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                                                                                                           Which                                                                                                            Which Jesus?*

The following are "the most important areas of broad consensus" discovered by the interdisciplinary group of biblical scholars and theologians, the results of whose work are published as a collection of essays in the book:, Seeking the Identity of Jesus: A Pilgrimage (Eerdmans, 2008), edited by Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Richard B. Hays.

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3. "The entirety of the canonical witness is indispensable to a faithful rendering of the figure of Jesus."unmigrated-wiki-markup

4. "In order to understand the identity of Jesus rightly, the church must constantly engage in the practice of deep, sustained reading of these texts." (The immediately following sentence reads, significantly \ -\- and very differently\! \ -\- "If Jesus is to be known through the testimony of the apostolic witnesses, one primary means of access to him will be through disciplined, faithful engagement with the texts through which that testimony is mediated" \ [30\].)

5. "To come to grips with the identity of Jesus, we must know him as he is presented to us through the medium of narrative."

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Ad 9. Yes, but "something that must be learned through long-term discipline" is ambiguous as between something that must be learned through the long-term discipline proper to Christian theology as critical appropriation of Christian witness and something that can only be learned through the long-term discipline proper to the Christian life itself as--in Wittgentstein's words---"Resultat eines Lebens." The two kinds of learning and discipline are significantly different and not to be confused.

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