Michael Metts is a Ph.D. candidate in New Testament at the University of Aberdeen specializing in historical Jesus studies. He is joining us today on Doth Protest Too Much to discuss the history of the historical-Jesus studies and help break down the methodologies involved with how scholars of the past three centuries have tried to study Jesus of Nazareth in his historical context and who Jesus was as a historical person.
We spend some time discussing the three 'quests' of the historical-Jesus as well as Metts' own research on the second or 'New Quest' in his essay featured in a recently published book Jesus, Skepticism, and the Problem of History (Zondervan Academic, 2019)
I highly recommend checking out this book featuring Metts and several other New Testament scholars. Here is a link to purchase this book (paperback and e-book editions available): https://www.zondervan.com/9780310534761/jesus-skepticism-and-the-problem-of-history/
*The biography of Luther that I mentioned by Heinrich Bornkamm (church historian), the brother of Gunther Bornkamm (a New Quest historical-Jesus scholar) can be accessed and read for free (with subscription) here: https://archive.org/details/lutherinmidcaree0000born/page/152/mode/2up
*This is a link to the book by Martin Kahler that critiqued the early quest for the Historical-Jesus which we mentioned but didn’t have time to get into:
https://www.amazon.com/So-Called-Historical-Historic-Biblical-Fortress/dp/0800632060