(3 of 9)
During the 18th century, however, Enlightenment scholars began to question the whole fabric of revealed religion. In the age of Newton, they believed that the Scriptures must be subjected to the same rigorous scientific scrutiny as the laws of nature; nothing could be taken on faith. One such self- confident rationalist was Thomas Jefferson. After leaving the White House, he wrote a biography of Jesus that kept many of the teachings but discarded numerous Gospel passages that, in his judgment, could not have been authentic. The true words, he said, were "imbedded as diamonds in dunghills."
Protestant scholars in Germany took the lead in the early 19th century, similarly sifting the New Testament for evidence of the flesh-and-blood Nazarene beneath the "myths." Often their Jesus turned out to be an inspirational preacher who bore a suspicious resemblance to a 19th century German. But by the 20th century, the great Protestant critic Rudolf Bultmann of Marburg University had concluded that such quests were fruitless. The Bible is so much an article of faith, so laden with unprovable events and legends, he contended in 1926, that "we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus."
In the years since Bultmann, who died in 1976, scholarship has been sharply divided. His Protestant heirs continue to view the New Testament as a seriously flawed historical document. Even Catholic scholars have moved toward this theory since the Vatican modified its traditionally strict view of the accuracy of the Gospels with a 1943 encyclical and a 1964 instruction allowing broader use of higher criticism.
At the same time, however, other scholars are going in the opposite direction, turning away from skepticism toward a renewed acceptance of much of what the New Testament postulates about Jesus and his teaching. The impetus comes in part from new evidence. As a matter of principle, Bultmann never visited the sites in the Holy Land and totally neglected the influence of Jewish culture on Jesus -- "a bad old German tradition with dangerous results," according to Martin Hengel of the University of Tubingen in West Germany. Hengel and his colleagues, and scholars elsewhere, are now reversing that anti-Semitic tradition, discovering that studies of Jewish culture in 1st century Palestine shed fresh light on the historical Jesus.
Tubingen's Rainer Riesner contends, for instance, that like most rabbis of his day, Christ probably preached in a pithy, aphoristic style that was likely to be faithfully remembered and recorded by his followers. "There is evidence that Jesus taught his disciples to recall his teachings by heart," says Methodist Thomas Oden of New Jersey's Drew Theological School. "We have the ipsissima verba, the exact words of Jesus. Why should they have been reported if they hadn't been actually remembered?"