When Reality Knocks

Henry here. A centuries old manuscript has been found which tells us that Judas was Jesus’ best friend and that he turned Jesus in to the authorities at his request. This revisionist history changes pretty much everything about the Jesus story. It adds another layer to the 200 year study by scholars trying to separate the Jesus of faith from the Jesus of history.

For many people this is an ongoing struggle. In fact an Italian brought a court case recently against his local priest. He criticized the priest who had all his professional life talked as if Jesus was an historical figure. The Italian claimed that there was no definitive proof and that the priest had been guilty of dishonesty and lying.

This search for the historical Jesus has gone on for a long time. Scholars have gone to extreme lengths to understand the Biblical and historical record to try to separate the Jesus of faith from the Jesus of history. This search has always been known as: “The search for the historical Jesus.”

Albert Schweitzer in his tome of the same name summarized the sheer impossibility of separating the two figures. The Jesus of history is lost in the Jesus of faith. In his conclusion to his classic work. He says of Jesus: “He comes to us, as of old by the lakeside, and speaks the same word, ‘Follow me.’ To those who obey it, he shows - as in an ineffable mystery — who he is.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 2:00 am and is filed under Religious Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.