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The Historical Jesus
Nov. 26th, 2025 09:44 am Every so often Quora sends me a debate about the historicity of Jesus and I go upstairs to have a shower and find I'm thinking about it.
Albert Schweitzer wrote a brilliant book on the Search for the Historical Jesus which is both scholarly and funny. He concluded every one who has written about Jesus creates an image of him in accord with their age and culture and individual predilections and the actual Jesus- if he even existed- is unknowable and, being so far away in time- quite alien to us.
Did he even exist? That's an open question. As with Lao Tzu, Buddha and Mohammed, all the early scriptures and chronicles date from a good while after his supposed lifetime. My own opinion, for what it's worth, is that you don't create figures like this out of whole cloth- and that there was almost certainly a real person- however poorly attested and badly reported- on whom the legend was built. For the record I think the same to be true of King Arthur and Robin Hood.
But the bigger point is that it doesn't matter. The legend and the teachings are what they are. Take from them what you can use.
Albert Schweitzer wrote a brilliant book on the Search for the Historical Jesus which is both scholarly and funny. He concluded every one who has written about Jesus creates an image of him in accord with their age and culture and individual predilections and the actual Jesus- if he even existed- is unknowable and, being so far away in time- quite alien to us.
Did he even exist? That's an open question. As with Lao Tzu, Buddha and Mohammed, all the early scriptures and chronicles date from a good while after his supposed lifetime. My own opinion, for what it's worth, is that you don't create figures like this out of whole cloth- and that there was almost certainly a real person- however poorly attested and badly reported- on whom the legend was built. For the record I think the same to be true of King Arthur and Robin Hood.
But the bigger point is that it doesn't matter. The legend and the teachings are what they are. Take from them what you can use.
