Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 40:4 (Dec 1997)
Article: The Historical Jesus Of Ancient Unbelief
Author: Douglas S. Huffman

JETS 40:4 (December 1997) p. 551

The Historical Jesus Of Ancient Unbelief

Douglas S. Huffman*

I. Introduction

* Douglas Huffman is assistant professor of Bible at Northwestern College, 3003 North Snelling Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55113–1598.

Christianity is not quite two thousand years young. The term “ancient” in this paper’s title, in view of history’s millennia prior to Christ’s birth, seems hardly applicable to studies of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But “ancient” is used here as a relative term. The focus of this study is not what people of recent centuries have thought about Jesus as an historical figure. Rather, it concentrates on what people thought about him in the first few centuries.

In the early Church, Christians identified Jesus as Christ. Now, in the modern Church, many consider themselves believers in the Christ of faith (as developed by the teachings of the Church) without believing in the identity of that Christ as the actual, historical person of Jesus.

But this distinction between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history need not be accepted as a recent developmental stage in the life of the Church. Even in the early years of the Church, explanations were offered that considered Jesus to be just another man in the stream of history. It is these early interpretations of the historical Jesus that this paper seeks to examine as explanations of unbelief (i.e. not believing Jesus to be the Christ that the early believers—and Jesus himself—claimed him to be). Herman S. Reimarus (d. 1768) is considered to have begun in modern scholarship the so-called quest for the historical Jesus. Colin Brown, however, suggests several possible earlier influences in the thought of Reimarus that evoke from him Albert Schweitzer’s praise for his uniqueness. 1

Now I am suggesting even older explanations. It must be acknowledged that, perhaps generally speaking, explanations found in modern quests for the historical Jesus have been proposed for different reasons than those of ancient explanations. The ancient worldview allowed for belief in the supernatural, and naturalistic explanations were offered out of unbelief (“I do not want to believe that”). The post-Enlightenment world of the modern questers has largely been one that emphasizes the believable, and naturalistic explanations of the historical Jesus are motivated more by disbelief (“I find that hard to believe”). Nevertheless this paper seeks to show modern works

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on the historical Jesus not as true innovations but as renovations (intentional or unintentional) of ancient unbelief. The seeds (or early versions) of the more b...