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This chapter describes the progression from “Jesus of Nazareth” to “Jesus of Hollywood”, and summarizes the main conclusions of the previous chapters. If the historical Jesus of Nazareth was the unique and only Son of God as the Gospels proclaim, then Jesus of Hollywood is his opposite — multiple, diverse, and born of many parents. These include not only the directors of the Jesus biopics over the course of a century, but the numerous others professionals, including screenwriters, producers, camera operators, and costume and set designers, whose creative and technical work is essential for the production of any film. As the products of multiple authors, the biopic Jesuses have more in common with the main character of the Gospel narratives, who varies somewhat from text to text. Yet while some of the movie Saviors' actions and words resemble those attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, it is unlikely that the Evangelists would recognize their own particular Jesus in any of the films that have been discussed.

This chapter examines the mature Christology of the Glaubenslehre. This Christology can be conveniently considered under two headings. The discussion concentrates first on the place that the historical Jesus holds in Troeltsch's position, and gives predominant place to reflection on the 1911 lecture ‘The Significance of the Historical Existence of Jesus for Faith’. It is characteristic of Troeltsch's mature Christology to insist that the historical Jesus is indeed of some importance for faith, and this reveals the ‘realist’ streak in his Christology, his demand that Christology be in some sense grounded, at least, in verifiable facts about Jesus of Nazareth.

What reason is there to think that something of enduring religious importance happened in the case of Jesus? In the Christian tradition, the most striking claim for Jesus’ importance is that he was “raised” from the dead. But although belief in Jesus’ resurrection has always been central to Christian belief, it turns out that the resurrection claim can mean many different things. This chapter begins with two minimalistic accounts of resurrection, the symbolic theory and the exemplary theory. A stronger claim, the participatory theory, claims that the resurrection established a new mode of divine-human relationship. Only this last approach allows one to speak of an ongoing influence of “the Spirit of Christ” beyond the first century. Yet, although this claim is much stronger than the first two options, it remains consistent with the constraints on divine action established in earlier chapters.

A view of the nature of Jesus Christ that rises to the level of full Christian orthodoxy, as expressed in such creeds and definitions as the Apostles’ Creed, and the statements of Nicea, and Chalcedon, cannot be responsibly derived from the New Testament if the constraints of modern historical criticism are obeyed. But robust and faithful views of the nature of Christ may be read from the New Testament, and even from the Old Testament, when the text is interpreted via lenses of creative, Christian interpretation, led by the holy spirit, and interpreted with the guidance of love. Moreover, though constructions of “the historical Jesus” may be used for theological reflection, the Jesus of Christian faith is the Christ of Christian creed and confessions, not the Jesus of modern historical research and construction.

Paul’s encounter with Jesus transformed the knowledge he had of the founder of Christianity that he had gained as a persecutor. A very brief mission in Arabia was followed by three years in Damascus during which period he became a tentmaker. From Peter in Jerusalem, Paul learnt about the historical Jesus. His probing of the mystery of a Messiah who should not have died is at the root of his unique stress on the fact that Jesus died by crucifixion.

Daley observes how contemporary theologians are often puzzled by the language and concepts of later patristic discussions about the person of Christ, especially by the Council of Chalcedon's teaching that he is one hypostasis or persona subsisting ‘in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation’. This chapter looks again at the significance of this classical christological vocabulary, in the light of an assertion made by the sixth‐century Leontius of Byzantium and echoed by Maximus Confessor and John of Damascus in the centuries that followed: that it is ‘the mode of union, rather than the intelligible structure of nature, which contains the great Mystery of our religion’. After sketching the background and apparent implications of the ancient language of ‘modality’ and of ‘union’, the paper looks more closely at the Christology of these three post‐Chalcedonian writers. It argues that for classical Greek Christology in its later stages, the unity and distinctiveness of Christ as a person, who is at once human and divine, are grounded in the unique way in which the divine and human realities condition and express each other in the historical Jesus of Nazareth. In the light of this ‘relational’ or ‘modal’ Christology, these late patristic authors also present human salvation as the beginning of a new mode of our own natural existence, and a new relationship with the triune that God modelled on that of God the Son.

The problems associated with recovering the teachings of the historical Jesus from the written records of the same are examined. The various criteria that have been used to build a case for or against probable authenticity are individually described and evaluated, with special attention being given to the problems associated with the application of the criterion of double dissimilarity. The use of this criterion as a negative test, or the privileging of the positive results of applying this criterion, contribute to the de-Judaizing of Jesus. Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter's criterion of historical plausibility is preferred. The chapter also examines evidence for and against the general reliability of the apostolic tradition, particularly the absence of evidence of invention of Jesus sayings to answer obvious challenges arising within the early church, concluding that scholars have generally exhibited a skepticism beyond what the sources merit.

This chapter offers a new interpretation of the text of Vie de Jésus, situating the book in the wide range of contexts and debates that it sought to address. As well as comparing Renan’s interpretation of the Gospels to that of contemporary Protestant biblical critics such as David Friedrich Strauss, it considers how the book’s use of ‘divination and conjecture’ grew out of a tradition of French historical writing, associated particularly with Augustin Thierry. The chapter considers Renan’s view on central issues such as miracles, revolutions, and the degree of Judeo-Christian harmony. It also provides an analysis of Renan’s use of racial and geographical determinism, and offers a new interpretation of the gender politics of his representation of Jesus and early Christianity.

This chapter looks at arguments concerning the ‘Jewishness’ of Jesus, the Otherness of his ‘background’, the apparently radical Jesuses, and the idea of Jesus the Great Man. It suggests that such arguments are typical of the rhetoric of contemporary liberal multiculturalism and liberal capitalism while masking a range of reasons for historical change. This chapter suggests alternative ways of approaching the quest for the historical Jesus/earliest Palestinian tradition. It develops ideas of how perceptions of socio-economic changes can generate protest movements which mimic and replicate power structures. This chapter looks at how the perceptions of socio-economic change in Galilee and Judea contributed to the rise of a ‘protest’, anti-imperial, or even ‘revolutionary’ movement while simultaneously reinscribing the language of empire and dominance. It looks at how ideas generated in contexts of social upheaval can be ignored, embraced, remain dormant, misinterpreted, or reapplied in a range of contexts.

Despite the demonstrated historiographical tropes of the gospels, today they are perceived to convey a bevy of myths. Myths can still be true despite being unhistorical. Sometimes Christian apologists defend the historicity of gospel myths to uphold their truth value. This is a modern technique of rationalization, the attempt to update Christian myths by making them seem more plausible. In reality, historicality does not demonstrate truth. So to study Jesus seriously, less investment in the so-called historical Jesus and increased attention to the mythological Jesus is a desideratum. Only by integrating gospel studies into myth studies can the former find a place in Humanities programs of modern public universities.

Early Christians believed that Old Testament prophets could slip into an alternative character (prosopon) through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As such, the Spirit was the ultimate author of the script spoken by the prophet, yet various characters, such as the Father and the Son, could be inhabited. For the earliest Christians, before the stars, the sun, and the moon were set in place, the Father and Son spoke to one another through the Spirit. Featured here are interpretations of Psalm 2 (“You are my Son, today I have begotten you”) and Psalm 110 (“Sit at my right hand”) as portrayed in the Synoptic Gospels and as refracted in the later imagination of the first- and second-century church. Methodological discussion centers on the role of reception history (or Wirkungsgeschichte) and diachronic intertextuality in assessing the plausibility of the historical Jesus’ self-appropriation of a begotten-Son Christology (rather than adoption).

In presenting an exalted concept of humanity, Lewis endorses historic Christian orthodoxy, which corrects and transcends distorted versions of humanity that devalue it in order to accent God’s glory and our fallen condition. Lewis continues to explain how human nature is meant for relationship with God and how persons can find that relation through the historical person of Jesus Christ who, as Athanasius said, “assumed” our humanity in order to heal and redeem it. Lewis navigated early and mid twentieth-century criticisms of the historical Jesus, which are not greatly different from current criticisms by the Jesus Seminar and others, and Lewis concludes that the Gospels reliably reveal an underlying historical personality. Thus, we see the relevance of Lewis’s “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” trilemma argument. In fact, in his own journey, he held some of these same criticisms and doubts, even after becoming a theist, such that it took a lengthy talk with J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson to convince him that the Gospels contained some “myths” (conceived as symbolic stories that communicate higher truth) but that in the person of Jesus the higher truth had become uniquely manifested in our world.

This chapter explores the popular reception of Vie de Jésus. After an analysis of the differences between the two editions of the book (scholarly and popular), the bulk of the chapter uses new manuscript sources to demonstrate the range of positions that contemporary readers took on Renan’s book. On the one hand, it shows that many insult letters redeployed the scathing and satirical language of Catholic populists against Renan. On the other hand, it demonstrates that many readers were less concerned with such political issues than with using the book reflecting on their personal religious ideas and relationships with the figure of Jesus.

This chapter argues that a ritual approach to Jesus’ healing is a meaningful project: the topic converges with many issues that anthropologists of shamanism and spirit possession have discussed under the general rubric of ‘ritual healing’. Insights and theories from such studies shed light on Jesus’ healing activity, as well as on the rites of healing and exorcism in the early Church. The chapter takes issue with certain social-scientific interpretations of Jesus as a spirit-possessed healer (which show a bias toward cultural relativism), and make use of recent cognitive research into spirit possession. Jesus’ healings, spirit possession, and more institutionalized forms of ritual healing cannot be lumped together under a single theory of ritual, but the cognitive analysis is helpful in pointing out aspects of ritual healing that have not been recognized in earlier studies.