In his earlier writings, Bultmann expressed this conclusion quite strongly, such as his belief that “we can know almost nothing concerning the life and personalty of Jesus.”5 Still, there is no doubt that Bultmann accepted a number of historical facts concerning the life and message of Jesus, especially in his later writings.6 Bultmann’s view will be presented in Chapter 7, where we will list a number of historical facts that are even accepted by historical skeptics.
While the works of Rudolf Bultmann are probably the best known source for the position that little can be known about the historical Jesus, other critics have also held this view as well, including a number of his disciples. But as we said in Chapter 1, several reasons have accounted for the decline in the influence of this postion over the last thirty years. We will emphasize four important problems.
1. Historical grounding needed
As already mentioned, Bultmann’s own disciples noted the initial problem with their mentor’s approach. By deemphasizing the historical basis for the life of Jesus, Bultmann failed to provide both early and modern Christians with the grounding that is indispensable for the founding and present existence of the Christian faith. If no such factual support exists, then this critique is not entirely effective. But if Bultmann’s position was due more to a philosophical bias, which many thought was the case, and if there is a historical foundation, then he was mistaken to proclaim otherwise.
The New Testament often claims to be based on historically accurate accounts.7 Paul reminds us that, apart from a historical Gospel, there is no basis for faith whatsoever, since it would be vain and groundless (1 Cor. 15:1-20). The point here is that, without a historical core of knowledge concerning Jesus, Christianity would have little initial impetus to encourage faith in an otherwise unknown person.
This criticism was probably the single most influential contribution to the dissatisfaction with Bultmann’s thought. John Macquarrie, while supporting Bultmann in a number of areas, takes issue with him here:
It is very doubtful whether the Christian faith could have been built upon the foundation of a historic Jesus who, as Bultmann presents him, was little more than a teacher of a practical philosophy with certain resemblances to existentialism, and who is stripped of the numinous characteristics which the Gospels attribute to him.8
Many of Bultmann’s disciples agreed with this critique that there had to be some adequate historical knowledge of Jesus. We saw in Chapter 1 that the major thrust came from the “new quest for the historical Jesus” scholars like Ernst Käsemann, Gunther Bornkamm, and James Robinson.9 While they did not emphasize historical facts as the basis for faith, they did agree that, without such data, violence is done both to the apostolic kerygma (the kernel of their message) and to the present understanding of Jesus.10
Although Bultmann never endorsed the search for a historical Jesus, he was perhaps affected by some of these critiques, and in his later years he admitted more historical knowledge about Jesus.11 Christianity proclaimed a historical basis for its message. If an investigation reveals that such a basis exists, then these facts must have a more important function than Bultmann allowed.
2. Assumption of myth
Second, the major problem for Bultmann in terms of this study is that he dismissed the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection without any investigation at all. Rather than consider the evidence, he simply rejected it a priori. Again it is Macquarrie, himself an eminent commentator on Bultmann’s thought, who sharply criticizes him on this point:
And here we must take Bultmann to task for what appears to be an entirely arbitrary dismissal of the possibility of understanding the resurrection as an objective-historical event . . . . The fallacy of such reasoning is obvious. The one valid way in which we can ascertain whether a certain event took place or not is not by bringing in some sweeping assumption to show that it could not have taken place, but to consider the historical evidence available, and decide on that.12
The problem is that Bultmann made his decision against the historicity of the resurrection apart from factual observation. Again it is Macquarrie who comments:
But Bultmann does not take the trouble to examine what evidence could be adduced to show that the resurrection was an objective-historical event. He assumes that it is myth.13
This is a crucial critique, because it just might be the case that the historical facts are enough to demonstrate the resurrection, but that Bultmann simply ignores what could provide an excellent basis for the Christian faith. Interestingly enough, we will argue below that the methodology of form criticism, which he popularized, even backfired into an argument for miracle-claims.
3. Faulty historiography
The third problem with Bultmann’s methodology is that even contemporary historians oppose the form and redaction criticism that he popularized as the proper approach to New Testament studies. Whereas Bultmann’s use of these methods revealed the minimal historical results noted above, ancient historians have employed their normal patterns of investigation and found an adequate basis for history in the New Testament. Oxford ancient historian A.N. Sherwin-White leveled the following indictment at form critics:
So, it is astonishing that while Graeco-Roman historians have been growing in confidence, the twentieth-century study of the Gospel narratives, starting from no less promising material, has taken so gloomy a turn in the development of form-criticism . . . that the historical Christ is unknowable and the history of his mission cannot be written. This seems very curious.14
Sherwin-White asserts that the same standards that are commonly applied to ancient secular history can also be applied to the New Testament records, with the result that a factual account emerges. Michael Grant, another historian, likewise applies the techniques of normal historical methodology to the New Testament and also concludes that much can be known about the historical Jesus, in spite of the efforts of Bultmann, whose methodology Grant specifically rejects.15
Here an objection is often advanced. It is sometimes claimed that the New Testament authors cannot be compared to ancient secular writers, since the latter attempted to write history, while form critics hold that the biblical authors allowed their beliefs to significantly color their recording. To this challenge and to the larger issue of the form criticism advocated by Bultmann and others, Sherwin-White and Grant provide numerous responses.
(1) There are several examples of ancient historians like Herodotus, Livy, or Tacitus whose works show similarities in several respects to that in the Gospels, including a moralizing intent “which the evangelists would have applauded,” yet they are well accepted as historical. And even though there were differences, too, this does not keep us from discovering a good amount of factual material in the Gospels.16
(2) Literature of the sort the form critics believe the Gospels to be is not known elsewhere in ancient history. As Sherwin-White asserts, “We are not acquainted with this type of writing in ancient historiography.”17
(3) The Gospels are quite close to the period of time that they record, while ancient histories such as those by Plutarch and Livy often describe events that took place even centuries earlier. Yet, modern historians are able to successfully delineate data even from these early periods of time.18
(4) Ancient histories sometimes “disagree amongst themselves in the wildest possible fashion,” such as the four ancient sources for the figure of Tiberius Caesar, yet the history they record can still be ascertained.19 Another contemporary historian, Paul Maier, makes the same point in reference to the contradictory material in the sources for the great (first century AD) fire in Rome.20