‘This book’, writes Halvor Moxnes, ‘suggests a new way to look at historical Jesus studies from the nineteenth century by considering them in their cultural and political contexts of developing nations, instead of viewing them within the confines of the development of a literary-historical discipline, the so-called ‘Quest for the historical Jesus’ (p. 4). For Moxnes scholars interested in the historiography of the quest have too easily overlooked the fact that in its early history, not least in Germany, it coincided with developing ideas of nationalism and the nation state and events in history which brought these matters to the fore. His book attempts to show how such ideas informed those who wrote about the historical Jesus in this period. Moxnes's is not a simple chronological study and he explicitly denies any claims to comprehensiveness for his monograph. Instead he has chosen a number of test cases which come from three different political, religious and cultural contexts within Europe, all representing varieties of nationalisms: Schleiermacher from the early phase of discussion of German nationalism; Strauss whose Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet influenced forms of German nationalism but whose later work on the same subject reflected a more developed stage in the discussion of the subject; Renan who represents nationalism in the context of empire and Orientalism; and George Adam Smith whose portrayal of Jesus reflects ideals of family, class and masculinity in late Victorian Britain.

Moxnes's study brings out a variety of themes: Jesus as great man or hero embodying in a variety of ways the aspirations of the nation, whether more democratically or hierarchically oriented (biography in this period had a nationalist character and while Christian adoption of such an approach to Jesus appalled some because of its implications that Jesus was a mere human being, in truth he was never treated as such in the Lives under discussion but always assumed to be a great man in one sense or another); the role of the land and the landscape in depictions of Jesus (Jesus is always depicted as a person amongst or above his people); the role of race and idealism in the forging of a national identity. Moxnes's discussion is always engaged and subtle. Schleiermacher's emphasis upon Jesus as a person operating both in Galilee and Judea is seen as part of his attempt to make Jesus appear a figure of all the nation and not just a part of it (and fits in with other democratising concerns in his implied picture of an ideal nation) and such an emphasis, Moxnes asserts, arises naturally out of Schleiermacher's prioritising of the Gospel of John, something which with the advances of literary-critical study became impossible later on, and led to a more Synoptic view of Jesus' exclusively Galilean ministry and varieties of readings of the significance of that land and its contrast with Jerusalem (his discussion of the role of Palestine in the nineteenth-century imagination is especially helpful). Moxnes is good on the role of race, showing, for instance, how Renan's presentation of Jesus as someone who transcended race reflected his strong sense that nationhood emerged from beliefs in a common humanity and not racial origins, a point which he was to take up in his later dispute with Strauss in the wake of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. But, Moxnes asserts, it is precisely Renan's non-racial presentation of Jesus which presents the sensitive reader with difficulties.

Such a subject can lend itself to a censorious tone but Moxnes has refrained from littering his text with outbursts of moral indignation. In fact he shows a considerable degree of empathy with his diverse subjects: ‘The nineteenth century construction of Jesus in Palestine are a form of the historical imagination of Jesus as a “great man” in communities configured as nations and empires. Rather than looking upon these imaginations as failures … we should consider them as responding to the needs of specific situations and trying to make history relevant for present-day challenges' (p. 178). In a sense these concluding words to the final section of the major part of the book echo Moxnes's discussion of Schleiermacher's desire to place Jesus within his people and his land while not ridding him of his ongoing relevance, and his final chapter is an attempt to present a variety of ways of understanding Jesus within a non-national and global setting. As he states, ‘The task now is to go beyond notions of nation, people and empire as models for writing about Jesus and to write about him in the context of a global community’ (p. 198).

This is a wide-ranging and stimulating book arguing a case which at one level seems quite obvious but has rarely been the subject of detailed discussion (though here we might recall W. R. Farmer's book on the synoptic problem; and Roland Deines's important work [neither mentioned in the bibliography] on the historiography of the Pharisees in which he shows how questions to do with the relationship of the State to the Church in the evolving Prussian state were reflected in discussion of the Pharisees and Sadducees). The role of religion in the formation of ideas of nationhood in the nineteenth century has long been recognised and this book is one legitimate extension of that thesis. Some might wonder at the precise function of the test cases. Are they there to present the tip of a diverse iceberg? Or are they some of the most convincing proofs of Moxnes's thesis? While Moxnes admits that he does not aim to be comprehensive, we should still ask whether the tendencies that he delineates in these four authors could be readily replicated. Were ideas of nationalism and of nationhood fundamental forces in the nineteenth-century quest or something less than that; and how do they relate to other influences upon the quest. Schweitzer, with whose analysis of the quest Moxnes begins, was no nationalist, and it is difficult to see his work as stimulated by these concerns. And other examples could be produced. But whatever place these ideas had in the quest, Moxnes has shown that any serious historian of this subject overlooks them at his or her peril.