Relevance

You can write about the method of historical Jesus research without having de facto studied Jesus. Only that you probably do not actually understand what you are doing.

You can study Jesus without knowing well his contemporary Judaism. Only that you probably will get it all wrong.

Therefore, you could say it all starts from and depends on learning about the ancient and second temple early Judaism(s). And I do not mean learning the basics. I mean immersing yourself in all possible knowledge that there is about the issues that you need to address. It is that relevant.

Hence, writing about the historical Jesus has required several in-depth studies of various Jewish topics as well as obtaining an understanding of the Judaism of Jesus’ time as a whole. Many of these issues have remained on my agenda. I have returned to them from time to time and they now form research interests on their own. Here I merely list some them, collected under four overall themes:

• The apocrypha
• The temple
• The law
• Purity