ...
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Gospel Of Mark
The Gospel of Mark), or simply Mark (which is also its most common form of abbreviation). is the second of the four canonical gospels and of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells of the ministry of Jesus from his baptism by John the Baptist to his death, burial, and the discovery of his empty tomb. There is no miraculous birth or doctrine of divine pre-existence, nor, in the original ending ( Mark 16:1–8), any post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. It portrays Jesus as a teacher, an exorcist, a healer, and a miracle worker. He refers to himself as the Son of Man. He is called the Son of God, but keeps his messianic nature secret; even his disciples fail to understand him. All this is in keeping with Christian interpretation of prophecy, which is believed to foretell the fate of the messiah as suffering servant. The gospel ends, in its original version, with the discovery of the empty tomb, a promise to meet again in Galilee, and an unheeded instruction to spread the good ne ...
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Messianic Secret
The Messianic Secret is a motif in the Gospel of Mark, in which Jesus is portrayed as commanding his followers to maintain silence about his Messianic mission. Attention was first drawn to this motif in 1901 by William Wrede. Part of Wrede's theory involved statements in the New Testament by Jesus to demons who recognize his divine nature as well as to his followers not to reveal to others that he is the Messiah.William Wrede''Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien: Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Verständnis des Markusevangeliums'' (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901); English edition, William Wrede, ''The Messianic Secret'', trans. The Rev'd James C. G. Grieg (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1971).James L. Blevins. ''The Messianic Secret in Markan Research, 1901–1976''. Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1981. Wrede suggested that this theme was not historical but was an addition by the author of Mark. Wrede's broad concept of the Messianic Secret also involved the ...
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Eschatological
Eschatology (; ) concerns expectations of the end of the present age, human history, or of the world itself. The end of the world or end times is predicted by several world religions (both Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic), which teach that negative world events will reach a climax. Belief that the end of the world is imminent is known as apocalypticism, and over time has been held both by members of mainstream religions and by doomsday cults. In the context of mysticism, the term refers metaphorically to the end of ordinary reality and to reunion with the divine. Various religions treat eschatology as a future event prophesied in sacred texts or in folklore. The Abrahamic religions maintain a linear cosmology, with end-time scenarios containing themes of transformation and redemption. In later Judaism, the term "end of days" makes reference to the Messianic Age and includes an in-gathering of the exiled Jewish diaspora, the coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the righteou ...
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William Wrede
Georg Friedrich Eduard William Wrede (; 10 May 1859 – 23 November 1906) was a German Lutheran theologian. Biography Wrede was born at Bücken in the Kingdom of Hanover. He became an associate professor at University of Wrocław, Breslau in 1893, and full professor in 1896. He died in office in 1906. He became famous for his investigation of the Messianic Secret theme in the Gospel of Mark. He suggested that this was a literary and apologetic device by which early Christians could explain away the absence of any clear claim to be the Messiah. According to Wrede, the solution devised by the author of the Mark Gospel was to imply that Jesus kept his messiahship secret to his inner group of supporters. He also wrote a crucial study of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, which argued for its inauthenticity. In his work on Paul, ''Paulus'', he argued that without Paul, Christianity would have basically become just another backwater Jewish sect that would have had little influenc ...
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Johannes Weiss
Johannes Weiss (December 13, 1863 – August 24, 1914) was a German Protestant theologian and biblical exegete. He was a member of the history of religions school. History Weiss was born in Kiel as son of Bernhard Weiss. A perpetual scholar, he studied in the University of Marburg, the University of Berlin, the University of Göttingen, and the University of Breslau. He then taught as a professor at Göttingen since 1890, at Marburg since 1895, and since 1908 at the University of Heidelberg. He wrote many influential books and papers, and was instrumental in the development of New Testament biblical criticism. He was held in the highest regard by his contemporaries, and subsequent scholarship has continued to recognize his wide influence. F. Crawford Burkitt, ''Johannes Weiss: In Memoriam'', The Harvard Theological Review, Cambridge University Press and Harvard Divinity School, 1915. He died in Heidelberg. Ideas Weiss made the first exegesis of the Gospels from an perspective of ...
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Mythical
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrative as a myth can be highly controversial. Many adherents of religions view their own religions' stories as truth and so object to their characterization as myth, the way they see the stories of other religions. As such, some scholars label all religious narratives "myths" for practical reasons, such as to avoid depreciating any one tradition because cultures interpret each other differently relative to one another. Other scholars avoid using the term "myth" altogether and instead use different terms like "sacred history", "holy story", or simply "history" to avoid placing pejorative overtones on any sacred narrative. Myths are often endorsed by secular and religious authorities and are closely linked to religion or spirituality. Many soci ...
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Supernatural
Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin (above, beyond, or outside of) + (nature) Though the corollary term "nature", has had multiple meanings since the ancient world, the term "supernatural" emerged in the Middle Ages and did not exist in the ancient world. The supernatural is featured in folklore and religious contexts, but can also feature as an explanation in more secular contexts, as in the cases of superstitions or belief in the paranormal. The term is attributed to non-physical entities, such as angels, demons, gods, and spirits. It also includes claimed abilities embodied in or provided by such beings, including magic, telekinesis, levitation, precognition, and extrasensory perception. The philosophy of naturalism contends that nothing exists beyond the natural world, and as such approaches supernatural claims with skepticism. Etymology and history of the concept Occurr ...
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David Strauss
David Friedrich Strauss (german: link=no, Strauß ; 27 January 1808 – 8 February 1874) was a German liberal Protestant theologian and writer, who influenced Christian Europe with his portrayal of the "historical Jesus", whose divine nature he denied. His work was connected to the Tübingen School, which revolutionized study of the New Testament, early Christianity, and ancient religions. Strauss was a pioneer in the historical investigation of Jesus. Early life He was born in Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart. At age 12 he was sent to the evangelical seminary at Blaubeuren, near Ulm, to be prepared for the study of theology. Two of the principal masters in the school were Professors Friedrich Heinrich Kern (1790–1842) and Ferdinand Christian Baur, who instilled in their pupils a deep appreciation for the ancient classics and the principles of textual criticism, which could be applied to texts in the sacred tradition as well as to classical ones. In 1825, Strauss entered the ...
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