Remembrance of Things Past?

Albert Schweitzer, the Anxiety of Influence, and the Untidy Jesus of Markan Memory

by Michael J. Thate

Book cover: Remembrance of Things Past?

Extent: 374 pages

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Subjects: Biblical Studies, Religious Studies

Series: Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2.Reihe

Series volume number: 351

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(July 2013)

ISBN: 9783161526336

6.06 x 9.06 inches

Price: $143.00

In stock

In this book, Michael J. Thate offers an experiment in reception criticism in its consideration of the formation and reception of the historical Jesus discourse. He also attempts to historicize Leben-Jesu-Forschung within debates and narratives of secularization. These two foci guide the book through its two parts. First Thate explicates Schweitzer’s dominant archival function in Leben-Jesu-Forschung, while aiming to make fragile the “grand architect’s” receptive hegemony. Then he combines critical memory theory and other theoretical readings of the material in an attempt to refocus the study of the historical Jesus as early Christian memory politics in the service of identity explication. He attempts to problematize Schweitzer’s legacy of a tidy systematic approach in which much of historical Jesus scholarship continues to operate.


In this book, Michael J. Thate offers an experiment in reception criticism in its consideration of the formation and reception of the historical Jesus discourse. He also attempts to historicize Leben-Jesu-Forschung within debates and narratives of secularization. These two foci guide the book through its two parts. First Thate explicates Schweitzer’s dominant archival function in Leben-Jesu-Forschung, while aiming to make fragile the “grand architect’s” receptive hegemony. Then he combines critical memory theory and other theoretical readings of the material in an attempt to refocus the study of the historical Jesus as early Christian memory politics in the service of identity explication. He attempts to problematize Schweitzer’s legacy of a tidy systematic approach in which much of historical Jesus scholarship continues to operate.

  • By (author) Michael J Thate