What Have They Done with Jesus?
Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History—Why We Can Trust the Bible
Ben Witherington III
To all my friends at CBS—
Miguel, Maureen, Shoshanah, John, Dustin, and Issah—
it was wonderful to work with you in the lands of the Bible.
In no case can any distinct separation be achieved between the genuine words of Jesus and constructions of the community. We do not escape the fact that we know Jesus only as the disciples remembered him. Whoever thinks that the disciples completely misunderstood their Master or even consciously falsified his picture may give fantasy free rein. From a purely scientific point of view, however, it is logical to assume that the Master can be known through his disciples’ words about him and their historical influence.
—Nils Dahl,
Jesus the Christ:
The Historical Origins of
Christological Doctrine1
The Resurrection of Jesus is the central fact of Christian devotion and the ground of all Christian thinking. The Resurrection was not a solitary occurrence, a prodigious miracle, but an event within a framework of Jewish history, and it brought into being a new community, the church. Christianity enters history not only as a message but as a communal life, a society…. The intellectual effort of the early church was at the service of a much loftier goal than giving conceptual form to Christian belief. Its mission was to win the hearts and minds of men and women and to change their lives. Christian thinkers appealed to a much deeper level of human experience than had the religious institutions of society or the doctrines of philosophers…. It narrated a history that reached back into antiquity even to the beginning of the world, it was filled with stories of unforgettable men and women (not all admirable) who were actual historical persons rather than mythical figures…. The faithful of one generation were united to the faithful of former times, not by a set of ideas or teachings (though this was assumed) but by the community that remembered their names…. They trailed their thoughts after the lives of others…so there was no Christian thinking without the church.
—Robert L. Wilken,
The Spirit of Early Christian Thought2