The Lamb of God - Historical Views

Historical Views

Main articles: Historical Jesus and Quest for the historical Jesus

Prior to the Enlightenment, the gospels were usually regarded as accurate historical accounts, but since then skeptics who question the reliability of the gospels emerged, and presupposed a distinction between the Jesus described in the gospels and the Jesus of history. Since the 18th-century, three separate scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and based on different research criteria, which were often developed during the quest that applied them. The second quest, which started in 1953, reached a plateau in the 1970s, and by 1992 the term "third quest" had been coined to characterize the new research approaches. In the third quest, research on the historical Jesus entered a new phase. According to Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter, the third quest gave greater emphasis to the methods of mainstream historical scholarship.

Donald Akenson has argued that, with very few exceptions, the historians of Jesus have not followed sound historical practices. He has stated that there is an unhealthy reliance on consensus for propositions which should be based on primary sources or rigorous interpretation. He also holds that some of the criteria being used are faulty. Michael R. Licona has criticized Jesus scholars for not using "deliberate methods for weighing hypotheses and criteria for awarding historicity." He says that the scholars too often "rely on their own intuition," which is ofttimes influenced by their backgrounds and biases.