Category:Historical Jesus Studies--1700s

Georg Frideric Haendel

Hermann Samuel Reimarus

Historical Jesus Studies in the 1700s--Works and Authors

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Overview

Jesus remains an important subject in the arts, as attested in this century especially by the production of numerous oratorios, including Haendel's Messiah. The Enlightenment brought about a more rationalistic approach to the gospels. In 1738 Thomas Chubb asserted that one must distinguish between the teaching of Jesus and that of the Apostles who wrote the Gospels. By the end of the century the idea emerged that the gospels might not tell the "true" story of Jesus. Maybe Jesus was a political revolutionary, whose failure prompted his reinterpretation as a religious figure (Hermann Samuel Reimarus), or maybe Jesus did not even exist and his biography was a completely mythological construct.

@2014 - Notes by Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan