Who was Maurice Goguel?
"Goguel (1880–1955) wrote several books on the historical Jesus. He first published Jésus de Nazareth: mythe ou histoire? It intended to refute the mythical interpretation of the gospels that was represented in France by Paul-Louis Couchoud. Then he wrote La Vie de Jésus, the first volume of a trilogy entitled Jésus et les origines du Christianisme. This work, largely amplified, was republished in 1950 with another title, Jésus. Goguel considered it a new book. He also wrote books about John the Baptist (1928), faith in the resurrection of Jesus in early Christianity (1933) and a great number of articles and reviews dealing with the gospels and the historical Jesus." [1]
On his work has been critically assessed:
"Of all French-speaking authors Goguel is certainly the one who devoted the most time and energy to the question of the historical Jesus. In his lifetime, his work was abundantly quoted and commented. Since he did not pledge allegiance to any school – although he can be linked to the symbolo-fideism of the School of Paris – he marked out an original path. However, he never really renewed his own approach, nor integrated the contribution of form-criticism or of the great discoveries, like the texts of Qumran. Thus he never departed from an historicism and a psychologism that may appear somewhat outdated today."
Why Am I Mentioning Goguel?
He was a contemporary of Albert Schweitzer, referenced him, and Bart Ehrman views Albert Schweitzer as one of the most brilliant and influential figures in the history of New Testament scholarship. For over a century, critical biblical studies have been deeply shaped by Schweitzer’s 1906 work, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, and Ehrman is one of his most prominent modern defenders and popularizers. The inadequacy of Ehrman's scholarship can be traced to his own mentors, and Schweitzer impacted Ehrman's mentors and many other scholars. Shedding light on those inadequacies is desperately needed in the academic fields associated with the historical nature of the beginnings of early Christianity.
Maurice Goguel and Albert Schweitzer are connected through their monumental contributions to historical-critical biblical scholarship, specifically during the era known as the "First Quest" for the Historical Jesus and its immediate aftermath in the early 20th century.
While they operated in different academic cultures (Schweitzer in Germany and Goguel in France) their work directly intersected on two major fronts: the role of apocalyptic eschatology in understanding Jesus, and the defense of Jesus’s historicity against the "Christ Myth" theory.
Footnotes
- Christian Grappe, "Goguel, Maurice," in The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus, ed. Craig A. Evans (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 231–232.