RT Article
T1 Revolutionary Contexts for the Quest: Jesus in the Rhetoric and Methods of Early Modern Intellectual History
JF Journal for the study of the historical Jesus
VO 17
IS 1/2
SP 35
OP 80
A1 Birch, Jonathan C. P.
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2019
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1683741412
AB This article contributes to a new perspective on the historical Jesus in early modern intellectual history. This perspective looks beyond German and academic scholarship, and takes account of a plurality of religious, social, and political contexts. Having outlined avenues of research which are consistent with this approach, I focus on radicalised socio-political contexts for the emergence of ‘history' as a category of analysis for Jesus. Two contexts will be discussed: the late eighteenth century, with reference to Joseph Priestley, Baron d'Holbach, and their associations with the French Revolution; and the interregnum period in seventeenth-century Britain, with reference to early Quaker controversies and the apologetic work of Henry More. I identify ideas about Jesus in those contexts which have echoed in subsequent scholarship, while challenging the notion that there is a compelling association between sympathetic historical conceptions of Jesus (as opposed to theological) and a tendency towards radical and revolutionary politics.
K1 More
K1 Nayler
K1 Priestley
K1 Quakers
K1 Reimarus
K1 d'Holbach
K1 Enlightenment
K1 Historical Jesus
K1 Revolution
DO 10.1163/17455197-01701005