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Anthony Giambrone. A Quest for the Historical Christ: Scientia Christi and the Modern Study of Jesus. Washington, DC : The Catholic University of America Press, 2022.

Abstract

""A Quest for the Historical Christ brings together a collection of interrelated essays on the historical Jesus and primitive Christology. Sensitive to the diverse, but traditionally Protestant assumptions and perspectives of the "Quest" as well as to thewidely lamented disconnect between New Testament exegesis and classical dogmatic theology, an alternative approach is proposed in these pages. Ecumenical and conciliar reference points, along with non-confessional historical methods (e.g. archeology) shape the basic project, which nevertheless assumes some distinctive and important Catholic contours. The book is divided into three sections: Historical Foundations, Theological Perspectives, and Jesus and the Scriptures. While the individual chapters represent independent probes, the cumulative argument and arc of the study drives in clear and concerted directions. After a first approach to the Gospel data, attentive at once to historiographical and historical questions, a series of interventions reorienting the present scholarly discussion are suggested. These various, foundational essays lead, finally, to a sustained mediation on the mind of Christ, considered as a unique reader of the Scriptures: a meditation having its proper reflex and reflection in the way Christians themselves, as readers of the Gospels, participate in the Lord's own encounter with the living Word"--

Contents

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Part I. Historical Foundations -- 1. Vera et Sincera de Iesu -- 2. The German Roots of Historical Jesus Research -- 3. The "Lying Historians" and Luke 1-2 -- 4. Memorializing Miracles in the World of the Gospels -- 5. Eyewitness Historiography and the Resurrection -- Part II. Theological Perspectives -- 6. Spirit and Power -- 7. The Revenge of Alexandrian Exegesis: Toward an Ecclesial Hermeneutic -- 8. Interpretatio Iudaica -- 9. Primitive Christology as Ancient Philosophy; 10. Two Loci of Greco-Roman Jewish Monotheism -- Part III. Jesus and the Scriptures -- 11. Scientia Christi: Three Theses -- 12. Another Johannine Thunderbolt? The Legatio Baptistae and "The Poetic Christ" -- 13. "Why Do the Scribes Say?" Scribal Expectations of an Eschatological High Priest and the Interpretation of Jesus' Transfiguration -- 14. Prosopological Exegesis and Christological Anagnorisis -- 15. Jesus' Prophetic Knowledge and the Gospels -- Appendix I: Anti-Hegelian Postlude on the Religion of the Future; Appendix II: Review of Paula Fredriksen, When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation -- Bibliography -- Scriptural Index -- Ancient Sources Index -- Subject Index