Page - 7 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/01

Cristiana Facchini and Paola von Wyss-Giacosa Understanding Jesus in the Early Modern Period and Beyond Editorial The exceptional and yet very human life of Jesus has been represented in a vast breadth of forms, from the visual to the textual, forming intertextual relation- ships that are highly complex in encompassing chronologically and geographi- cally varied cultures. Since the inception of Christianity and its separation from Judaism, canoni- cal and extracanonical sources have provided nuanced and contradictory bio- graphical information about Jesus, his birth and childhood, his early adulthood and his religious ministry. Gospel narratives describe at length the Nazarene’s acts and words before turning to his dramatic and violent end, with his arrest, torture and death on the cross. Intensified attention, especially in the form of precise historical knowledge, appears to have been given to Jesus’ biography in times of conflict. The search for sources and documents that might provide accurate information about his life has been central to intra-Christian debate since the time of the Reformation. During the period of the “radical Enlightenment” a particularly polemical his- toriographical tradition took shape, which, bolstered by the rise of modernity, was eventually to become influential in the political and cultural public arenas.1 A genuinely historiographical approach, aiming at a more accurate and more detailed reconstruction of the historical person and images of Jesus was a hallmark of 19th-century scholarly efforts. According to the eminent theologi- an Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), a rationalist genius of the Enlightenment, the Hamburg theologian Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1698–1768), had been at the forefront of this scholarly endeavor.2 Schweitzer was relying on selected fragments of Reimarus’ Deist work published in the 1770s by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. The complete Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes (An Apology for, or Some Words in Defense of, Reasoning Worshipers of God) was edited and published only in 1972.3 In Schweitzer’s historiographical account, which covers the entire 19th century, great relevance is attributed to 1 Schweizer 1906. 2 Mulsow 2011, Groetsch 2015. 3 Edited by Gerhard Alexander; see Reimarus 1972. DOI: 10.25364/05.4:2019.1.1 Editorial | 7www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1, 7–21