158 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
Missio Dei, 2012], p. 9) and suggests that “the anarchist vision may
yet be a key to the renewal of church and society” (Holy Anarchist,
p. 11).
- It has become customary to refer to the study of the historical
Jesus as the “Quest” for the historical Jesus, following the publi-
cation of the English translation in 1910 of Albert Schweitzer’s in-
fluential Von Reimarus zu Wrede: eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-
Forschung (Tübingen: Mohr ,1906) which was entitled The Quest of
the Historical Jesus: a Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus
to Wrede (London: A. and C. Black, 1910). - See, for example, the criticisms of Bernard C. Lategan, ‘Questing
or Sense-Making? Some Thoughts on the Nature of Historiography’,
Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches, 11
(2003), 588–601. - For a still useful, albeit confessional, critique of such undertakings
see Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for
the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996). - See, for example, N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God
(London: SPCK, 1996), p. xv. - Although characterizing the historical Jesus’ understanding of
God as a matter of “belief” is, perhaps, unhelpful. “Belief” has a dis-
tinctive and specific place in some forms Christianity but cannot be
said to be a significant organizing or nodal concept within the re-
ligious life of most humans, ancient or modern. See, for example,
Malcolm Ruel, Belief, Ritual and the Securing of Life: Reflective
Essays on a Bantu Religion (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 36–59. - For example, Mark 1.15 and Matthew 4.17 (see also Luke 4.43);
Luke 17.20–21, Thomas 3, 113; Matthew 11.11–12, Luke 5.28,
16.16, Thomas 46; Mark 10.15, Matthew 18.3, Luke 18.17; Mark
10.23–25, Matthew 19.23–24, Luke 18.24–25; Luke 11.20, Matthew
12.28; Matthew 13.44; Thomas 109; Matthew 13.45–46, Thomas
76; Mark 3.22–27, Matthew 12.29–30, Luke 11.21–23; Mark 9:1
(see also Matthew 16.28, Luke 9.27); Mark 14.25, Matthew 26.29
(cf. Luke 22.18); Matthew 8.11, Luke 13.28–30; Matthew 6.10, Luke
11.2 and Didache 8.2.