Marginal Christianity

  October 8, 2013 In the continuing scholarly discussion about the origins and nature of earliest “Jesus-devotion” (my term for the reverence given to the risen/exalted Jesus in early Christian beliefs, proclamation, and worship), a question repeatedly emerges, especially from the general public:  Did Jesus demand that he be so reverenced? In fact, not long after my book, Lord Jesus Christ:  Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity appeared (Eerdmans, 2003), I was invited by the editor of Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus to address basically the question of what kind of reverence was likely offered to the “earthly” Jesus.  My article on the question appeared in the journal in 2003 (pp. 131-46):  “Homage to the Historical Jesus and Early Christian Devotion,” and was re-published as a chapter in my book, How on Earth did Jesus Become a God? (Eerdmans, 2005, pp. 134-51). Essentially, I contend that a critical sifting of ...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion/2012/05/the-historical-jesus-four-theses/ May 6, 2012 By Michael F. Bird 0 Comments In light of the Anthony Le Donne saga , I thought I’d repost, “The Historical Jesus: Four Theses.” 1 .  The Historical Jesus is not …   a. The untheological Jesus. Our only access to Jesus is through the faith and theology of the early church. The Gospels contains a mixture of fact and faith, history and hermeneutic, authenticity and artistry. Jesus himself was theologically grounded and his message was about God (i.e., his message about God addressed the socio-political circumstances of Palestine and the position of Israel vis-a-vis God) . So we can expect to find theological matter (not abstract theology) in the historical Jesus and in the memory that Jesus himself generated.   b. A fifth Gospel . The historical Jesus will always be a reconstructed Jesus by historians and makes no attempt to become the authorizing narrative o...