The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Rating:
Summary: A true landmark
Review: Although quite long and involved, this book represents a true landmark in the history of the study of the life of Jesus Christ.
When it was published, it literally became the period at the end of a sentence - in this case, the book that ended what had come to be known as the First Quest for the Historical Jesus.
Schweitzer explained clearly that this quest had ended in failure, as 19th century German theologians failed to find the Jesus the longed to find - a man who was rather suspiciously like themselves - liberal, enlightened and most certainly not the eschatalogical Son of God.
It is rare that a single book can have such a great impact on the theological discourse of its time, but Schweitzer's book changed the course of New Testament investigation for at least the first half of the 20th century.
This book is a technical investigation, and certainly not for everyone, but for those who have the patience and the desire to work their way through the pages of Schweitzer's Quest, the reasons for the failure of the First Quest will become quite clear.
Now that we are in the middle of what has been called the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, Schweitzer's book is perhaps more relevant than ever.
For the real historical Jesus, we should all spend more time reading the Gospels, which were written by the very men who knew and walked with Jesus in his lifetime.
They still stand.

Rating:
Summary: A sweeping indictment on an era of pretentious scholarship
Review: Albert Schweitzer wrote this great classical study in 1906, back when historical criticism was predominantly a German enterprise. "The Quest of the Historical Jesus" eulogizes the quest of 1778-1901, indicting every scholar of this period for making Jesus over in his liberal self-image, for replacing the original Jewish apocalyptic prophet with a moral and ethical teacher suited to the Protestant temperament. As the reviewers below have observed, Schweitzer demonstrated that everyone had been peering into the well of the Gospels only to see themselves at the bottom. It's now become a cliche in historical-Jesus studies to speak of the painting telling you more about the painter than the subject being painted.

So who was the historical Jesus? For Schweitzer, he was an heroic, albeit deluded, messianic prophet dominated by the conviction that he was God's chosen instrument to announce the imminent end of history -- burning with apocalyptic zeal, marching to Jerusalem, confident that he could compel the Kingdom's arrival on earth through a voluntary death. But the anticipated divine intervention failed to occur, and Jesus was crushed by the system he defied, the entire drama ending on the cross. No resurrection.

Even if Schweitzer's portrait of Jesus is a bit extreme, he at least got the basics right -- that is, Jesus as an eschatological prophet -- and he rightly sounded the death knell for the liberal quest of the historical Jesus. And Schweitzer was a true prophet, for there has been a resurgence of the liberal quest, particularly in the work of the notorious Jesus Seminar. Just as the quest of 1778-1901 made Jesus into a liberal German Protestant, so now the Jesus Seminar has made him into a liberal North American humanist, fitting this mold in the guise of a non-eshatological cynic-sage divorced from Judaism. This Jesus is, as Schweitzer could have easily predicted, made over in the image of the Jesus Seminarians.

For more up-to-date works which follow Schweitzer in depicting Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, see E.P. Sanders' "The Historical Figure of Jesus", Paula Fredriksen's "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews", and Dale Allison's "Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet". Allison's book, in particular, is worth its weight in gold.

Rating:
Summary: A MUST for theologians, pastors, & serious Christians
Review: I don't think the above review understood the central theme or the historical importance of this monumental work. Fortunately, Mr. Price's eloquent review (below) explains Dr. Schweitzer's theme well: that most theologians who attempt to reconstruct the Gospels & the life of Jesus are simply projecting their own values onto the subject. The result is a normative portrayal of a "Christ of Faith," NOT a "historical Jesus." In fact, the "real" Jesus recedes into historical background as the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John also project their own values & interpretation onto Jesus' life. Who is Jesus, then? That is a question of faith, not a question of history.

Rating:
Summary: The Quest of the Historical Jesus
Review: I found this to be excruciatingly boring. The material is at best obsolete and of little value. A waste of time and money and not appropriate to one searching for a history of Jesus.

Rating:
Summary: Very well laid out, but somewhat outdated...
Review: I hold this book high and dear, despite a few disagreements. Anyone doing Jesus research should have this tome in their library. While I do feel this book is outdated (being it was written at the end of the First Quest and we are now in the Third) I do feel that better scholarship has been done out there that is more reliable and less blasphemous (such as John Meier, N.T Wright, Ben Witherington) and basically, while Schweitzer really did have a VERY good overview of the entire spectrum of historical Jesus studies, this book can be considered somewhat "outdated". The Jesus Seminar, as well as such scholars as Robert Funk, J.D. Crossan and Marcus Borg in both collaborated and singular efforts have claimed to not only carry on the legacy of David Freidrich Strauss, the supposed pioneer of what came to be the First Quest for Jesus, but they claim to take it further. While I heavily disagree with the Jesus Seminar and many of these "scholars" out there, I agree that they do take it further than any work in this book.

Scweitzer, however, outlines the book MASSIVELY well. He does not skimp on details and progress of the studies for each scholar he mentions and being a Theology professor himself, I do tip my hat to his studies. He does them well. He states more the studies of other scholars and does not go so much into what he has discovered. But I do feel that since this was written, there is much evidence against claims made in the book and, if you agree with the progress of the Historical Jesus studies, much better work out there, even by the Jesus Seminar.

This book is a great read, I recommend that if what I wrote interests you, buy it. However, you will definitely need much supplementary materials from both liberal and conservative scholars to revise your frame of thought.

Rating:
Summary: better tahn anything on the subject since, Schweitzer summar
Review: This book is a turning point in the history of Jesus studies. Schweitzer demonstrates how previous research was really an (unwitting) attempt by liberal and rationalist theologians to proof-text a Jesus who would embarrass orthodox Protestantism and serve as a figurehead for liberal ("Fatherhood of God, Brotherhood of Man") Christianity. Schweitzer showed how each historical reconstruction of Jesus uncannily matched the beliefs and agenda of the scholar in question. But Schweitzer knew the Christ of orthodoxy was not the historical Jesus either. One could only discover the latter by being willing to find the unexpected, and Schweitzer thought he found a Jesus who was a prophet of the end of the world, who expected to judge the earth as the Son of Man, and who died tragically mistaken. Even so, he still serves as a beacon of spiritual force for the ages. As does Schweitzer's great book!

Rating:
Summary: "There is silence all around..."
Review: This landmark classic demonstrates the cliche of "the painting telling more about the painter than the subject being painted". Almost everyone looks into the well of the gospels to find themselves at the bottom.

Schweitzer's Jesus, by contrast, stands on a foreign landscape of apocalyptic fanaticism -- as an heroic but deluded prophet dominated by the conviction that he was God's chosen instrument to announce the end of history; burning with apocalyptic zeal, marching to Jerusalem, confident he could force God's hand and usher in the kingdom through a voluntary death. But it didn't happen: Jesus was crushed by the system he defied, and the drama ended on the cross.

Even if Schweitzer's portrait of Jesus is a bit extreme, he got the basics right -- that is, Jesus the eschatological prophet -- and he rightly sounded the death knell for the liberal quest for Jesus. He was a prophet himself, for there has been a resurgence of the liberal quest in the work of today's Jesus Seminar. Just as the quest of 1778-1901 made Jesus into a liberal Protestant, the Seminar has made him into a liberal humanist, fitting this mold in the guise of a non-eshatological cynic-sage divorced from Judaism.

For more up-to-date works which follow Schweitzer's apocalyptic prophet, see E.P. Sanders' "The Historical Figure of Jesus", Paula Fredriksen's "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews", and Dale Allison's "Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet". Allison's book, in particular, is worth its weight in gold.