What I'm reading

I need to take the time to catch up my sidebar. Last week I read The First Christian; a short little book that started out well, but ended rather disappointingly. The first 60-70 pages are a very nice, concise overview of the first, second, and third quest for the historical Jesus. Granted, the title doesn't give you a clue that the book is about the historical quest—poor marketing :)

Anyway, his central thesis is that the first quest ran aground when it hit the realization that Jesus was an eschatological figure and not the rational 19th century man they were looking for—see Schweitzer's book. The second quest was started in 1953 and continued until the summer of 1968 when student unrest on the campuses and "ban the bomb" took over everyone's interest. Zahl claims that the second quest didn't die because it hit a logical wall, but because interests turned elsewhere. Since most of the questers had lived through the eschatological experience of WW II, they didn't have a problem with Jesus as an eschatological figure. Enter the third quest. According to Zahl, the third quest is a reaction to the Holocaust on the part of Christians. The Jesus they are looking for, and finding, is continuous with Second Temple Judaism. So continuous, in fact, that one is tempted to say "What's the problem? Why did Jesus get crucified?"

If Jesus is continuous with Second Temple Judaism, then Christianity must have been a creation of his followers, or more precisely, Paul. According to Zahl, this cheapens not just Christianity, but also Judaism. There has to be a difference, and he claims that Jesus was the first Christian (hence the title of the book), and that he was not continuous with Second Temple Judaism, but in stark opposition to it. Here he calls in the testimony of Flusser. Now, I must admit that the reason I even read the book is because I noticed he referred to Flusser a lot, so I enjoyed his appeal to Flusser.

Based on his reading of Flusser, Zahl is calling for a fourth quest, as a resurrection of the second, unfulfilled quest. This is where the book got boring. He paints the third quest far too broadly, ignoring the subtle distinctions within the various questers involved in the third quest. To see the nuances of the third quest, I recommend reading Mark Goodacre's recent summary (which I can't find right now).

In summary, Zahl has some good points, but he tends to oversimplify a bit. But, at 134 pages, it is worth a quick read. He has some good insights, having studied under Dunn, Kaesemann, and other luminaries of both the second and third quest. Being a pastor, he brings in some good pastoral perspective to the various quests also.