Vermes Quest

Geza Vermes is central to the study of the historical Jesus, and the shift in mainstream scholarship often called the third quest is closely tied to his name. Ever since Jesus the Jew appeared in 1973, leading scholars have engaged with his proposals, but usually only in passing and without settling on a clear verdict. Hilde Brekke Moller sets out to measure how much Vermes actually changed the field, both during the 1980s and within later third quest work. She does this by reading his writings alongside the responses they provoked from many Jesus scholars.

Moller gives particular attention to three areas that have drawn the most debate: the Jewishness of Jesus, the so-called Son-of-Man problem, and Vermes's claim that Jesus should be understood as a Hasid. Her method is research-historical, meaning it studies how the scholarship itself developed. Alongside the major figures E.P. Sanders, J.D. Crossan, J.P. Meier and C.A. Evans, she brings forward neglected strands of earlier research. She also examines the current state of the field and questions the rhetoric that much recent historical Jesus scholarship relies on.