Although at the heart of the largest religious tradition in human history, Jesus of Nazareth left no writings. The earliest texts about his sayings, teachings, life, and movement were written decades after his death in a language (Greek) that was almost certainly not the primary language he himself spoke (Aramaic). Moreover, his activities attracted almost no attention outside of the backwater frontier provinces of the Roman Empire where he lived and died. Nevertheless, it is possible to tease a significant amount of historically likely information out of the sources through the discipline of literary criticism. Our lecture group will explore how scholars have undertaken this project and look at some of the results of two centuries of academic inquiry.
What Can We Know about the Historical Jesus?
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