I finished Part One of A Marginal Jew which attempts to sketch the problem of reconstructing (or constructing if you’re new) the historical Jesus. Meier discusses categories, sources and criteria and concludes the section with a chapter titled “Why Bother?” where he addresses the theological motivations of such an exercise. I’ll leave anyone interested with a few excellent quotes. They address the benefit of such endeavors. The primary benefit being, in my opinion, a much needed corrective to the ideas, presumptions and creations offered by good-intentioned theologians. While perhaps not all wrong, they had their own challenges (culture, language, biases) that should cause us to critically evaluate some the conclusions these men arrived at.

Like good sociology, the historical Jesus subverts not just some ideologies, but all idealogies.. (p.199)

Indeed the usefulness of the historical Jsus to theology is that he ultimately eludes all our neat theological programs; he brings all of them into question by refusing to fit into the boxes we create for him. (p.199)

Properly understood, the historical Jesus is a bulwark against the reduction of Christian faith in general and christology in particular to “relevant” ideology of any stripe. His [Jesus] refusal to be held fast by any given school of thought is what drives theologians onward into new paths; hence the historical Jsus remains a constant stimulus to theological renewal. (p.200)