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A Historical Jesus
[Mark] [Matthew] [Luke] [John] [Thomas] [Background]

Christianity is an historical faith. That is, it's traditionally based on a real person, who actually lived and about whom we know certain things. The links below may help readers get perspective on a Jesus of history.

If faith is enough, why bother with an historical Jesus?
Read A Jesus of History.

A number of short essays written about the Background to the Gospels might help fill in some gaps.

To learn something of how external evidence affects an historical Jesus, read about Josephus and Josephus on Jesus.
The current position in our search for a Jesus of history is summarised in Where We Are Today.
The Historical Jesus Theories page on the Early Christian Writings website provides a decent overview of the many approaches to a Jesus of history.
The Wright Quest for the Historical Jesus represents a mainstream Anglican attempt to offer an alternative to the dominant model of approaching the gospels.
The Historical Jesus Puzzle is a clear and not-too-detailed article by Professor William Loader.

The gospel selections below represent one of many reconstructions of a Jesus of history. This one consists of fairly strict selections of "what really happened", ones which rule out the "least likely" pieces but retain the "highly likely", the "likely" and (with less conviction, sometimes) the "less likely".
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Good News According to ...

Mark	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
Matthew	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27
Luke	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23
John	2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 18, 19
Thomas	1-113

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I work from the original Greek, except for the Gospel of Thomas. My selection of what is historical is loosely based on The Acts of Jesus and The Five Gospels by Robert W Funk and the Jesus Seminar in the light of my own studies of the Bible (my judgement about "what really happened" may differ from theirs). For background to the Seminar see Faith Futures. I have used Bible commentaries and other reference books to get the best English meaning for me of the original Greek and for the background to the gospels. Also used are:

Saint Mark, Dennis Nineham, Penguin (1986)
Saint Matthew, J C Fenton, Penguin (1963 & 1997)
Saint Luke, GB Caird, Penguin (1983)
Dictionary of New Testament Background, C A Evans & SE Porter, Oxford (2000)
Analytical Concordance of the Bible, R Young (7th Edition)
Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vols 1-3, Ed C Brown (1978)
Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Eds Green, McKnight & Marshall (1992)
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, IVP (1962)
The International Critical Commentary: St Matthew (1907)
The NIV Theological Dictionary of NT Words, Ed. V Verhugge, Paternoster, 2000
The Greek New Testament, British & Foreign Bible Society (1958)
The Good News Bible (1976)
Atlas of the Bible, Ed J B Pritchard, Harper Collins, 2003
A Marginal Jew, Vol. I (1991); Vol. II (1994); Vol. III (2001), J P Meier, Doubleday
History of the Synoptic Tradition, Rudolf Bultmann, Oxford/Blackwell (1963)
The Complete Gospels, R J Miller (Ed), Polebridge Press (1992)
The Historical Jesus, G Theissen & A Merz, SCM Press (1996)
The God of Jesus, S J Patterson, Trinity Press International (1998)
Jesus After 2000 Years, Gerd Ludemann, SCM Press (2000)
The Trial of Jesus, Simon Legasse, SCM Press (1994)
Josephus and the New Testament, Steve Mason, Hendrickson Publishers (2003)
Excavating Jesus, J D Crossan & J L Reed, SPCK (2001)
Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, J L Reed, Trinity Press (2000)
The Life and Times of Herod the Great, S Perowne, Hodder & Stoughton (1956)
In Search of Jesus, Clinton Bennett, Continuum (2001)
The Trial of Jesus, Simon Legasse, SCM Press (1997)
The Gospel of Jesus, James M Robinson, HarperSanFrancisco (2005)

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