Summary of Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 German theology has produced the most accurate and thorough critical analysis of the life of Jesus, and it has laid the groundwork for future religious thinking. It has not yet reconciled history and modern thought, but it has opened up a new path for the world.

#2 Early Christianity was right to live entirely in the future with the Christ who was to come, and it preserved only a few of Jesus’s sayings and a few of His miracles. It escaped the inner division described above by abolishing both the world and the historical Jesus.

#3 Early Christianity was right to live entirely in the future with the Christ who was to come, and it preserved only a few of Jesus’s sayings and a few of His miracles. It escaped the inner division described above by abolishing both the world and the historical Jesus.

#4 Early Christianity was right to live entirely in the future with the Christ who was to come, and it preserved only a few of Jesus’s sayings and a few of His miracles. It escaped the inner division described above by abolishing both the world and the historical Jesus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350032314

IRB Media

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Insights on Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 21

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

German theology is the greatest achievement of German culture. It has produced the most critical investigation of the life of Jesus, which has laid down the conditions and determined the course of religious thinking of the future.

#2

Early Christianity was right to live entirely in the future with the Christ who was to come, and it preserved only detached sayings and a few miracles from the historic Jesus. But the world continued to exist, and its continuance required the unification of the supra-mundane Christ and the historical Jesus of Nazareth into a single personality.

#3

The historical Jesus is something different from the Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures. The former is the tool of a secret order, while the latter is the admirable revealer of true virtue, which is coincident with right reason.

#4

The writing of a Life of Jesus is a perfect reflection of each epoch’s character. Each individual created Jesus in accordance with his own character. The stronger the love or the stronger the hate, the more life-like the figure is.

#5

The life of Jesus has no analogue in history. The sources of His life are not good, but they are not bad either. They are simply incomplete. The only way to solve the problem is to experiment and see what works.

#6

The sources do not contain any connexion between the actions and discourses of Jesus, because the self-consciousness of Jesus did not undergo a development during His public ministry. We only begin to understand these facts historically when we can place them in a connexion and conceive them as the acts of a clearly defined personality.

#7

The sources assert that Jesus felt himself to be the Messiah, but his behavior does not support this claim. We have no way of knowing what his Messianic consciousness looked like from within, since he never revealed it to anyone.

#8

The question of the life of Jesus began to be discussed in the ’90s. Was it possible to explain the contradiction between the Messianic consciousness of Jesus and His non-Messianic discourses and actions by means of a conception of His Messianic consciousness that would make it appear that He could not have acted otherwise than as the Evangelists describe.

#9

The history of the study of the life of Jesus has so far received little attention. We will attempt to trace the shaping of the problem in the successive works, and provide a historical account of the critical study of Jesus’ life.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

There was nothing in the world that prepared the world for the publication of the Life of Jesus written by Reimarus. It was a master-stroke of the spirit of the time, and it was published in 1778.

#2

Reimarus was a professor of Oriental languages in Hamburg who wrote a book arguing that the Church’s teachings were not based on faith, but on reason. He died in 1768.

#3

The first critic of the tradition was Lessing, who recognized the significance of the historical element and how it would transform and deepen rationalism. He disregarded the scruples of Reimarus’s family and the objections of Nicolai and Mendelssohn, and threw the torch with his own hand.

#4

The Kingdom of Heaven must be understood according to Jewish ways of thought. Jesus did not change or develop the Jewish religion, but He did proclaim that the Kingdom of God was near. For Jews who were waiting for the Kingdom of God, this meant that Jesus was the Messiah.

#5

The preaching of Jesus did not go beyond the ideas of His contemporaries. However, He demanded a new and deeper morality that would not be dependent on the Law. His followers broke with the Law later on, but not in accordance with a command from Jesus.

#6

The miracles of Jesus, which were meant to prove that He was the Messiah, were not actually done by Him. They were done by His followers to prove His power. The people of Jerusalem did not accept Him as the Messiah, and the authorities prepared for vigorous action.

#7

The disciples were prepared for anything except the death of Jesus, since he had never told them about his dying and rising again. They fell back on the second form