Quote for the Day: The "Third Quest"
“I am no antagonist of innovation, but I do not wish to trumpet it where it does not exist. The assertion that we have recently embarked upon a third quest [for the historical Jesus] may be partly due, one suspects, to chronological snobbery, to the ever-present temptation, instinctive in a technologically driven world, where new is always improved, to flatter ourselves and bestow upon our own age exaggerated significance, to imagine the contemporary to be of more moment than it is.” (Dale Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, p 14)
posted by Loren Rosson III @ 10/13/2005
3 Comments:
Loren, I am just about to publish a paper dealing with this snooty aversion to the 3rd Quest.
I look forward to reading it, Michael. I'm somewhat on the fence with this one, agreeing in essence with what Dale is getting at, though I can't say I'm too hostile to using the term "third quest" as a general designation reflecting some of the new methods that have arisen since the 80s. Certainly the social sciences have helped up make headway like never before (though when misconstrued, they've also done harm: Dale calls this the secularization of Jesus). Still, Dale is right, in general, about the myth of progress. We haven't come as far as we think we have, and the mistakes of the past keep getting repeated.
Loren,
Email me and I'll send you a copy. Otherwise, it is to be published in Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology.
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