NT Midterm Scholars

Rudolf Bultmann—a liberal theologian who wanted to strip away history to get to the nugget of truth. He said that Christ could not be both human and God. He says hat you have to get away from the history in order to find God. He calls this the “offense of the gospel” getting the gospel away from history. He wanted to find out what Jesus really said himself and the “irreducible core.” Wanted to rely on God not the evidence of history, get to the spiritual meaning.

Albert Schweitzer—is associated with consistent eschatology (not yet guy) and lead “the Quest for the Historical Jesus.” It seeks to construct a chronology from the gospels.  But that all people have discovered at the bottom of the well is their own image. He saw that the theologians were just imposing the 19th century view of the “ideal man” on Jesus. 

D.F. Strass—studied under F.C. Baur and the Turbïngen School. He scandalized Christian Europe with his portrayal of the "historical Jesus," whose divine nature he denied. He characterized miraculous elements in the gospels as being "mythical" in character. Strauss dispels the actuality of the stories as "happenings" and reads them solely on a mythic level. Moving from miracle to miracle, he understood all as the product of the early church's use of Jewish ideas about what the Messiah would be like, in order to express the conviction that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.

J.J. Griesbach—most famous for a solution to the synoptic problem. It gives priority to the Gospel of Matthew, portrays the Gospel of Luke as based on it, and the Gospel of Mark as based on both.

H.J. Hotzmann—presents a view which has been widely accepted, maintaining the priority of Mark, deriving Matthew in its present form from Mark and from Matthew's earlier "collection of Sayings," the Logia of Papias, and Luke from Matthew and Mark in the form in which we have them. 

B.H. Streeter—Developed the four-source hypothesis. Posited the existence of two other sources in addition to Mark and Q: “M,” the material peculiar to Matthew’s gospel, and “L,” the material peculiar to Luke’s gospel.

William Wrede—argued that Mark had added the many references where Jesus urged silence about his messiah-ship, that this “messianic secret” was designed to explain how it came about that so few people recognized Jesus to be the Messiah during his lifetime.  Though his thesis is generally discredited today, his contention that Mark is as much theologian as historian has been widely accepted.