Ajalooline Jeesus : teaduse probleem religiooni kontekstis

Summary in English

The essence of the problem discussed in the current thesis is related to the inability of scholars to achieve generally agreed consensus both in the methods of study and the results despite the fact that the research itself has already been going on intensely for two centuries. The focus of the current thesis is therefore in Jesus-research itself and the attention is given to following main points of the research problem. First, the critical study has reached the point where it is said that we can only assuredly know a few bare facts about Jesus– like that he lived in the 1st century Palestine. Secondly the researchers who have tried to overcome the abovementioned scepticism, by working out their constructive treatments of the historical Jesus, have come out with wildly differing pictures of who Jesus was and what he did. Thirdly the research itself as an academic process has been and is being done in the context of varying religious expectations, reactions and prejudices of different groups of people. It is a specific expression of the problem of the relations between religion and science. The thesis is composed of articles written according to the principle of interdisciplinary descriptive modelling. These articles study various particular problems of Jesus-research. Taken altogether they form an overall analysis of the historical-critical methodology. The conclusion of the thesis can be stated as follows. The research of the historical Jesus has mainly been done within the paradigm of the historical-critical method of biblical studies. From the beginning this method has had to deal with an inbuilt tension – to study the religious text while ignoring or opposing the religiousness of it. This tension has lead both to scepticism and an inability to reach consensus in most of the important questions related to study.