June 17 1996

ARTICLE TOOLS

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As always, I enjoyed your annual book awards feature [April 29]. I noticed that a number of your top selections have to do with the recent craze over the quest for the historical Jesus. For some reason, the so-called conservative position on this issue seems to be coalescing around the work and thought of Luke Timothy Johnson, profiled by Robert J. Hutchinson in this issue ["The Jesus Seminar Unmasked"]. Admittedly, Johnson is closer to historical Christian orthodoxy than John Dominic Crossan and his Jesus Seminar brethren, but he nevertheless falls far short. Thus it is disappointing to see that Johnson's views--which seem to downplay the necessity of the historicity of the gospel narratives with respect to the facts surrounding the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus--come under only mild criticism.

* After reading the review of Luke Timothy Johnson's book "The Real Jesus," I came across the following in Martin Kahler's "The So-Called Historical Jesus" and the "Historic Biblical Christ," written over a hundred years ago: "The real Christ, that is to say, the living Christ, the Christ who strides through the history of peoples, with whom millions have fellowship in childlike faith . . . the real Christ is the Christ that is preached." It occurred to me that Johnson's proposal to choose the "real Jesus" (Kahler's "real Christ") over the "historical" one is not only hardly novel but, in fact, a blind alley that others have been led down before in vain. Indeed, by claiming the "real Jesus" of the New Testament while yielding the "historical Jesus," Johnson is paying a greater price than he seems to realize: the rootedness of his Christian faith in the real, historical life and work of the earthly Jesus. John wrote ...