Abstract
Relating the historical Jesus to images of Jesus in Christian tradition and to the experiences of a contemporary audience has proven a burdensome task in the modern period. In the present day, various disjunctions and entanglements with religious and non-religious features of social life intensify the crisis of identity experienced by many Christians. Juan Luis Segundo and Burton Mack stand out as two interpreters of the historical Jesus who have approached the problem in different ways, not so much to restore the tradition for their audience as to subject it to radical historical criticism. As this study demonstrates, hermeneutics does not solve the larger problem of contemporary Christian identity but it does enable exchange between very different accounts of the problem, in turn clarifying what is at stake in the interpretive task: an interpreter's present conduct in the world.
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