ABSTRACT
Many observers of the current ‘third wave’ of historical Jesus research are con-vinced that it too is theologically motivated, even when the concerns that are operative today are very different from those which drove the original quest in the last century. In a post-Marx and post-Freud world the focus of attention is no longer a search for Jesus’ universal moral ideals according to the Hegelian conceptions of history, but rather on the particularity of Jesus’ engagement with the social structures of his own immediate world and the cultural ethos that shaped his responses to it. Suddenly, Galilee has become centre stage in terms of Jesus’ ministry, and inevitably the assumptions about its ethos have varied considerably from one writer to another. Indeed, so great has been the attention to Galilee in some recent studies that the one most historically secure event in his life, namely, that he was crucified in Jerusalem under the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, has been virtually lost sight of. In some accounts Jesus’ denouement in Jerusalem is treated either as an accidental happening or the result of a one-off visit to the Judaean religious centre.
