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H.J. Holtzmann's Die synoptischen Evangelien(1863) is not only regarded as having established Markan priority and the basic contours of the Two Source hypothesis; it also offered a sketch of the life of Jesus based on a Mark-like source that represents a starting point for the so-called ‘Liberal Lives of Jesus’ which prevailed from 1863 until the early 1900s. Holtzmann's ‘Life’ portrayed Jesus as an exemplary personality, and posited psychological development in seven stages in the career of Jesus. This essay discusses the intellectual context leading to Holtzmann's book and then offers an annotated English translation of Holtzmann's ‘Life of Jesus’. This is Part 2 of a two-part essay.

While recent historical Jesus studies often appreciate the role played by Jesus’ characteristic activities, debate continues over the historicity of specific examples of such activities. This essay examines the story of Jesus healing a leper as a specific example of Jesus’ activity of healing. In particular it shows the contribution to be made by analyzing the account in the Egerton Gospel 35–47 alongside Mark 1.40-45. The nature of leprosy in the ancient Mediterranean world and the sociocultural realities of a frst-century Jewish context contribute to this analysis. The essay concludes that within the bounds of historical probability Jesus healed a leper (not Hansen's disease but a flaking skin condition). Jesus responded to the man's request by anticipating the priestly declaration that he would be clean and making this possible by curing the man's disease (i.e., his bio-medical condition) by means of verbal command and probably also through touch. Jesus instructed the man to seek a priest's declaration of cleanness in order to heal his illness (i.e., his socio-cultural condition) which Jesus had anticipated would be the result of his response.

Recent study of the priesthood in Second Temple life and thought invites a reconsideration of Jesus’ self-understanding. The appeal to Psalm 110 and Daniel 7.13 indicates that Jesus thought that, although not of priestly lineage, nevertheless he would ultimately be the nation's king and priest after the order of Melchizedek. Mark 1–6 contains a programmatic statement of Jesus’ claim to a high priestly identity as the ‘holy one of God’ (1.24), with a high priestly contagious holiness (1.40-45; 5.25-34; 5.35-43), freedom to forgive sins (2.1-12) and the embodiment of divine presence in a Galilean cornfield (2.23-28). As true high priest he makes divine presence ‘draw near’ to God's people (1.15), where before they had to ‘draw near’ to the Jerusalem temple. The hypothesis that Jesus thought he was Israel's long-awaited eschatological high priest resolves otherwise intractable problems in historical Jesus scholarship. This is Part 1 of a two-part essay.

This article notes the polarized nature of scholarship on Simon of Cyrene (Mark 15.21) and reviews the evidence used to support both the view that he is a fictional character and the view that he is a historical figure. This falls into four categories: competing traditions, homiletic function, absence of Christian witnesses, and the significance of Alexander and Rufus. Concluding that the evidence invoked cannot account for these divergent views, I propose that the decisive factor in scholarly choice is hermeneutical in origin; it is the influence of the matrix of presuppositions that each scholar brings to this text. Until such time as we have investigated these matrices more fully, I suggest that any agreement on texts like Mark 15.21 will remain strictly limited. By way of conclusion, my personal view of Simon is outlined and deemed less than adequate in the light of this study.

John Dominic Crossan recently used Robert Frost's poem ‘For Once, Then, Something’ to illustrate (and partially refute) the familiar charge that historical Jesus scholars have seen a reflection of their own faces looking down into the depths of a well rather than any sort of purchase on the historical Jesus. In so doing, Crossan has misunderstood both Frost's poem and the intention behind the original wellgazer metaphor as coined by George Tyrrell. Although there is little indication that Crossan has applied his newly honed ‘interactivism’ at any point in his work, the problems with the epistemology that he renders are too great to ignore. This article also notes problems with epistemologies advanced by other historical Jesus scholars.