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Good points from John which I think conclusively answer beliefs some (not myself) Christians may have that moral ideas and equality were absent pre 30-33AD.I've appreciate both standpoints in this Blog! I think the source of Jesus' & Paul's beliefs has to be founded in OT theology due to their context which was most certainly Jewish?

(James Thompson, on "Atheism and the Good Life")

The First Quest: the confidence of the Enlightenment

The so-called ‘Enlightenment’ was a European intellectual movement of the 17th-18th centuries which emphasized the power of human reason to discover all that was valuable in life. Buoyed by the significant literary and artistic successes of the recent Renaissance period (1400s-1500s) Enlightenment thinkers felt free to question everything. They would not be constrained by mere tradition, whether cultural or ecclesiastical, and the consequences for biblical studies were significant.

Whereas earlier scholarship was inspired by its faith in Christian teachings, Enlightenment scholarship was guided by its confidence in human reason. I should point out that neither approach really lacked the application of reason, as the example of Origen amply demonstrates for the ancient period. Equally, it has to be said that neither really lacked a faith-commitment either. As the philosophers remind us, the prerequisite of all intellectual enquiry is trust in the efficacy of one’s rational powers. 

Enlightenment scholarship was absolutely confident in its ability to separate fact from fiction in the Bible. It could do this using linguistics, historiography, archaeology and philosophy, without recourse to the ‘dogmas’ of the Christian church. Many have called this movement the ‘First Quest’ for the historical Jesus.

The ‘revolutionary Jesus’ of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768)

German scholar Hermann Reimarus epitomized the Enlightenment spirit and in some ways can be said to have launched the First Quest.

Reimarus was a professor of oriental languages in Hamburg and a thoroughgoing ‘Deist’; he rejected the idea that the Creator had revealed himself to humanity (either through the Bible or elsewhere).  It was out of this academic and philosophical perspective that he wrote his stinging critique of orthodox Christianity titled Apologia or Defence of the Rational Worshippers of God. He originally made it available only to a close circle of friends but, after his death, sections of the work were published by the philosopher G. E. Lessing. These included chapters titled On the Resurrection Narratives and On the Intentions of Jesus and His Disciples.

Reimarus proposed three new ideas. First, he insisted that we distinguish between what Jesus actually said and did and what the apostles merely claimed he said and did. In other words, he posited a significant difference—even contradiction—between the ‘Jesus of history’ and the ‘Christ of faith’. Many echo this sentiment today without realising where it came from.  

Secondly—and perhaps a little surprisingly to modern ears—Reimarus maintained that Jesus was a failed political revolutionary. His reasoning was in three parts: (1) many ancient Jews thought of God’s coming kingdom as an earthly reality destined to overthrow the Romans (that’s true); (2) Jesus, who was a Jew, also talked a lot about the ‘kingdom of God’ (that’s true too); and (3) Jesus must therefore also have intended to oust the Romans and establish a political kingdom. Jesus was executed, then, as a dissident. Any teachings or deeds of Jesus in the Gospels that moved in a different direction—e.g., ‘love your enemies’—was likely, said Reimarus, to be the result of the apostles putting words into Jesus’ mouth sometime after his political agenda had failed.
  [Reimarus] posited a significant difference—even contradiction—between the ‘Jesus of history’ and the ‘Christ of faith’. Many echo this sentiment today without realising where it came from.
 
 

This introduces the third idea in Reimarus’ rational reconstruction of the historical Jesus. The saviour figure described in the Gospels and proclaimed by the church ever since is a deliberate deception crafted by the apostles. Unable to let go of their commitment to the failed Jesus, the first disciples stole the body of Jesus from the tomb, invented a story about his being raised to life and then proclaimed him to the world as a divine redeemer (rather than a political revolutionary) who would soon appear to end the world. The fact that such a redeemer did not reappear, said Reimarus, means that the entire Christian religion is irrelevant.

The ‘mythical Jesus’ of David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874)
Reimarus’ extreme scepticism and anti-Christian agenda were cemented (and slightly moderated) by another Enlightenment scholar, and another German, David Strauss.

In one of the most influential books of the 19th century, Strauss’ The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (published in 1835-36) argued that the Gospels need to be understood as Myth.  ‘Myth’ does not mean simply untrue; nor did Strauss go along with the idea that the apostles set out to deliberately deceive. What he meant was that wherever the Gospel writers strain our rational minds—as in the miracle stories—they are employing the religious imagination to express the inexpressible longings of the human soul. The resurrection narratives, for instance, are not out-and-out lies; nor are they historical reports. They are rather poetical images (myths) of the divine life which the early Christians longed for.

Unlike Reimarus, David Strauss believed that the core ideas of Christianity—peace and love and all that—could be preserved even if the main events are unhistorical. Someone like Bishop John Shelby Spong is a modern example of a theologian in the Straussian model.
  David Strauss believed that the core ideas of Christianity... could be preserved even if the main events are unhistorical 
 
 

The ‘wise man Jesus’ of Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-1892)

David Strauss launched a flurry of very confident critical analyses of the life of Jesus. In 1863 the French philosopher and historian Ernest Renan published his Life of Jesus in which he cast Jesus as a charming and wise Galilean preacher whose initial popularity soon waned—to the point of outright rejection—on account of the high demands he placed on his followers.

The First Quest was beginning to take its shape. Jesus as the simple, wise teacher would become a stock theme in many discussions about him (even today).


 
 
 

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