‘The Jesus I Didn't Know‘: The Historical Jesus in an Unappreciated African Basket

Abstract

The emergence of the Age of the Enlightenment ushered in critical thinking about the Gospels and Jesus. This makes the hypostatic perspective of Jesus as being God and human to be subjected to academic scrutiny. Modern critical scholars predominantly in North America and Germany have attempted to place Jesus on the scientific scale which seems to view Jesus as being human rather than divine. Using the historical-critical method, this paper surveys the various depictions of Jesus in the Jesus scholarship and it adopts Crossan's categorisation; the traditional Jesus, the Historical Jesus and the fictional Jesus because of its reliability and clarity in surveying the entire Jesus studies. It also surveys the understanding of Jesus in Africa following Taylors perception of Jesus's question, ‘Who do men say I am?'. An evaluation of these Western and African portraits of Jesus was made and it is obvious the Africans are left to select from the various options of Jesus in the African basket: the biblio—westem and African biblio-cultural contexts. Lastly, the paper argues for the Bible depictions of Jesus as reliable and authentic portraits of Jesus of all times which are foundational for faith and spiritual growth in both scholarly and spiritual searches for Jesus.