There have been some interesting blog posts on the state of historical Jesus studies around the blogosphere recently:
In order to introduce the topics of memory and gap-filling in historical Jesus studies Anthony Le Donne asks, “Was Jesus breastfed?” in “Of Memory and Mother’s Milk”.
Pat McCullough responds in “Breast was Best for Jesus” by asking why this matters. Then he proposes that we might go a different direction with such questions. Rather than “digging up historical details” about Jesus he finds that these types of questions open the door for different areas of inquiry, such as “gendered discourse” and “group boundaries and ideals.” Then McCullough mentions in “Jesus: All Things to All People” a recent blog post by Kate Daley-Bailey titled “Jesus’ Remains: Teaching Multiple Jesi” where it is observed that “…our job…is not to magically distill the ‘real’ Jesus from the swill of theology and political packaging, but rather to highlight the nuanced processes of constructing ‘Jesi’ and query the discursive strategies deployed to flesh out the impoverished Jesus.” In other words, most historical Jesus scholars do not find the “real Jesus” they seek, but rather create another Jesus for all to consider, so a more fruitful approach is the embrace the reality we won’t find the ‘real’ Jesus by becomign aquainted with the multiple depictions of Jesus (she calls them “Jesi”) available to us.
James McGrath challenges this pessimism in “Is Historical Jesus Studies Futile?” He observes that while there is diversity in how scholars present Jesus, and even in how the Evangelists present Jesus, that doesn’t mean there isn’t commonality to be found. He advocates the role of “scholarly consensus” as a guide to historical Jesus studies, admitting that the nature of the field is to discover something new, which may create confusion and excessive diversity, but that doesn’t mean there are not aspects of the life of Jesus that most scholars affirm which can tell us something about the man.
the archives near Emmaus 
I was about to pounce all over this “In other words, most historical Jesus scholars do not find the “real Jesus” they seek, but rather create another Jesus for all to consider.” when I noticed you conclude by observing James McGrath has already done that.
Thank you James McGrath …
I both agree and disagree with McGrath, historical Jesus studies aren’t futile in the absolute sense for the reasons mentioned, but they have degenerated into a futile exercise in the academy. The problem is that too many people want to find a Jesus that isn’t quite like the Church’s Jesus; however, the Church’s Jesus (more or less) ably reflects our sources in the NT. Hence, many researchers (e.g., Crossan) in this area have tended towards a minimalist approach that allows them to keep our sources at arm’s length while at the same time recovering just enough historical nuggets to reconstruct a historical Jesus that’s more to their liking. The problem with this approach is that it’s self-defeating. In particular, if the judgments that inform the aforementioned minimalism are sound then we really can’t recover the historical Jesus and might as well close up shop. Indeed, this point was made explicitly by Allison in his latest book “Constructing Jesus” and, I think, informs the spirit of the approach to the historical Jesus taken by Le Donne et al.
To give an example of what I mean, the academy’s general unwillingness to grant that the historical Jesus thought of himself as a god of some sort is, in my opinion, rather silly and motivated by an obvious bias against the Church’s Jesus. However, this is clearly the opinion of the Johannine corpus and the Pauline corpus, and also the opinion of the synoptic gospels (i.e., Jesus is “the Lord” in Matt 3:3//Mark 1:3), though this latter point is less obvious I suppose. But the modern sensibilities of Crossan et al. are uncomfortable with this sort of thing and slant their scholarship accordingly.
Thanks for taking note, Brian! I’ve got a more fully developed response to James up on the blog now: http://patmccullough.com/jesus-historical-inquiry-and-futility/.
You’re welcome. Thanks for notifying me of the newest post.