Much has been written about the life of Jesus in works that often claim
to be historical and to employ historical methods. Yet only sometimes
are the methods and the presuppositions involved made explicit. However,
it has also been claimed more recently that a decisive change in our
view of the nature of historical knowledge and methods has taken place,
in that the 'modern' has given way to the 'postmodern'. After a survey
of a number of books on Jesus that have raised the question of how his
life should be studied historically, Alexander J. M. Wedderburn starts
by looking at such claims, asking how new and how valid the insights
involved in what claims to be a new historiographical epistemology in
fact are, before turning to look at a number of problems raised by
recent studies of the life of Jesus that are relevant for the work of
the historian: the nature of the sources available to us and how to use
them and the criteria and principles to employ; the role played by the
early Christian communities' memories of Jesus and the extent to which
this enhances their trustworthiness or gives reason for caution; the
extent to which the traditions about Jesus were transmitted orally and
the implications of this for the reliability of these traditions; and,
finally, the questions how far we can investigate how Jesus understood
his work and to what conclusions a historical study of this could lead
us as well as the implications of this for christology.
