Historical Jesus

In the comment section of James McGrath’s blog, Eric Reitan gave a good analogy of the four major positions on the Historical Jesus:

1. There was an historic king of the Britons named Arthur, and his life was exactly as described by Sir Thomas Malory in _Le Morte d’Arthur_.
2. There was an historic king of the Britons named Artur whose impact was sufficiently great that, after being slain by a usurper, those loyal to him would gather secretly to swear allegiance to his bloodline and share stories about him—stories said to come from Artur’s closest thanes. The earliest writings from these communities are by a priest more interested in the meaning of Artur’s life than the details of it. But after a few decades, several followers attempted to write accounts of Artur’s life and sayings based on what their respective communities had preserved. While not historically accurate, they offer clues for anyone wanting to understanding the historic King Arthur.
3. There was an historic king of the Britons named Artur whose impact was sufficiently great to prompt storytelling about him. This storytelling became quickly severed from actual historic events, becoming interwoven with the creative fancies of bards whose interest lay more in telling colorful tales than in preserving history. Eventually these stories evolved into the legendary figure we now know as King Arthur. But the King Arthur we encounter in the inherited legends has little similarity to the historic figure that inspired the original storytelling.
4. There was no historic king of the Britons who gave rise to the King Arthur legends. Instead, this figure was wholly an invention of bards interested in creating colorful tales—although the first bard to invent the first King Arthur story borrowed a few of his plotlines from divergent bits of recent events he’d witnessed in his travels, and decided to name his hero “Artur” because he had some vague memory that there was some king by that name who’d lived a generation ago.

Number 1 corresponds to the Fundamentalist/Evangelical confidence in the reliability of the Gospel narratives about Jesus. Ben Witherington and Norman Geisler would be typical examples of #1. The second item corresponds to mainstream Jesus scholarship, which while critical, still allows enough room for confessional Christian beliefs. EP Sanders and Bart Ehrman are some of the more well-known examples. Third is the minimalist historical Jesus position, which I broadly agree with. Randel Helms and Alan Dundes can be said to hold this view. The last item is equated with Jesus mythicists, who do not accept a historical Jesus. Earl Doherty and Acharya S are the well-known exponents of this fringe position.