Friday, June 11, 2004

Introductory Links

But precisely this is the misfortune, and has been the misfortune, in Christendom that Christ is neither the one nor the other -- neither the one he was when living on earth, nor he who will return in glory, but rather one about whom we have learned to know something in an inadmissible way from history -- that he was somebody or other of great account. In an inadmissible and unlawful way we have learned to know him; whereas to believe in him is the only permissible mode of approach. (Soren Kierkegaard, Preparation for a Christian Life)
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This blog started out as an attempt to provide students of my Intro to World Religion course some resources on Jesus Christ that augmented the many websites on the Historical Jesus. Since then, I have found myself attempting to provide a site that not only augments the search for the historical Jesus, but does so from a distinctly philosophical bent. In particular, I have found enough information on the web to present a fairly adequate starting point for students and scholars to investigate a critique of the search for a historical Jesus, as well as provide a framework for that critique.

In most cases, this framework is based on Soren Kierkegaard--what biblical scholars might call his hermeneutics. Although some Kierkegaardians will find this terminology amenable, I personally find the possibility of transcending hermeneutics much more exciting. (For what this might possibly mean, see the Alastair Hannay article below).

I do not necessarily agree wholly or in part with any of these articles or links, except the Kierkegaard.

Cynic Librarian

Click on a link below to arrive at that section...

| Philosophical Background to the Search for a Historical Jesus |
Theological, with Emphasis on Historical Jesus |
Under Suspicion: the Hisotrical Critical Method |
Critical of the Jesus Seminar |
Interviews, Symposia, Conversations, Debates, and Dialogs |
Journals |
Syllabi and Lectures |
Bibliographies |
Inter-Faith |
Historical Jesus in Popular Media |
Theoretics of Film and Religion |
For Further Thought |
Soren Kierkegaard |

Philosophical Background to the Search for a Historical Jesus
______________________________________________________
Biblical Theology and the Analogy of Faith by Daniel Fuller
Christ in Spinoza and Reimarus: Prophet, Philosopher, or Rogue? (pdf file)
Tractatus Theologico-politicus by Benedict de Spinoza (1632 - 1677)
OF THE MEANS OF BELIEF by Blaise Pascal
The Education of The Human Race (1778) by Gotthold Lessing
The Reasonableness of Christianity by John Locke(1743-1826)
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION by David Hume
Is Kierkegaard's Absolute Paradox Hume's Miracle? by Jyrki Kivelä
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone by Immanuel Kant
KANT AND KIERKEGAARD: THE SUBJECTIVIZATION OF FAITH by © Antoinette M. Stafford
What Is Enlightenment? (Was ist Aufklärung?) by Michel Foucault, 1978; translation by Mathew Henson, 1992
THE LIFE OF JESUS CRITICALLY EXAMINED by DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see the entry on Absolute Spirit)
Schleiermacher (1768-1834): Romantic Hermeneutics
The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach
"Divinity School Address" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The Lord's Supper" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The Meaning of Ascetic Ideals," from The Geneaolgy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzche
"NIETZSCHEAN CHRISTOLOGY" by Christopher Demuth Rodkey © Copyright 1999
QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS BY ALBERT SCHWEITZER
Protestant Theology in Early Weimar Germany: Barth, Tillich, and Bultmann by Douglas J. Cremer
Being Ingested by the Word: Barth’s Scriptural Hermeneutics of Textual Otherness by John C. McDowell
Friedrich Schleiermacher & Karl Barth by Mark Schumacher
Beyond Religious Socialism by Paul Tillich
Wittgenstein on Religion: Metaphor and Metaphysics From Jorn K. Bramann: The Educating Rita Work Book, Copyright © 2004
Reason, Faith and the Language-Game by Benjamin M. Sandin
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth: Extracted Textually from the Gospels Greek, Latin, French, and English (1743-1826) by Thomas Jefferson

Theological, with Emphasis on Historical Jesus
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Can the New Jesus Save Us? by C. Stephen Evans. Copyright ©1995 All rights reserved.
Transfiguration as Saturated Phenomenon by Merold Westphal
Revisioning Christian Theology in Light of Emmanuel Levinas's Ethics of Responsibility by Marie L. Baird
TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF HOME: LEVINAS AND THE NEW TESTAMENT by Chris Harris
Critique, tradition, and the religious imagination: An essay on Levinas' talmudic readings by Jacob E. Meskin
The Threefold Body: Theology After Suspicion by Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt
"SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE SURVIVAL OF CHRISTIANITY: REFLECTIONS AT THE END OF THE MILLENNIUM" by Louis Dupré
The Mystery of persons and Belief in God
A Conversation between Ideological and Social Scientific Feminist Approaches to the Bible by Alice A. Keefe

Under Suspicion: the Historical Critical Method
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"THE JEWISH UNDERSTANDING OF SCRIPTURE" by Emmanuel Levinas
Scripture as Realistic Narrative: Karl Barth as Critic of Historical Criticism by Hans Frei
"HISTORY AND FAITH: ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FACT AND POSSIBILITIES" by Douglas McGaughey
Modern Biblical Scholarship, Philosophy of Religion and Traditional Christianity
Why the 'Lost Gospels' Lost Out
The Crisis In Biblical Theology
HEARING GOD’S WORD IN THE “SILENCE”: A CANONICAL APPROACH TO 1 CORINTHIANS 14.34-35 by Jon M. Isaak (pdf file)
The Bible as a Site for Struggle: Rethinking Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza by Marie Sabin
The Use of the Bible in Theology by John Howard Yoder
Historical-Critical Method in its Application to Statements Concerning Events in the Holy Scriptures by Christian Hartlich
Salvation by Trust? Reading the Bible Faithfully by Richard B. Hays
Jim Ross' Bible Page
The Jesus Quest & The Real Jesus (reviews of Ben Witherington III and Luke Timothy Johnson)
The New Testament and the Examined Life: Thoughts on Teaching by Luke Timothy Johnson
"RETURNING TO SCRIPTURE: TRENDS IN POSTCRITICAL INTERPRETATION" by Peter Ochs
Thomas Altizer and the Dialectic of Regression by Daniel C. Noel
Testing Models of the Incarnation: From Revelation to Historical Science by Alan G. Padgett
Evans' The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith by Alan G. Padgett
Books In Review: The Scandal of the Gospels (David McCracken) Reviewed by Michael Dodaro
CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION by MOISES SILVA
Secular Presuppositions in Biblical Interpretation Foolproof Composition or Imaginative Construal of the Rape of Dinah (Genesis 34) by Stephen F. Noll
EXAMINING VALIDITY: THE BIBLE AS TEXT OF HISTORY by Lael Othniel Caesar

Critical of the Jesus Seminar
_____________________________________________________________________
The Gospel According to the Jesus Seminar by Birger A. Pearson
A Century of Quests for the Culturally Compatible Jesus by Howard Clark Kee
The Politics of Exodus. Kierkegaard’s Ethics of Responsibility, by Mark Dooley reviewed by George Pattison (see Pattison's remarks at the end)
Preaching Jesus to Skeptics by Rodney J. Decker, Copyright 1997. All rights reserved
Matthew Arnold and the Jesus Seminar by Tod E. Jones
Rediscovering the Historical Jesus: Presuppositions and Pretensions of the Jesus Seminar by Dr. William Lane Craig
Defending the Historicity of Jesus Christ: An Examination of the Jesus Seminar (pdf file) by Edwin K. P. Chong
LIES, TRUTHS, AND THE PERSON IN THE PEW: THE ROLE OF MYTH IN MODERN SOCIETY by Mark L. Steiger © 1996
Advice for Religious Historians: On the Myth of a Purely Historical Jesus by Alan G. Padgett
The Corrected Jesus by Richard B. Hays
Blackballing Jesus? Jesus Seminar severely challenges the Bible's account of Jesus by MARK ALLEN POWELL

Interviews, Symposia, Conversations, Debates, and Dialogs
________________________________________________________________
John Dominic Crossan and the Historical Jesus
Why get to know the historical Jesus? An Interview with John P. Meier
"THE THIN THREAD OF CONVERSATION: AN INTERVIEW WITH MARY DALY" by Catherine Madsen
A LEGACY OF INCLUSION: AN INTERVIEW WITH ROSEMARY RADFORD RUETHER by Rosalind Hinton
Symposium on Biblical Criticism (with Elizabeth Achtemeier, J. Christiaan Beker, Robert A. Bennett, Brevard S. Childs, Avery Dulles, William R. Farmer, Roland Mushat Frye, Robert W. Funk, and Harold Lindsell)
Jesus at 2000 E-mail Debate (with John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, both members of the Jesus Seminar, and Luke Timothy Johnson)
Jesus at 2000: The Conversation Continues (with Marcus Borg, Luke Timothy Johnson, Deirdre Good, N.T. Wright, and John Dominic Crossan)
Responses to Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Study (with Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, David Hester Amador, Edith M. Humphrey, and Vernon K. Robbins)
The Self-Deconstruction of Christianity August 2000 an open discussion with Jean-Luc Nancy
An Interview with Slavoj Zizek "On Divine Self-Limitation and Revolutionary Love" Joshua Delpech-Ramey, Journal of Philosophy and Scripture
Faith Fires Back: A conversation with Stanley Hauerwas from Duke Magazine

Journals
_________________________________________________________________
Journal of Philosophy and Scripture Edited by Graduate Students in Philosophy at Villanova University, Editorial Advisor - John D. Caputo
The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory

Syllabi and Lectures
___________________________________________________________________
Lecture One: Lessing and the Religious Use of Irony by Hans Frei
Lecture Two: Kant and the Transcendence of Rationalism and Religion by Hans Frei
Historical Reference and the Gospels by Hans Frei
Biblical Hermeneutics Handouts 3rd Edition (September 2001) © 2001 by Brenda B. Colijn
Postmodernism and the Christian Tradition by Brandie R. Siegfried
Contemporary Religious Thought: Faith, Suspicion, and Modernity by Tyler Roberts
Methods of Interpreting Texts Notes over Materials not in the Textbook: Study Helps; Lecture One by Tony L. Moyers
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT by JOHN MARK HICKS
Syllabus: METHOD AND PRAXIS IN THEOLOGY by Larry Wood
Jesus: An Online Course on the Historical Figure of Jesus of Nazareth by James F. McGrath
Syllabus: History of Protestant Biblical Hermeneutics by Lois Malcolm and Paul E. Capetz
Syllabus: JESUS, CHRISTOLOGY, AND THE GOSPELS by C. Clifton Black
Syllabus: Life of Jesus by Barry D. Smith

Bibliographies
_____________________________________________________________________
Select Kierkegaard Bibliography
Jesus/Christology Bibliography by Andrew T. Dolan
BIBLIOGRAPHIES for THEOLOGY
Butler.edu Biblography
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Christology
HISTORICAL CRITICAL METHOD IN THEOLOGY: SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF THEOLOGY: SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
JESUS AND CHRISTOLOGY: A BIBLIOGRAPHY by John H. Elliott
Jesus Christ: Affirming the Incarnation Today: Select Bibliography by John Castelein (LCS)
Hermeneutics by John D. Castelein
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CRITICAL HERMENEUTICS TODAY by John D. Castelein

Inter-Faith
____________________________________________________________________
The Bible: God's Word Or Man's Work? (Islamic Polemics)
Historical Jesus from Islamic Polemics

Historical Jesus in Popular Media
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Novels
The Da Vinci Code: Of Magdalene, Gnostics, the Goddess and the Grail
Comments on the Da Vinci Code
Fact or Fiction? A Review of The Da Vinci Code
Da Vinci Code Reviewed by Islamic Broadcasting Network (audio file)
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS CHRIST, by Jose Saramago
Jesus Wept: Norman Mailer takes on Christ by A.N. Wilson

Movies

Admiring The Passion?
By Eric Haaland
The film Stigmata & the Challenge of Conceptualizing Women as Spiritual Agents by Miranda Morris
Stigmata
Stigmata
THE BODY (2001)
GIBSON AGONISTES: Anatomy of a Neo-Manichean Vision of Jesus by Mahlon H Smith
The Passion of the Christian: Having Little Passion for Mel Gibson’s Christ by John C. McDowell
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Last Temptation Reconsidered by Carol Iannone

Theoretics of Film and Religion
_________________________________________________________________
A Picture's Worth: Teaching Religion and Film by Irena S. M. Makarushka
Cinema, Contextualization, and “Redemptive Analogies”
Andrei Tarkovsky: The Redemptive Vision of a Soviet Filmmaker by Gregory Halvorsen Schreck
Signs and Wonderings: Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue by Rodney Clapp

For Further Thought
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POSTMODERNISM AND THE DESIRE FOR GOD: AN E-MAIL EXCHANGE by Edith Wyschogrod and John D. Caputo
Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation from its Beginnings to the Present by Vernon K. Robbins, Emory University
Changing the Paradigms by Elisabeth S. Fiorenza
WHEN THE OTHER APPEARS ON THE SCENE by Umberto Eco
Poststructuralism and the New Testament: Derrida and Foucault at the Foot of the Cross by Stephen D. Moore
Christianity and the "Homelessness" of the Modern Mind by Craig M. Gay
The Kingdom of Heaven versus the Kingdom on Earth: Christianity and the Displacement of Africans in Black Anger by Sinkwan Cheng
Human Rights and Its Discontents a lecture by Slavoj Zizek
Zizek's Second Coming; Review of: Slavoj Zizek, On Belief by Char Roone Miller
"Instruction on Scripture and Christology" Pontifical Biblical Commission (1984)

Soren Kierkegaard
______________________________________________________________________
Philosophical Fragments (full text) by Soren Kierkegaard
Being Something on Hermeneutics and Communication in Kierkegaard After All by Alastair Hannay
Levinas and Kierkegaard: Judaism, Christianity, and an Ethics of Witnessing by Michael R. Michau
"Can Kierkegaard Help Us Understand The Role Of The Law In Rom 7:7-12? Tools For A Kierkegaardian Reading Of Paul" by Valérie Nicolet Anderson
Response to Valérie Nicolet Anderson by Cristina Grenholm
Kierkegaard's Either/Or and the Parable of the Prodigal Son: Or, Three Rival Versions of Three Rival Versions by Charles K. Bellinger
The Voice of God and the Face of the Other by Claire Elise Katz
SACRIFICING THE TEXT: THE PHILOSOPHER/POET AT MOUNT MORIAH by © Dorota Glowacka
Kierkegaard: The Mirror of the Word by Kyle Roberts
KIERKEGAARD’S ILLUSION OF CHRISTENDOM AND ATTACK ON CHRISTENDOM: An `inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria. by J. L. Craft
"THE CROWD IS UNTRUTH": A COMPARISON OF KIERKEGAARD AND GIRARD by Charles K. Bellinger
Kierkegaard on Miracles: Introductory Observations by Jyrki Kivelä
The text as 'seduction' by Kierkegaard by Kinya MASUGATA
“Seeing” is Believing: Narrative Visualization in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling by Daniel W. Conway
Kierkegaard and Feminism: A Paradoxical Friendship by Dera Sipe
Faith, paradox, reason, and the argumentum spiritus sancti in Climacus and Kierkegaard by Johannes Post‑Climacum, edited by Alexander R. Pruss
[Excerpts from Kierkegaard's] Concluding Unscientific Postscript (with notes by Joel Elowsky)