History of Consciousness- Spring 1998

INTRODUCTION: so-called search for the historical

April 7-9 Jesus; critical scholarship and sources for a "life"

of Jesus; Jesusites vs. Christians; Jesus and the origins

of Christianity

MEMORIES OF JESUS I: Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke as

April 14-16 folk and community-based sources of different Jesuses

MEMORIES OF JESUS II: Gospel of John, the Apocalypse,

April 21-23 and Paul as theologizing sources of different Jesuses

MEMORIES OF JESUS III: Gospel of Thomas, Nativity

April 28-30 Narratives, the Gnostics and Jewish-Christians as

sources of different reconstructed Jesuses

TYPOLOGIES OF JESUS I: Jesus as accident (wrong

May 5-7 person in right place; right person in wrong place)

TYPOLOGIES OF JESUS II: Jesus as Jew and Messiah

May 12-14

TYPOLOGIES OF JESUS III: Jesus as Hellenistic Wise

May 19-21 Man, healer/miracle worker, and theologian (hippy)

TYPOLOGIES OF JESUS IV: Jesus as revolutionary and

May 26-28 urban guerilla

TYPOLOGIES OF JESUS V: Jesus as divine and as god

June 2-4

CONCLUSION: is there a "real" Jesus? How many

June 9-11 Christianities derive from many Jesuses

Students will be required to take two exams (a mid-term and a final), and in addition provide essay responses to take-home questions. Their performance on these exercises will constitute the basis of an evaluation of their work.

• ALLEGRO, John
  • The sacred Mushroom and the Cross (New York: Doubleday, 1970)
• ALTIZER, Thomas
  • The contemporary Jesus (Ithaca: SUNY Press, 1996)
• ANDREWS, Richard and Paul SCHELLENBERGER
  • The Tomb of God (London: Little, Brown, 1996)
• BAIGENT, Michael and Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln
  • Holy Blood, Holy Grail (New York: Dell, 1983)
• BAUER, Walter
  • Orthodoxy and Heresy in earliest Christianity (1877-1960) (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979)
  • Rechtgl ubigkeit und Ketzerei im ltesten Christentum (1934)
• BULTMANN, Rudolph
  • History of the Synoptic Tradition (New York: Harper, 1963)
  • Primitive Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980)
  • Jesus and the Word (New York: Scribner's)
  • Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Scribner's, 1958)
• CROSSAN, John Dominic
  • The essential Jesus: original sayings and earliest images (San Francisco: Harper, 1994)
  • The historical Jesus: the life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: Harper, 1991)
  • Jesus: a revolutionary biography (San Francisco: Harper, 1994)
• EISLER, Robert
  • The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist (1882-1949) (London: Methuen, 1931)
  • Die messianische Unabh ngigkeitsbewegung vom Auftreten Johannes des T ufers bis zum Untergang Jakobs des Gerechten (1929-30)
• FLUSSER, David
  • Jesus (New York: Herder, 1969)
• GAGER, John
  • Kingdom and Community: the social World of early Christianity (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1975)
• GRANT, Robert
  • Gnosticism and early Christianity (New York: Harper, 1966)
• HARNACK, Adolf von
  • What is Christianity? (1851-1930) (New York: Harper, 1957)
  • Das Wesen des Christentums (1900)
• JEREMIAS, Joachim
  • New Testament Theology (New York: Scribner's, 1971)
• KISEMANN, Ernst
  • Jesus means Freedom (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970)
• KAZANTZAKIS, Nikos
  • The Last Temptation of Christ (1883-1957) (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1960)
• KINNARD, Roy and Tim Davis
  • Divine Images: A history of Jesus on the Screen (New York: Carol Pub., 1992)
• LOISY, Alfred
  • The Origins of the New Testament (1857-1940) (New York: Macmillan, 1950)
• MACK, Burton
  • A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988)
  • The Lost Gospel: the Book of Q and Christian Origins (San Francisco: Harper, 1993)
  • Who wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth (San Francisco: Harper, 1995)
• MAILER, Norman
  • The Gospel according to the Son (New York: Random House, 1997)
• MALONE, Peter
  • Movie Christs and Anti-Christs (New York: Crossroad, 1990)
• MARTIN, Luther
  • Hellenistic Religions: an introduction (New York: Oxford, 1987)
• MEIER, John
  • A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991-94, in 2 vols.)
• NEW TESTAMENT: gospels, letters, apocalypse
• PAGELS, Elaine
  • The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage, 1989) (1979)
• RENAN, Ernst
  • The Life of Jesus (1823-1892) (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1991)
  • Vie de Jesus (1863)
• ROBINSON, James M.
  • A new Quest for the historical Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) (1959)
  • and Helmut Koester: Trajectories through early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971)
• RUETHER, Rosemary Radford
  • Faith and Fratricide: the theological Roots of Antisemitism (New York: Seabury, 1979)
• SANDERS, E.P.
  • The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993)
• SANDMEL, Samuel
  • We Jews and Jesus (New York: Oxford, 1965)
• SCHOEPS, Hans-Joachim
  • Jewish Christiantiy: factional Disputes in the early Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969)
  • Paul: the Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish religious History (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961)
• SCHONFIELD, Hugh
  • The Passover Plot(London: Bantam, 1971) (1965)
  • The Jesus Party (New York: Macmillan, 1974)
• SCHWEITZER, Albert
  • The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1875-1965) (New York: Macmillan, 1968)
  • Von Reimarus zu Wrede: eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (1906)
  • The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: the secret of Jesus' Messiahship and Passion (New York: Schocken, 1964)
  • The psychiatric Study of Jesus (Boston: Beacon, 1958)
  • Schweitzer's dissertation
• STARK, Rodney
  • The Rise of Christianity: a sociologist reconsiders History (Princeton: Princeton University, 1996)
• STRAUSS, David Friedrich
  • The Life of Jesus (1808-1874) (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973)
  • Das Leben Jesu (1835-36)
  • The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) (1865)
• THIERING, Barbara
  • Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Jesus the Man) (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992)
• VERMES, Geza
  • Jesus the Jew (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981)
  • The Religion of Jesus the Jew (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993)
• WEISS, Johannes
  • Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God (1863-1914) (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971) (1901)
• WILKEN, Robert
  • The Myth of Christian Beginnings (Garden City: Doubleday, 1971)
• WILSON, A.N.
  • Jesus: A Life (New York: Norton, 1992)
• WOOD, James
  • "He is finished" ( review of Normal Mailer's The Gospel according to the Son), in: The New Republic, 12 May 1997, 30-35

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• MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)
  • directed by Terry Jones; written by, and starring Graham Chapman (93 minutes 1 hour 33 minutes)
• THE RULING CLASS (1972)
  • directed by Peter Medak; starring Peter O'Toole (155 minutes 2 hours 35 minutes)
• THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988)
  • directed by Martin Scorsese; starring Willem Dafoe (from the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, 1883-1957) (163 minutes 2 hours 43 minutes)
• THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD (1965)
  • directed by George Stevens; starring Max von Sydow (from the 1949 novel by Fulton Oursler) (225 minutes 3 hours 45 minutes)
• BEN HUR (1959)
  • directed by William Wyler; starring Charleton Heston (from the 1880 novel by Lew Wallace, 1827-1905, subtitled "A Tale of the Christ") (217 minutes 3 hours 37 minutes)
• JESUS OF NAZARETH (1977)
  • directed by Franco Zeffirelli; starring Robert Powell (written by Anthony Burgess and Zeffirelli) (382 minutes 6 hours 22 minutes)
• THE SIGN OF THE CROSS (1932)
  • directed by Cecil B. de Mille; starring Frederic March, Charles Laughton, Claudette Colbert (from the 1897 novel by Wilson Barrett, 1848-1904) (125 mins 2 hours 5 minutes)
• QUO VADIS (1951)
  • directed by Mervyn Le Roy; starring Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Peter Ustinov (from the novel by Henryk Sienkiwicz, 1846-1916) (171 minutes 2 hours 51 minutes)
• THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW (1964)
  • directed and written by P. Pasolini (1922-1975) (136 minutes 2 hours 16 minutes)
• JESUS OF MONTREAL (1989)
  • written by Denys Arcand (119 minutes 1 hour 59 minutes)
• WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND (1961)
  • from the novel by Mary Hayley Bell, directed by Bryan Forbes, and starring Alan Bates and Hayley Mills (99 minutes 1 hour 36 minutes)

Revised 7/13/04.