title: Waterstones

text: Following an attempt by Tim Waterstone in 1997 to buy the entire WHSmith group, WHSmith sold the Waterstones chain for £300 million to HMV Media plc (now HMV Group) – a joint venture between EMI, Advent International and Tim Waterstone. This included high street brands HMV and rival Dillons, creating an international entertainment retailer. Waterstone was appointed chairman of the group but stood down in 2001, citing "concerns for the way the company was being run" and was replaced by Alan Giles. A year later, all Dillons shops were rebranded as Waterstones, with some sold to rival Ottakar's making the brand defunct. The chain had also begun pulling out of its US overseas venture.


title: Waterstones

text: Waterstones launched the "Waterstones Books Quarterly" magazine in 2001, containing book reviews and author interviews. In the same year the booksellers' online operation, Waterstones.co.uk, was franchised to Amazon.com, with the company expressing a desire "to concentrate on its high street and campus shops". The move resulted in the loss of 50 jobs. In 2003, Waterstones announced it was supporting Dyslexia Action as its chosen charity, helping to raise awareness and understanding for dyslexia.


title: Waterstones

text: In 2006 Giles stepped down from his position and was replaced by Gerry Johnson as managing director of Waterstones and Simon Fox as group CEO. In April 2006 following two bids by Permira for the group, Tim Waterstone attempted to buy back the company from HMV for £256 million, but later withdrew his offer specifying the conditions set by HMV were "too punitive" to accept. A strategic review in September saw Waterstones pull out of its franchise agreement with Amazon to re-launch its online business, "Waterstones.com", independently. The chain also began to pilot a loyalty programme in South West England and Wales. The scheme was successful, launching nationally as "The Waterstones Card" across its entire shop portfolio.


title: Waterstones

text: Waterstones piloted a brand refresh exercise in selected shops, beginning with Manchester's Arndale Centre in 2007. On 19 November 2007, the chain closed its first branch on Old Brompton Road. Following a consultation, the company's supply chain was overhauled in 2008 with the implementation of a warehouse and distribution centre in Burton-upon-Trent. Existing direct-to-store deliveries from suppliers were replaced by a centralised warehouse capable of receiving merchandise and sorting an estimated 70 million books per year and 200 staff were made redundant by the process. In September 2008, Waterstones began selling the Sony Reader in an agreement which saw the booksellers' branches and Sony Centre shops stock the reader exclusively for two weeks after its release. Waterstones.com began to supply eBooks in the .epub format. In November 2009, Waterstones moved into second-hand bookselling in a partnership with Alibris setting up an online reselling tool called "Waterstones Marketplace", part of Waterstones.com.


title: Waterstones

text: In January 2010, HMV Group announced that Waterstones like-for-like sales over the Christmas period were down 8.5 per cent on the previous year. This culminated in the resignation of managing director Gerry Johnson with immediate effect. He was replaced by development director Dominic Myers, who was managing director of the British academic bookselling chain Blackwells until 2005. Myers joined HMV in 2006 to oversee the integration of Ottakar's into the chain. In response to the decline in sales, he implemented a three-year plan in which branches were tailored to their local market alongside a 'rejuvenation' of the company brand and an increase in range. As part of these changes, Waterstones implemented new branding in May 2010, developed by agency VentureThree. The company also moved to support the Rainbow Trust, which provides support to children with life-threatening and terminal illnesses and their families, in the same year.


title: Waterstones

text: After an announcement that profits would be at the lower end of analysts' forecasts due to falling sales and a share price fall of 20%, HMV Group indicated its intention to close a number of Waterstones branches in January 2011. These shop closures, including two in Dublin, Republic of Ireland and nine others across the United Kingdom occurred in February 2011. Further branch closures in Luton, Dorking, Lancaster University, Harrods, Gateshead and Norwich Arcade were completed by the end of 2011.


title: Waterstones

text: In May 2011 HMV Group announced the sale of Waterstones to A&NN Capital Fund Management, a fund controlled by Russian businessman Alexander Mamut for £53 million. The takeover was welcomed by publishers as "a step forward to re-establishing a proper physical presence". On 29 June 2011, the sale of Waterstones was completed and approved by the vast majority of shareholders at an emergency general meeting. Mamut appointed James Daunt, founder of Daunt Books, as managing director and a board of directors was announced in October 2011 including Miranda Curtis as chairman. In September 2011, the bookseller announced that it intended to drop its 3-for-2 deal on books after a decade. The offer was replaced with a 'bespoke offer', based on branches choosing their own pricing structures from available discounts.


title: Waterstones

text: In January 2012, the company announced that it would be moving away from the branding developed in 2010 by agency VentureThree, and reverting to its original logo. This involved the removal of the apostrophe from its name, saying it would be "a more versatile and practical spelling". This decision received media coverage, in which the company was subject to criticism. John Richards, of the Apostrophe Protection Society, said that the change was "just plain wrong" and "grammatically incorrect" while the move sparked outrage on Twitter, involving debate on whether the move was grammatically incorrect or not. James Daunt expressed that "Waterstones without an apostrophe is, in a digital world of URLs and email addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling". Linguist David Crystal on his blog added: " ... if Waterstone's wants to become Waterstones, that's up to the firm. It's nothing to do with expressing possession or plurality or anything to do with meaning."


title: Waterstones

text: In the same month, Waterstones confirmed plans to open a Russian language bookshop in its Piccadilly branch, intending to stock 5000 titles with the shop being entirely staffed of Russian-speaking booksellers. The concession, named "The Russian Bookshop", opened in March 2012.


title: Waterstones

text: Following a decision in late-2011 to scrap an e-reading offer in-branch, it was announced in May 2012 that Waterstones would be selling the Amazon Kindle across its estate. James Daunt launched the new agreement with Amazon stating that Waterstones would be offering "e-reading services and offer Kindle digital devices" throughout the company's branches and on its website, with an intention to "make the Kindle experience better". This announcement was received with surprise across the book industry as it had been suggested that Waterstones was developing a partnership with Barnes & Noble to launch the Nook in the UK, or that the company was developing its own device, but Daunt "ultimately rejected" other avenues as Waterstones "would have been out of the market" before their implementation.


title: Waterstones

text: It was also announced in May 2012 that the company would begin a refurbishment plan, with Mamut "investing tens of millions of pounds" to fund the refit of a planned 100 shops before the end of the year. The plan saw the introduction of wi-fi into shops, reorganisation of shop sections and space dedicated areas for Kindle devices, and a number of own-brand coffee shops called "Café W". The Café W brand was trialled in the Sutton branch, with an expressed aim for around 130 shops over a 3-year period to be fitted with a café. The announcement also noted the introduction of a 'click-and-collect' service.


title: Waterstones

text: The Amazon Kindle officially launched in-branch in October 2012 with an "outdoor and press advertising campaign" promoting the launch, with the Kindle Fire and Kindle Paperwhite model going on sale for the first time in the UK along with older models. The Kindles were tailored with Waterstones screensavers, which led to some complaints and customers attempting to return their devices. The release of the Kindle coincided with a relaunch of the company's brand in the same month, pushing the message that the chain was the 'nation's leading bookshop' and producing an exclusive anthology, the "Waterstones Red Anthology", to help promote the shops.


title: Waterstones

text: By the end of 2012, the Waterstones estate had shrunk to 288 shops, with "commercial reasons" given for the closure of branches in Bromsgrove, Stevenage, Watford, Fleet Street, High Holborn and Epsom among others, with staff being redeployed where possible. In 2012, Daunt stated that future expansion was being considered, based on the performance of the company. The accounts for the year to 2012 showed Waterstones, prior- and post-acquisition had made losses of £37.3 million Started in 2012 was an overhaul of the company's business strategy, with centralised decision making giving way to shop-based decisions and a renewed emphasis on traditional bookselling techniques. Waterstones embarked on a major restructuring of staffing levels, with a company-wide consultation with 560 managerial staff to subsequently reduce roles within the company. This consultation led to Head Office staff departures and around 200 branch and regional managers leaving their posts. Waterstones launched a number of new partnerships through the year, including with the University of Derby to launch a professional qualification programme for its staff, with the Folio Society to extend customer reach and stock selection in London-based bookshops, and partnering with a new charity, BookTrust. By the end of 2013, Waterstones had cut its losses to £12.2 million, opened 12 further Café W outlets, and embarked on a capital investment in its shop portfolio of £29.5 million.


title: Waterstones

text: In 2014, the opened new shops in Ringwood, Blackburn and Southwold, its first branch to be without Waterstones branding, as well as closing shops in Eastleigh and St Neots. Continued business strategy change saw further departures from head office in brand communication and PR and a renewed agency contract for Waterstones' digital marketing with Epiphany. The retailer overhauled its business technology with new algorithms on its website to help personalise the online shopping experience, updated point-of-sale IT and by introducing contactless payment in its shops. The retailer partnered with Airbnb to hold a one-off ‘sleepover’ for customers in its Piccadilly branch in October 2014 after a customer was accidentally trapped in the Trafalgar Square branch after closing. Accounts for 2014 saw operating income losses narrow to £3.8 million, but sales slip by 5.9%.


title: Waterstones

text: The ongoing strategic changes made to the way the business operates included the decision in October 2015, after 3 years on sale in shops, to remove the Kindle from its offer following "pitiful" sales and handing the retail space over to books. This was followed, after a failed attempt to buy BlinkBox books from Tesco in January 2015, with Waterstones announcing it had sold its ebook business to Rakuten Kobo Inc in May 2016, subsequently directing customers who had purchased eBooks through the retailer to access their ebooks via Kobo's eBook site. This sale represented an exit from the eBook and eReader market for Waterstones after 8 years and multiple platforms.


title: Waterstones

text: The company partnered with Oxfam in 2015 to raise £1 million for those impacted by the Syrian civil war crisis through a nationwide campaign called ‘Buy Books for Syria’. Further changes to shops were made in 2015, with the closure of Wimbledon and Birmingham New Street, the opening of The Rye Bookshop and a return to Welwyn Garden City. The company reported an operating income of £5.4 million and a further narrowing of losses to £4.5 million from £18.8 million the previous year.


title: Waterstones

text: In a 2016 interview with Daunt, he stated that Amazon "defines how Waterstones acts" and while Waterstones could not compete with the internet retailer digitally, it could offer a credible alternative, believing there was "a future in physical bookselling." Waterstones continued to look at "fixing the basics" during 2016, such as adjusting shop opening hours and harnessing data from the loyalty card as well as refurbishment of physical shops, including the Canterbury branch, and work on its e-commerce routes through improvements to product ranking. Shops in Oxford Street Plaza, Edinburgh George Street, and Reading Oracle were closed, Harpenden Books, Glasgow Fort, Tottenham Court Road were opened and Wimbledon and Watford were reopened in new sites. The newly opened shops benefitted from a refreshed brand look, widely welcomed by the book trade. The retailer renewed its partnership with Oxfam to continue to raise money for the Syrian crisis, donating £5 for each ‘"Book of the Month"’ sold in-shop during November 2016. Daunt made public his concern that the UK EU referendum was likely to impact on company sales due to an expected retail downturn following a ‘no’ vote. He later noted that sales had remained ‘buoyant’ following the decision to leave the EU, but remained pessimistic for the future.


title: Waterstones

text: Accounts show that Waterstones made its first profit in 7 years of £11.7 million in the year ending April 2016. This included increased profits in Ireland, with sales rising 7% over the year, with the company expressing a desire to open more shops in Ireland. The management board was reduced from 7 members to 3 in August 2016, with the departure of Miranda Curtis and a statement that the future composition was under review. Waterstones announced it had raised £300,000 for BookTrust in 3 years since partnering, and would continue the partnership for a fourth year.


title: Waterstones

text: In April 2018, hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation bought a majority stake in the company, leaving Alexander Mamut's Lynwood Investments with a minority holding. The sale completed in early June 2018. Daunt remained as chief executive.


title: Waterstones

text: In 2021, an article in The Bookseller reported that Waterstones were planning a collaboration with Next to have Waterstones within some Next stores. In April 2022, a new Waterstones within Next in Martlesham, Ipswich was announced


title: Waterstones

text: In 2022, Waterstones purchased Blackwell's, the largest independent bookstore in the UK, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition was done under US hedge fund Elliott Investment Management.


title: Waterstones

text: Acquired in 1995 by the Thorn EMI group, Dillons was the UK's second largest bookseller behind Waterstones and was the bookselling arm of EMI's retail division, which included HMV. Following the demerger of Thorn and EMI in 1996, the retail arm was divested from the EMI portfolio within a year and spun off into the HMV Media Group, an investment venture between EMI Group and Advent International private equity group. This venture included HMV, Dillons and Waterstones (the latter bought from WHSmith for £300 million), combining to make an international entertainment retailer of over 500 shops. Following a rebuffed takeover attempt in 1997 of WHSmith, Tim Waterstone became part of the deal and by May 1998, following the £801 million deal completion became chairman of the group. All Dillons shops were incorporated within the Waterstones brand by 1998.


title: Waterstones

text: In September 2005 HMV Group began attempts to buy rival book chain Ottakar's. This alarmed publishers and authors who hoped the Office of Fair Trading would refer the takeover bid to the Competition Commission. In March 2006, the Competition Commission cleared Waterstones for takeover of the Ottakar's, stating the takeover would "not result in a substantial lessening of competition", and is "not likely to affect book prices, range of titles offered or quality of service." Through extensive research they also found that "contrary to widespread perception, Waterstones, like Ottakar's, operates a book-buying system which mixes central and local input on stock selection."


title: Waterstones

text: On 31 May 2006, Waterstones announced that it had successfully negotiated the takeover of Ottakar's. HMV chief executive Alan Giles said: "A combined Waterstones and Ottakar's business will create an exciting, quality bookseller, able to respond better to the increasingly competitive pressures of the retail market." Ottakar's chairman Philip Dunne said: "Over the last year the book market has undergone a significant change with new levels of competition from the supermarkets and online retailers impacting all specialist booksellers and in particular those with insufficient scale to compete on equal terms."


title: Waterstones

text: Following the takeover, HMV announced that they would be rebranding every branch of Ottakar's as a Waterstones. In July 2006, a conversion programme was initiated and within four months, every Ottakar's shop had been relaunched as a Waterstones and had seen the loss of 100 jobs.


title: Waterstones

text: In August 2008, the now defunct Borders chain agreed to sell eight Books Etc. shops to Waterstones for an undisclosed sum. The takeover, which represented 34,000 sq ft of retail space and incurred no staff losses, increased Waterstones' presence within London to almost 50 shops, "crucially [in] areas that are not represented by Waterstones bookshops". The shops, in Fleet Street, London Wall, Holborn, Wandsworth, Uxbridge, Finchley Road, and Canary Wharf, were rebranded and merged into the Waterstones chain by September 2008.


title: Waterstones

text: In September 2018, Waterstones confirmed it would buy 115-year-old Foyles, with seven stores whilst retaining the brand. James Daunt said the purchase would help "to protect and champion the pleasures of real bookshops in the face of Amazon's siren call".


title: Waterstones

text: Tim Waterstone and James Daunt have been critical of tax avoidance by Amazon.com in the British press. Amazon has received sustained scrutiny for the amount of its overall sales that are reported by its UK subsidiary, in comparison to those 'processed offshore in Luxembourg to avoid UK tax'. In the 2012–13 financial year, Amazon paid £3.2 million in tax on sales of £4.2 billion and received £2.5 million in grants from the government. In the same period, it was revealed that Waterstones paid £11.9 million in tax, despite an operating loss of £25.4 million and sales of £410.4 million.


title: Waterstones

text: In a report on tax avoidance in the book industry, the magazine Ethical Consumer argued that A&NN Capital Fund Management, Waterstones' parent company in Bermuda, "likely to be for tax avoidance purposes". In response to this, Waterstones issued a clarification on their website reading "As a UK registered and domiciled business, Waterstones fulfils all its tax obligations. This will include both the payment and reporting of all necessary UK taxes, as set out under UK tax legislation." In the 2013–14 financial period, the first full year under A&NN, Waterstones reported sales to Companies House of £398.5 million and an operating loss of £12.2 million.


title: Waterstones

text: Waterstones opened its first non-branded shop in Southwold, Suffolk in July 2014 called "Southwold Books". The company decided not to use its branding as it wished to ‘fit in’ with the town's high proportion of independent retailers, but this move drew anger from local residents at the time as they viewed the move as "dishonest" and said that local shop rents were being increased because of retail chains moving in and this subsequently was "changing the character of the high street".


title: Waterstones

text: Non-branded Waterstones became an issue again in 2016 at a national level, following newspaper reports about not only Southwold Books but two further shops, "The Rye Bookshop" in Sussex and "Harpenden Books" in Hertfordshire, being opened and local residents not realising the connection with the retailer. Commentators were split on the ethics of the decision to open unbranded shops, but it was noted that at no point had attempts been made to hide the connection to the retailer. In interviews, James Daunt denied any "subterfuge" and said he wanted for the shops to behave as independent retailers do and have their own identity. He further stated that more unbranded shops were likely to open in the future.


title: Waterstones

text: Waterstones has worked with the British Safety Council to consider its environmental impact, including factors beyond its carbon footprint. After a 2008 audit, the Council awarded Waterstones three out of a possible five stars for environmental impact.


title: Waterstones

text: , Waterstones does not pay the "real living wage", as recommended by the Living Wage Foundation, and a rate significantly higher than the official National Living Wage. More than 1,300 writers backed a campaign to ask Waterstones to pay the "real living wage". In response Waterstone managing director James Daunt said the company was "simply not profitable enough" and that "there's a long gap between wanting to do something and it being remotely sensible". Waterstones said that only Ikea, Majestic and Lush of other similar large retailers pay the "real living wage".


title: Waterstones

text: Waterstones maintains and supports various literary awards, including the Waterstones Children's Laureate, the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, the Waterstones Book of the Year, Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, and the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize as well as now defunct awards including the Waterstones 11 and The Guardian First Book Award. The company has also received various industry and consumer awards.


title: Waterstones

text: The prize, which has been running since 2012, sees booksellers from across the company select a shortlist of books from any category, published at any time, before the winner is chosen by panel.


title: Waterstones

text: Waterstones continued the "Ottakar's Children's Book Prize" under its own brand and since 2005, the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize has attempted "to uncover hidden talent in children's writing" by awarding authors with no more than two previously published books (adult or children's fiction).


title: Waterstones

text: Waterstones is also the main sponsor of "The Waterstones Children's Laureate", previously sponsored by Ottakar's. The 2011–2013 role saw the position carry the Waterstones branding for the first time, with the company stating it was 'up weighting [its] activity' and 'supporting the role in shops and online in different ways throughout the year and beyond.' Holders of the role during sponsorship include Julia Donaldson, Malorie Blackman and the current holder, Chris Riddle.


title: Waterstones

text: The Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, established in 2022, is an annual literary award presented to the best debut fiction published in the previous 12 months.


title: Waterstones

text: Set up in 2011, the Waterstones 11 was created to promote debut literary fiction from new authors being published in the year ahead. Books were chosen from a list of 100 submitted by publishers, and were announced in January 2011 with in-shop and online support, as well as a media campaign for the final 11. The inaugural 11 included the Orange Prize Winner "The Tiger's Wife" by Téa Obreht, Man Booker Prize nominee "Pigeon English", by Stephen Kelman and the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award winner "When God Was a Rabbit", by Sarah Winman. The last list was announced in January 2013, following the discontinuation of the prize in January 2014.


title: Waterstones

text: Waterstones has academic and high street shops in Europe including the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland (with shops in Cork, Drogheda, and in Dublin under the name Hodges Figgis) and in the Netherlands and Belgium. Some branches in the company occupy buildings of architectural and historical interest.


title: Waterstones

text: Its flagship shop on Piccadilly, formerly the Simpsons of Piccadilly department store and notable for its 1930s-Modernist architecture, is the largest shop in the Waterstones estate and claimed to be the largest bookshop in Europe. The main academic branch, formerly the flagship shop of Dillons, is located on Gower Street, between University College London and the Student Central, and promoted as Europe's largest academic bookshop. Aside from these branches, Waterstones operates a number of large shops which are set over multiple floors. Waterstones refers to these shops as 'superstores':


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The quest for the historical Jesus consists of academic efforts to determine what words and actions, if any, may be attributed to Jesus, and to use the findings to provide portraits of the historical Jesus. Since the 18th century, three scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and based on different research criteria, which were often developed during each specific phase. These quests are distinguished from earlier approaches because they rely on the historical method to study biblical narratives. While textual analysis of biblical sources had taken place for centuries, these quests introduced new methods and specific techniques to establish the historical validity of their conclusions.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The enthusiasm shown during the first quest diminished after Albert Schweitzer's critique of 1906 in which he pointed out various shortcomings in the approaches used at the time. The second quest began in 1953 and introduced a number of new techniques, but reached a plateau in the 1970s. In the 1980s a number of scholars gradually began to introduce new research ideas, initiating a third quest characterized by the latest research approaches. Since the late 2000s, concerns have been growing about the usefulness of the criteria of authenticity and proclamations of a more expansive and genuinely interdisciplinary Next Quest.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: While there is widespread scholarly agreement on the existence of Jesus and a basic consensus on the general outline of his life, the portraits of Jesus constructed in the quests have often differed from each other and from the image portrayed in the gospel accounts. There are overlapping attributes among the portraits and, while pairs of scholars may agree on some attributes, those same scholars may differ on other attributes and there is no single portrait of the historical Jesus that satisfies most scholars.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: As the Enlightenment ended, various scholars in Europe began to go beyond textual analysis and the development of gospel harmonies and began to produce biographies of Jesus typically referred to as "Lives of Jesus". These biographies attempted to apply some historical techniques to a harmonized version of the gospel accounts and produced new overviews of the life of Jesus. These attempts at constructing a biography of Jesus came to be known as the first "quest for the historical Jesus", a term effectively coined by Albert Schweitzer's book which was originally titled "The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede".


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: By late 19th century, hundreds of "Lives of Jesus" had been written. Some of these were purely sensational: They were not produced because any new data had appeared, but because some people read and interpreted the gospels in new ways. These stories of the "Lives of Jesus" were often romanticized, highly psychological or included new elements which did not appear in any of the gospels or other historical documents. For example, Ernest Renan used the incident where Jesus rides a donkey during his Triumphal entry into Jerusalem to build a story in which Jesus the carpenter was a gentle prophet who had a donkey in Galilee and rode it while traveling between its different towns.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Mark Powell states that the production of these "Lives of Jesus" were typically driven by three elements: 1. the imposition of a grand scheme (e.g. Jesus as a reformer) which dictated the theme of the work and in terms of which the gospels were interpreted; 2. the exclusion of those parts of the gospel accounts that did not fit in the scheme; 3. the addition of new material which did not appear in any of the gospels to fill in the gaps in the story. Andreas J. Köstenberger stated that in many cases these stories portrayed Jesus "like the questers themselves" rather than a first-century Jewish figure.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The underlying theme used by the authors of the various "Lives of Jesus" during the first quest varied. In some cases it aimed to praise Christianity, in other cases to attack it. One of the earliest notable publications in the field was by Hermann Reimarus (1694–1768) who portrayed Jesus as a less than successful political figure who assumed his destiny was to place God as the king of Israel. Reimarus wrote a treatise which rejected miracles and accused the Bible authors of fraud, but he did not publish this. Later, Gotthold Lessing (1729–1781) posthumously published Reimarus' thesis. Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) who had no interest in recovering a historical Jesus but to criticize religion wrote "Ecce Homo! Or, A Critical Inquiry into the History of Jesus Christ; Being a Rational Analysis of the Gospels" and published it anonymously in Amsterdam in 1769. The book was translated into English by George Houston, and published in 1799 and then 1813, for which Houston (who confessed himself to be the author) was condemned for blasphemy to two years in prison.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: David Strauss (1808–1874), at the age of 27 years, pioneered the search for the "Historical Jesus" by rejecting all supernatural events as mythical elaborations. His 1835 work, "Life of Jesus", was one of the first and most influential systematic analyses of the life story of Jesus, aiming to base it on unbiased historical research. Strauss viewed the miraculous accounts of Jesus' life in the gospels in terms of myths which had arisen as a result of the community's imagination as it retold stories and represented natural events as miracles. Albert Schweitzer wrote in "The Quest of the Historical Jesus" (1906; 1910) that Strauss's arguments "filled in the death-certificates of a whole series of explanations which, at first sight, have all the air of being alive, but are not really so". He added that there are two broad periods of academic research in the quest for the historical Jesus, namely, "the period before David Strauss and the period after David Strauss". Among the works that appeared after Strauss, Ernest Renan's book "Vie de Jesus", which combined scholarship with sentimental and novelistic psychological interpretation, was very successful and had eight re-printings in three months. Renan merged gospel narratives with his own psychological interpretations, e.g. that Jesus preached a "sweet theology of love" in Galilee, but turned into a revolutionary once he encountered the establishment in Jerusalem.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Johannes Weiss (1863–1914) and William Wrede (1859–1906) brought the eschatological aspects of the ministry of Jesus to the attention of the academic world. Both Weiss and Wrede were passionately anti-liberal and their presentations aimed to emphasize the unusual nature of the ministry and teachings of Jesus. Wrede wrote on the Messianic Secret theme in the Gospel of Mark and argued that it was a method used by early Christians to explain Jesus not claiming himself as the Messiah.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906), in the chapter "Was There An Historical Jesus?" of his 1904 work, "How Christianity arose. New contributions to the Christ-problem" (published in English 1907 as "The rise of Christianity") wrote, "A Son of God, Lord of the World, born of a virgin, and rising again after death, and the son of a small builder with revolutionary notions, are two totally different beings. If one was the historical Jesus, the other certainly was not. The real question of the historicity of Jesus is not merely whether there ever was a Jesus among the numerous claimants of a Messiahship in Judea, but whether we are to recognise the historical character of this Jesus in the Gospels, and whether he is to be regarded as the founder of Christianity."


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), a historian of theology, presented an important critical review of the history of the search for Jesus's life in "The Quest of the Historical Jesus – From Reimarus to Wrede" (1906, first edition), denouncing the subjectivity of the various writers who injected their own preferences in Jesus's character. There is one chapter (Ch. 10) on the two-source hypothesis of Christian Hermann Weisse and the Wilke hypothesis of Christian Gottlob Wilke and three chapters to David Strauss (Ch. 7, 8, and 9), as well as a full chapter to Bruno Bauer (Ch. 11). Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) was the first academic theologian to assert the non-historicity of Jesus. However his scholarship was buried by German academia, and he remained a pariah, until Albert Kalthoff rescued his works from neglect and obscurity. Schweitzer highly praised Bauer's early work, prior to his later period work and conclusion regarding the ahistoricty of Jesus.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: A direct challenge to the first quest was "The Christ Myth", first published in 1909 by Arthur Drews on the Christ myth theory and the denial of the existence of a historical Jesus. Drews, by amplifying and publicizing the thesis initially advanced by Bruno Bauer, rose to international prominence from the resulting international controversy provoked by his book. In 1912, Shirley Jackson Case noted that within the last decade, doubts about Jesus existence had been advanced in several quarters, but nowhere so insistently as in Germany where the skeptical movement had become a regular propaganda, "Its foremost champion is Arthur Drews, professor of philosophy in Karlsruhe Technical High School. Since the appearance of his "Christusmythe" in 1909 the subject has been kept before the public by means of debates held in various places, particularly at some important university centers such as Jena, Marburg, Giessen, Leipzig, Berlin."


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: To discuss Drews's thesis, Schweitzer added two new chapters in the 1913 second edition of his work, "The Quest of the Historical Jesus". ("Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung", 2. Auflage, 1913)


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Schweitzer himself also argued that all the 19th-century presentations of Jesus had either minimized or neglected the apocalyptic message of Jesus, and he developed his own version of the profile of Jesus in the Jewish apocalyptic context.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Schweitzer's work was preceded by Martin Kähler's book "The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ" which was published in 1896. Kähler argued that it was not possible to separate the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith and that in any case, the key goal of biblical analysis should be to better understand the Christ of faith who had influenced history. Kähler's work appealed to both conservatives and liberals and its combined effect with Schweitzer's book effectively ended the first quest.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Schweitzer's 1906 critique undermined the previous attempts in historical Jesus research, and is often seen as the start of a period of "no quest" lasting until Ernst Käsemann's 1953 lecture which started the second quest. Ben Witherington states that at the end of the first quest, historical Jesus research was assumed to be dead, although that did not turn out to be the case.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Some scholars such as Paul Zahl argue that the last two paragraphs of Schweitzer's book aptly summarize the end of the first quest, Schweitzer stating "Jesus of Nazareth will not suffer himself to be modernized as a historical figure... He comes to us as One unknown". Zahl likens the first quest to the Scott expedition to Antarctica, and states that the first quest ended as a total disaster, slowing down academic efforts to pursue research into the historical Jesus. However, other scholars such as Stanley Porter or Dale Allison disagree with that assessment, or the separation in terms of these phases.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Stanley Porter states that Schweitzer's critique only ended the "romanticized and overly psychologized" studies into the life of Jesus, and other research continued. Dale Allison states that other research did take place during the so-called no quest phase, and the progress was continuous in that every year except 1919 a new academic book on Jesus was published. Maurice Casey states that although it may at first appear reasonable to call this a period of "no quest" that characterization is not accurate and in this period significant other progress was made, e.g. B. H. Streeter's work on Markan priority and Q source which affected future research.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: A key figure in the relatively quiet period from 1906 to 1953 was Rudolf Bultmann, who was skeptical regarding the relevance and necessity of historical Jesus research and argued that the only thing we can or need to know about Jesus is the "thatness" (German: "Dass") of his existence and very little else. Bultmann argued that all that matters is the "thatness", not the "whatness" in that only that Jesus existed, preached and died by crucifixion matters, not what happened throughout his life. Bultmann was also a supporter of the study of the oral traditions that transmitted the gospels.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Bultmann believed that only a few scattered facts could be known about Jesus, and although a few things could be known about Jesus such a search was pointless for all that matters is following "the call of Jesus" which can only be known through an existential encounter with the word of God. Bultmann argued that the earliest Christian literature showed little interest in specific locations and that the study of Jesus through historical analysis was not only impossible, but unnecessary. However, in the end Bultmann did not totally close the door on historical research and by 1948 suggested the possibility of further investigation.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: While the exact date for the start of the first or third quest may be questioned, the beginning of the second quest has a well known time and location, namely Ernst Käsemann's October 20, 1953 lecture titled "The Problem of the Historical Jesus", delivered to an annual gathering of alumni from the University of Marburg who, like Käsemann, has studied with Rudolf Bultmann.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Käsemann's lecture marked a departure from the teachings of his former professor Bultmann who emphasized theology and in 1926 had argued that historical Jesus research was both futile and unnecessary; although Bultmann slightly modified that position in a later book. Käsemann advanced the position that although the gospels may be interpreted for theological purposes, they still contain historical memories which can yield information about Jesus. This perspective effectively began what was then known as the "New Quest" and later came to be called the second quest for the historical Jesus. Most of the scholars involved in the second quest were either German or trained by Germans.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Käsemann's perspective that it is possible to know something about Jesus if the tools of historical analysis are applied in a systematic manner proved highly consequential and inspired a number of scholars to develop new approaches to the study of the historical Jesus. One of the influential works that followed his approach was Günther Bornkamm's 1956 book "Jesus of Nazareth" and his well-known statement that "what the Gospels report concerning the message, the deeds and the history of Jesus is still distinguished by an authenticity... these features point us directly to the earthly figure of Jesus" provided momentum for the second quest in the 1960s. James M. Robinson's 1959 book "A New Quest for the Historical Jesus" was reprinted numerous times, indicating the high level of interest in the subject during the 1960s.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: In order to analyze biblical passages, Käsemann introduced the criterion of dissimilarity, that compares a gospel passage (e.g. a statement by Jesus) to the Jewish context of the time, and if dissimilar, places weight on its being on safe ground. During the second quest the criterion of embarrassment was also introduced. This criterion states that a group is unlikely to invent a story that would be embarrassing to themselves. For instance, this criterion argues that the early Christian Church would have never wanted to invent the kernel of the story about the Baptism of Jesus because John baptised for the remission of sins, and Jesus was viewed as without sin, hence the story served no purpose, and would have been an embarrassment given that it positioned John above Jesus. While the baptism of Jesus itself may be a historical event, the presence of the dove and the voice from Heaven may be later embellishments to the original happening. Marcello Craveri's "Life of Jesus" in 1967, based on the Dead Sea Scrolls, argued that the claims to divinity made by the historical Jesus were strictly limited and not unusual for a Jew of that generation. Much of the stronger claims, and the emphasis on the redeeming power of Christ's death on the Cross, could be seen as reworkings by St. Paul, who was probably influenced strongly by the Graeco-Roman traditions.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: By the early 1970s the initial momentum of the second quest had all but disappeared. A number of scholars, attribute the end of this quest to the diminishing role of Bultmann's ideas, Ben Witherington stating: "As the towering influence of Bultmann and the enthusiasm for existentialism began to wane, so did the enthusiasm for the Second Quest". Geza Vermes stated: "Owing to the colossal influence of Bultmann on German, and subsequently through his former students on North American, New Testament learning, the clock of real historical research stopped for half a century" and that it started again only after that influence had ended. Paul Zahl stated that while the second quest made significant contributions at the time, its results are now mostly forgotten, although not disproven.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The 1977 publication of E.P. Sanders, "Paul and Palestinian Judaism", renewed interest in the historical Jesus, and initiated a third quest. Unlike the second quest, the third quest had no well-defined beginning and emerged as a number of scholars presented new approaches within a relatively short time of each other. In 1982, N. T. Wright coined the term "third quest" to refer to these new approaches.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The third quest yielded new insights into Jesus' Palestinian and Jewish context, and not so much on the person of Jesus himself. It also has made clear that all material on Jesus has been handed down by the emerging Church, raising questions about the criterion of dissimilarity, and the possibility of ascribing material solely to Jesus, and not to the emerging Church. Even so, the criteria of authenticity reigned supreme during this period of the quest.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: In 2021, James Crossley (editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus) announced that historical Jesus scholarship now had moved to the era of the Next Quest. The Next Quest has moved on from the criteria, obsessions with the uniqueness of Jesus, and the supersessionism still implicit in scholarly questions of the Jewishness of Jesus. Instead, sober scholarship now focuses on treating the subject matter as part of the wider human phenomenon of religion, cultural comparison, class relations, slave culture and economy, memory studies, and the social history of historical Jesus scholarship and wider reception histories of the historical Jesus. The book by Crossley and Robert J. Myles, "Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict", is indicative of this new tendency.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Since the late 2000s, concerns have been growing about the usefulness of the criteria of authenticity. According to Keith, the criteria are literary tools, indebted to form criticism, not historiographic tools. They were meant to discern pre-Gospel traditions, not to identify historical facts, but have "substituted the pre-literary tradition with that of the historical Jesus." According to Le Donne, the usage of such criteria is a form of "positivist historiography."


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: James D. G. Dunn's 2003 study, "Jesus Remembered", was the onset for an "increased [...] interest in memory theory and eyewitness testimony." Dunn argues that "[t]he only realistic objective for any 'quest of the historical Jesus' is Jesus "remembered"." Dunn argues that Christianity started with the impact Jesus had on his followers, shaping their memories of him, which were passed on through oral tradition. According to Dunn, to understand the person and impact of Jesus, scholars must look at "the broad picture, focusing on the characteristic motifs and emphases of the Jesus tradition, rather than making findings overly dependent on individual items of the tradition." According to Dunn, the remembered Jesus was Jewish, set in first-century Palestine. Central in Jesus' message was the idea of an inclusive Kingdom of God, which was already coming into existence. Dunn deems it possible that "talk of rejection (the prophetic tradition), of the son of man suffering, and of a cup to be drunk and a baptism to be endured began in greater or less part with Jesus himself reflecting on his own destiny."


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Chris Keith, Le Donne, and others argue for a "social memory" approach, which argues that memories are shaped by socially determined interpretative frameworks, which are shaped by the needs of the present. Any Gospel unit is shaped and interpreted by the ones who remember; the distinction between "authentic" and "inauthentic" is therefore useless. Instead of searching for a historical Jesus, scholarship should investigate how the memories of Jesus were shaped, and how they were reshaped "with the aim of cohesion and the self-understanding (identity) of groups."


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Anthony Le Donne elaborated on Dunn's thesis, basing "his historiography squarely on Dunn’s thesis that the historical Jesus is the memory of Jesus recalled by the earliest disciples." According to Le Donne, memories are fractured, and not exact recalls of the past. Le Donne further argues that the remembrance of events is facilitated by relating it to a common story, or "type." The type shapes how the memories are retained, c.q. narrated. This means the Jesus-tradition is not a theological invention of the early Church, but rather a tradition shaped and refracted through such memory "type."


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: According to Chris Keith, there are "two competing 'models' for how to use the gospel tradition in order to approach the historical Jesus [...] A first model, inspired by form criticism and still advocated today, attempts to attain a historical Jesus ‘behind’ the interpretations of early Christians. A second model, inspired by advances in historiography and memory theory, posits a historical Jesus who is ultimately unattainable, but can be hypothesized on the basis of the interpretations of the early Christians, and as part of a larger process of accounting for how and why early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did." According to Keith, "these two models are methodologically and epistemologically incompatible," calling into question the methods and aim of the first model.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The first quest, which started in 1778, was almost entirely based on biblical criticism. This took the form of textual and source criticism originally, which were supplemented with form criticism in 1919, and redaction criticism in 1948. Form criticism began as an attempt to trace the history of the biblical material during the oral period before it was written in its current form, and may be seen as starting where textual criticism ends. Form criticism views Gospel writers as editors, not authors. Redaction criticism may be viewed as the child of source criticism and form criticism. and views the Gospel writers as authors and early theologians and tries to understand how the redactor(s) has (have) molded the narrative to express their own perspectives.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: When form criticism questioned the historical reliability of the Gospels, scholars began looking for other criteria. Taken from other areas of study such as source criticism, the "criteria of authenticity" emerged gradually, becoming a distinct branch of methodology associated with life of Jesus research. The "criteria" are a variety of rules used to determine if some event or person is more or less likely to be historical. These criteria are primarily, though not exclusively, used to assess the sayings and actions of Jesus. James Crossley has argued that "[e]merging from under the rubble of the criteria, we are left with an old fashioned view of interpretation, argument, and the combining of arguments for collective weight to make a general case."


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: In view of the skepticism produced in the mid-twentieth century by form criticism concerning the historical reliability of the gospels, the burden shifted in historical Jesus studies from attempting to identify an authentic life of Jesus to attempting to prove authenticity. The criteria developed within this framework, therefore, are tools that provide arguments solely for authenticity, not inauthenticity. By 1987, D.Polkow lists 25 separate criteria being used by scholars to test for historical authenticity including the criterion of "historical plausibility". Following the prompt of Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, the criteria are no longer in fashion and James Crossley has argued that "[e]merging from under the rubble of the criteria, we are left with an old fashioned view of interpretation, argument, and the combining of arguments for collective weight to make a general case."


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: In 1901, the application of criteria of authenticity began with dissimilarity. It was often applied unevenly with a preconceived goal. The criterion of dissimilarity or discontinuity says that if a particular saying can be plausibly accounted for as the words or teaching of some other source contemporary to Jesus, it is not thought to be genuine evidence of the historical Jesus. The "Son of Man" sayings are an example. Judaism had a Son of Man concept (as indicated by texts like and ), but there is no record of the Jews ever applying it to Jesus. The Son of Man is Jesus' most common self-designation in the Gospels, yet none of the New Testament epistles use this expression, nor is there any evidence that the disciples or the early church did. The conclusion is that, by the process of elimination of all other options, it is likely historically accurate that Jesus used this designation for himself.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The criterion of multiple attestation or independent attestation, sometimes also referred to as the "cross-sectional method", is a type of source criticism first developed by F. C. Burkitt in 1906. Simply put, the method looks for commonalities in multiple sources with the assumption that, the more sources that report an event or saying, the more likely that event or saying is historically accurate. Burkitt claimed he found 31 independent sayings in Mark and Q. Within Synoptic Gospel studies, this was used to develop the four-source hypothesis. Multiple sources lend support to some level of historicity. New Testament scholar Gerd Theissen says "there is broad scholarly consensus that we can best find access to the historical Jesus through the Synoptic tradition." A second related theory is that of "multiple forms". Developed by C. H. Dodd, it focuses on the sayings or deeds of Jesus found in more than one literary form. Bible scholar Andreas J. Köstenberger gives the example of Jesus proclaiming the kingdom of God had arrived. He says it is found in an "aphorism (Mat.5:17), in parables (Mat.9:37–38 and Mark 4:26–29), poetic sayings (Mat.13:16–17), and dialogues (Mat.12:24–28)" and is therefore likely an authentic theme of Jesus' teaching.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: A series of language-based criteria have been developed since 1925, when the 'criterion of Semitic language phenomena' was first introduced, followed by and linked to the 'criterion of Palestinian environment' by scholars such as Joachim Jeremias (1947). Jeremias's criterion of traces of Aramaic evaluates a biblical saying based on the presence of possibly Aramaic vocabulary or grammar, while the similar criterion of the Palestinian environment considers a saying authentic if it fits in the Palestinian setting of Jesus' time. The linguistic criterion observers that the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, but contains a high number of words and phrases called Semitisms: a combination of poetic or vernacular "koine" Greek with Hebrew and Aramaic influences. A Semitism is the linguistic usage, in the Greek in a non-Greek fashion, of an expression or construction typical of Hebrew or Aramaic. In other words, a Semitism is Greek in Hebrew or Aramaic style. The environmental criterion observers features mentioned in the sources that point to origin of the tradition in Palestine. For example, Matthew begins with a Hebrew "gematria" (a method of interpreting Hebrew by computing the numerical value of words). In , Jesus is designated "the son of David, the son of Abraham". The numerical value of David's name in Hebrew is 14; so this genealogy has 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the Babylonian exile, and 14 from the exile to the Christ (). Such linguistic peculiarities tie New Testament texts to Jews of 1st-century Palestine.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The linguistic and environmental criteria are treated separately by some scholars, but taken together by others (e.g. as 'the criterion of Semitisms and Palestinian background'). John P. Meier (1991) defined a 'criterion of traces of Aramaic' and a 'criterion of Palestinian environment', noting they are closely connected and warning that they are best applied in the negative sense, as the linguistic, social, and cultural environment of Palestine didn't suddenly change after the death of Jesus, and so traditions invented inside Palestine in the first few decades after Jesus's death may – misleadingly – appear contextually authentic. Bart D. Ehrman (1999) combined them into the 'criterion of contextual credibility'. This 'asserts that traditions are more likely to be reliable if they conform well to what is known of the historical and social situation of the time', namely 1st-century Palestine. As an example, Ehrman cites the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus in chapter 3 of the Gospel of John: their confusion is based on the multiple meanings of the Greek word ανωθεν/"anothen" ('again' and 'from above'), but in 1st-century Palestine they would have spoken Aramaic, which doesn't have a word with the same double meaning; therefore, the conversation could not have taken place as narrated.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The Second Quest introduced the criterion of embarrassment. The criterion of embarrassment is based on the assumption the early church would not have gone out of its way to "create" or "falsify" historical material that only embarrassed its author or weakened its position in arguments with opponents. As historian Will Durant explains:


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: These and other possibly embarrassing events, such as the discovery of the empty tomb by women, Jesus' baptism by John, and the crucifixion itself, are seen by this criterion as lending credence to the supposition the gospels contain some history. The "criterion of the crucifixion" is related to the criterion of embarrassment. In the first-century Roman empire, only criminals were crucified. The early church referred to death on the cross as a scandal. It is therefore unlikely to have been invented by them.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: New Testament scholar Gerd Theissen and theologian Dagmar Winter say one aspect of the criterion of embarrassment is "resistance to tendencies of the tradition". It works on the assumption that what goes against the general tendencies of the early church is historical. For example, criticisms of Jesus go against the tendency of the early church to worship him, making it unlikely the early church community invented statements such as those accusing Jesus of being in league with Satan (), or being a glutton and drunkard (). Theissen and Winter sum this up with what can also be referred to as "enemy attestation": when friends and enemies alike refer to the same events, those events are likely to be historical.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: By the 1950s, coherence was also included. The "criterion of coherence" (also called "criterion of consistency" or "criterion of conformity") can be used only when other material has been identified as authentic. This criterion holds that a saying or action attributed to Jesus may be accepted as authentic if it coheres with other sayings and actions already established as authentic. While this criterion cannot be used alone, it can broaden what scholars believe Jesus said and did. For example, Jesus' teaching in concerning the resurrection of the dead coheres well with a saying of Jesus in Q on the same subject of the afterlife (reported in /), as well as other teachings of Jesus on the same subject.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Beyond the previous criteria of multiple attestation, dissimilarity (also called discontinuity), context (language and environment), and embarrassment, a number of other criteria have been developed through the third quest. Primary among these are:


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: A number of other proposed criteria are viewed as dubious and unreliable by third quest scholars. These include the criterion of the vividness of narration, which suggested that a saying expressed in more vivid language than the rest of the surrounding text, it may be an eyewitness declaration; but the criterion is generally rejected by scholars.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: A new characteristic of the modern aspects of the third quest has been the role of archeology and James Charlesworth states that few modern scholars now want to overlook the archaeological discoveries that clarify the nature of life in Galilee and Judea during the time of Jesus. A further characteristic of the third quest has been its interdisciplinary and global nature of the scholarship. While the first two quests were mostly by European Protestant theologians, the third quest has seen an worldwide influx of scholars from multiple disciplines, e.g. Jewish scholars involved in historical Jesus research have contributed their detailed knowledge of Second Temple Judaism as the backdrop for the third quest.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The 21st century has witnessed an increase in scholarly interest in the integrated use of archaeology as an additional research component in arriving at a better understanding of the historical Jesus by illuminating the socio-economic and political background of his age. James Charlesworth states that few modern scholars now want to overlook the archaeological discoveries that clarify the nature of life in Galilee and Judea during the time of Jesus.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Jonathan Reed states that chief contribution of archaeology to the study of the historical Jesus is the reconstruction of his social world. An example archaeological item that Reed mentions is the 1961 discovery of the Pilate Stone, which mentions the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, by whose order Jesus was crucified.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: David Gowler states that an interdisciplinary scholarly study of archeology, textual analysis and historical context can shed light on Jesus and his teachings. An example is the archeological studies at Capernaum. Despite the frequent references to Capernaum in the New Testament, little is said about it there. However, recent archeological evidence show that unlike earlier assumptions, Capernaum was poor and small, without even a forum or agora. This archaeological discovery thus resonates well with the scholarly view that Jesus advocated reciprocal sharing among the destitute in that area of Galilee. Other archeological findings support the wealth of the ruling priests in Judea at the beginning of the 1st century.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: While there is widespread scholarly agreement on the existence of Jesus as a historical figure, the portraits of Jesus constructed during the three quests have often differed from each other and from the image portrayed in the gospel accounts. Amy-Jill Levine states that despite the differing portraits, there is a general scholarly consensus on the basic outline of Jesus' life in that most scholars agree that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, debated Jewish authorities on the subject of God, performed some healings, taught in parables, gathered followers and was crucified by Roman prefect Pontius Pilate.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The many differences of emphasis among mainstream interpretations in the third quest may be grouped together based on a number of primary interpretations of Jesus as variously an apocalyptic prophet, charismatic healer, cynic philosopher, Jewish Messiah or prophet of social change. However, there is little scholarly agreement on a single interpretation of his life, or the methods needed to construct it. There are also overlapping attributes among the accounts and pairs of scholars which may differ on some attributes may agree on others. These groupings reflect the essential feature of each portrait and the accounts often include overlapping elements, for example there are a number of scholars, including Crossan and Wright, who are otherwise critical of each other, but whose interpretations agree that Jesus was not "primarily apocalyptic" and still believe that Jesus preached such a message, while others (e.g. Borg and Mack) differ on that issue. The third quest has thus witnessed a fragmentation of the scholarly interpretations in which no unified picture of Jesus can be attained at all.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: In his 1906 book "The Quest of the Historical Jesus", Albert Schweitzer noted the similarities of the portraits to the scholars who construct them and stated that they are often "pale reflections of the researchers" themselves. John Dominic Crossan stated that the trend has continued and summarized the situation by stating that many authors writing about the life of Jesus would "do autobiography and call it biography". More recent scholarship has challenged this view that reconstruction of Jesus has to be a self-portrait. For instance, James Crossley and Robert J. Myles argue that a rigorous and sober materialist approach can help counter anachronism and scholars' interest in talking about themselves when doing historical Jesus studies.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The historical analysis techniques used by Biblical scholars have been questioned, and according to James Dunn it is not possible "to construct (from the available data) a Jesus who will be the real Jesus." W.R. Herzog has stated that "What we call the historical Jesus is the composite of the recoverable bits and pieces of historical information and speculation about him that we assemble, construct, and reconstruct. For this reason, the historical Jesus is, in Meier's words, 'a modern abstraction and construct.'"


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Bart Ehrman and separately Andreas Köstenberger contend that given the scarcity of historical sources, it is generally difficult for any scholar to construct a portrait of Jesus that can be considered historically valid beyond the basic elements of his life. On the other hand, scholars such as N. T. Wright and Luke Timothy Johnson argue that the image of Jesus presented in the gospels is largely accurate, and that dissenting scholars are simply too cautious about what we can claim to know about the ancient period.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: A number of scholars have criticized historical Jesus research for religious bias and lack of methodological soundness. Some have argued that modern biblical scholarship is insufficiently critical, and sometimes amounts to covert apologetics.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Bible scholar Clive Marsh has stated that construction of the portraits of Jesus has often been driven by "specific agendas". He argues that historical components of the relevant biblical texts are often interpreted to fit specific goals. Marsh lists theological agendas that aim to confirm the divinity of Jesus, agendas that aim to discredit Christianity, and political agendas that aim to interpret the teachings of Jesus with the hope of causing social change.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Academic historians have looked at the social, historical, political, and ideological influences on scholarship. In different ways, William Arnal and James Crossley look at a range of factors behind the scholarly discourse about the "Jewishness" of Jesus and how scholars present their Jesus as "very Jewish", while implicitly continuing Christian and cultural supersessionism. Robert J. Myles has looked at how contemporary scholars claim Jesus was "subversive" while in actuality they bolster a non-subversive liberal view of him, similar to the phenomenon of the Hipster. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has shown how different forms of patriarchy have skewed the scholarly Jesus in the male image.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: John P. Meier, a Catholic priest and a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, has stated "... I think a lot of the confusion comes from the fact that people claim they are doing a quest for the historical Jesus when de facto they’re doing theology, albeit a theology that is indeed historically informed ..." Meier also wrote that in the past the quest for the historical Jesus has often been motivated more by a desire to produce an alternate Christology than a true historical search.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Historian Michael Licona says a number of scholars have also criticized historical Jesus research for a "secular bias that ...often goes unrecognized to the extent such beliefs are ...considered to be undeniable truths." New Testament scholar Scot McKnight notes that bias is a universal criticism: "everyone tends to lean toward their own belief system" though historian Michael Grant notes that within life of Jesus studies the "notorious problem reaches its height." Licona adds that because "there is no such thing as an unbiased reader/author," and that every scholar of the historical Jesus "brings philosophical baggage," and because there are no "impartial historians," and "only the naive maintain that historians who are agnostics, atheists and non-Christian theists... [are] without any biases," this is a criticism inevitably accurate to varying degrees for everyone in the field. Stephen Porter says "We are all very biased observers, and given how biased we are, it is no wonder that our criteria so often give us what we want."


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The New Testament scholar Nicholas Perrin has argued that since most biblical scholars are Christians, a "certain" bias is inevitable, but he does not see this as a major problem. Licona quotes N. T. Wright:It must be asserted most strongly that to discover that a particular writer has a bias tells us nothing whatever of the value of the particular information he or she presents. It merely bids us be aware of the bias (and of our own for that matter), and to assess the material according to as many sources as we can."


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Historian Thomas L. Haskell explains, "even a polemicist, deeply and fixedly committed" can be objective "insofar as such a person successfully enters into the thinking of his or her rivals and produces arguments potentially compelling, not only to those who potentially share the same views, but to outsiders as well." This has led Licona to recognize 6 tools/methods used to check bias.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: A number of scholars have criticized the various approaches used in the study of the historical Jesus: for the lack of rigor in research methods, and for being driven by "specific agendas" that interpret ancient sources to fit specific goals. New Testament scholar John Kloppenborg Verbin says the lack of uniformity in the application of the criteria, and the absence of agreement on methodological issues concerning them, have created challenges and problems. For example, the question of whether dissimilarity or multiple attestation should be given more weight has led some scholars exploring the historical Jesus to come up with "wildly divergent" portraits of him, which would be less likely to occur if the criteria were prioritized consistently. Methodological alternatives involving hermeneutics, linguistics, cultural studies and more, have been put forth by various scholars as alternatives to the criteria, but so far, the criteria remain the most common method used to measure historicity even though there is still no definitive criteriology.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The historical analysis techniques used by biblical scholars have been questioned, and according to James Dunn it is not possible "to construct (from the available data) a Jesus who will be the real Jesus." Classicist historian A. N. Sherwin-White "noted that approaches taken by biblical scholars differed from those of classical historians." Historian Michael R. Licona says biblical scholars are not trained historians for the most part. He asks, "How many have completed so much as a single undergraduate course pertaining to how to investigate the past?" Licona says N. T. Wright, James G. D. Dunn, and Dale Allison have written substantive historically minded works using hermeneutics, but even so, there remains "no carefully defined and extensive historical method...typical of professional historians."


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Donald Akenson, Professor of Irish Studies in the department of history at Queen's University has argued that, with very few exceptions, the historians attempting to reconstruct a biography of the man Jesus of Nazareth apart from the mere facts of his existence and crucifixion have not followed sound historical practices. He has stated that there is an unhealthy reliance on consensus for propositions which should otherwise be based on primary sources, or rigorous interpretation. He also identifies a peculiar downward dating creep, and holds that some of the criteria being used are faulty.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: It is difficult for any scholar to construct a portrait of Jesus that can be considered historically valid beyond the basic elements of his life. As a result, W.R. Herzog has stated that: "What we call the historical Jesus is the composite of the recoverable bits and pieces of historical information and speculation about him that we assemble, construct, and reconstruct. For this reason, the historical Jesus is, in Meier's words, 'a modern abstraction and construct.'" According to James Dunn, "the "historical Jesus" is properly speaking a nineteenth and twentieth-century construction, "not" Jesus back then, and "not" a figure in history" (emphasis original). Dunn further explains "the facts are not to be identified as data; they are always an "interpretation" of the data. For example, scholars Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne point out that under Bultmann and form criticism in the early and mid-twentieth century, Jesus was seen as historically "authentic" only where he was dissimilar from Judaism, whereas, in contemporary studies since the late twentieth, there is near unanimous agreement that Jesus must be understood within the context of first century Judaism.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: Since Albert Schweitzer's book "The Quest of the Historical Jesus," scholars have stated that many of the portraits of Jesus are "pale reflections of the researchers" themselves. Schweitzer stated: "There is no historical task which so reveals a man's true self as the writing of a life of Jesus." John Dominic Crossan summarized saying, many authors writing about the life of Jesus "do autobiography and call it biography." By way of contrast, James Crossley and Robert J. Myles argue that a rigorous and sober materialist approach can help counter anachronism and scholars' interest in talking about themselves when doing historical Jesus studies.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: There is no physical archaeological evidence for Jesus, and there are no writings by Jesus. First century Greek and Roman authors do not mention Jesus. Textual scholar Bart Ehrman writes that it is a myth that the Romans kept detailed records of everything, however, within a century of Jesus' death there are three extant Roman references to Jesus. While none of them were written during Jesus' lifetime, that is not unusual for personages from antiquity. Josephus, the first-century Romano-Jewish scholar, mentions Jesus twice. There are enough independent attestations of Jesus' existence, Ehrman says, it is "astounding for an ancient figure of any kind". While there are additional second and third century references to Jesus, evangelical philosopher and historian Gary Habermas says extra-biblical sources are of varied quality and dependability and can only provide a broad outline of the life of Jesus. He also points out that Christian non-New Testament sources, such as the church fathers, rely on the New Testament for much of their data and cannot therefore be considered as independent sources.


title: Quest for the historical Jesus

text: The primary sources on Jesus are the Gospels, therefore the Jesus of history is inextricably bound to the issue of the historical reliability of those writings. The authenticity and reliability of the gospels and the letters of the apostles have been questioned, and there are few events mentioned in the gospels that are universally accepted. However, Bart Ehrman says "To dismiss the Gospels from the historical record is neither fair nor scholarly." He adds: "There is historical information about Jesus in the Gospels." Representative of critical scholarship today are the comments of James Crossley and Robert J. Myles who "are sceptical about what we can know "with confidence"" and "prefer to think in terms of whether ideas about Jesus were early or late and whether they were particular to his geographical location or beyond."


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: In human–computer interaction, a cursor is an indicator used to show the current position on a computer monitor or other display device that will respond to input from a text input or pointing device. The mouse cursor is also called a pointer, owing to its resemblance in usage to a pointing stick.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: "Cursor" is Latin for 'runner'. A cursor is a name given to the transparent slide engraved with a hairline used to mark a point on a slide rule. The term was then transferred to computers through analogy.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: On 14 November 1963, while attending a conference on computer graphics in Reno, Nevada, Douglas Engelbart of Augmentation Research Center (ARC) first expressed his thoughts to pursue his objective of developing both hardware and software computer technology to "augment" human intelligence by pondering how to adapt the underlying principles of the planimeter to inputting X- and Y-coordinate data, and envisioned something like the cursor of a mouse he initially called a "bug", which, in a "3-point" form, could have a "drop point and 2 orthogonal wheels". He wrote that the "bug" would be "easier" and "more natural" to use, and unlike a stylus, it would stay still when let go, which meant it would be "much better for coordination with the keyboard."


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: According to Roger Bates, a young hardware designer at ARC under Bill English, the cursor on the screen was for some unknown reason also referred to as "CAT" at the time, which led to calling the new pointing device a "mouse" as well.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: In most command-line interfaces or text editors, the text cursor, also known as a caret, is an underscore, a solid rectangle, or a vertical line, which may be flashing or steady, indicating where text will be placed when entered (the insertion point). In text mode displays, it was not possible to show a vertical bar between characters to show where the new text would be inserted, so an underscore or block cursor was used instead. In situations where a block was used, the block was usually created by inverting the pixels of the character using the boolean math exclusive or function. On text editors and word processors of modern design on bitmapped displays, the vertical bar is typically used instead.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: In a typical text editing application, the cursor can be moved by pressing various keys. These include the four arrow keys, the Page Up and Page Down keys, the Home key, the End key, and various key combinations involving a modifier key such as the Control key. The position of the cursor also may be changed by moving the mouse pointer to a different location in the document and clicking.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: The blinking of the text cursor is usually temporarily suspended when it is being moved; otherwise, the cursor may change position when it is not visible, making its location difficult to follow.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: The concept of a blinking cursor can be attributed to Charles Kiesling Sr. via US Patent 3531796, filed in August 1967.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: Some interfaces use an underscore or thin vertical bar to indicate that the user is in insert mode, a mode where text will be inserted in the middle of the existing text, and a larger block to indicate that the user is in overtype mode, where inserted text will overwrite existing text. In this way, a block cursor may be seen as a piece of selected text one character wide, since typing will replace the text "in" the cursor with the new text.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: A vertical line text cursor with a small left-pointing or right-pointing appendage is for indicating the direction of text flow on systems that support bi-directional text, and is thus usually known among programmers as a 'bidi cursor'. In some cases, the cursor may split into two parts, each indicating where left-to-right and right-to-left text would be inserted.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: In computing, a pointer or mouse cursor (as part of a personal computer WIMP style of interaction) is a symbol or graphical image on the computer monitor or other display device that echoes movements of the pointing device, commonly a mouse, touchpad, or stylus pen. It signals the point where actions of the user take place. It can be used in text-based or graphical user interfaces to select and move other elements. It is distinct from the cursor, which responds to keyboard input. The cursor may also be repositioned using the pointer.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: The pointer commonly appears as an angled arrow (angled because historically that improved appearance on low-resolution screens), but it can vary within different programs or operating systems. The use of a pointer is employed when the input method, or pointing device, is a device that can move fluidly across a screen and select or highlight objects on the screen. In GUIs where the input method relies on hard keys, such as the five-way key on many mobile phones, there is no pointer employed, and instead, the GUI relies on a clear focus state.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: The pointer or mouse cursor echoes movements of the pointing device, commonly a mouse, touchpad or trackball.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: This kind of cursor is used to manipulate elements of graphical user interfaces such as menus, buttons, scrollbars or any other widget. It may be called a "mouse pointer" because the mouse is the dominant type of pointing device used with desktop computers.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: The pointer "hotspot" is the active pixel of the pointer, used to target a click or drag. The hotspot is normally along the pointer edges or in its center, though it may reside at any location in the pointer.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: In many GUIs, moving the pointer around the screen may reveal other screen hotspots as the pointer changes shape depending on the circumstances. For example:


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: The I-beam pointer (also called the I-cursor) is a cursor shaped like a serifed capital letter "I". The purpose of this cursor is to indicate that the text beneath the cursor can be highlighted and sometimes inserted or changed.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: can be used to enhance its visibility during movement. Pointer trails are a feature of GUI operating systems to enhance the visibility of the pointer. Although disabled by default, pointer trails have been an option in every version of Microsoft Windows since Windows 3.1x.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: When pointer trails are active and the mouse or stylus is moved, the system waits a moment before removing the pointer image from the old location on the screen. A copy of the pointer persists at every point that the pointer has visited at that moment, resulting in a snake-like trail of pointer icons that follow the actual pointer. When the user stops moving the mouse or removes the stylus from the screen, the trails disappear and the pointer returns to normal.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: Pointer trails have been provided as a feature mainly for users with poor vision and for screens where low visibility may become an issue, such as LCD screens in bright sunlight.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: Introduced with Windows NT, an "animated pointer" was a small looping animation that was played at the location of the pointer. This is used, for example, to provide a visual cue that the computer is busy with a task. After their introduction, many animated pointers became available for download from third party suppliers. Unfortunately, animated pointers are not without their problems. In addition to imposing a small additional load on the CPU, the animated pointer routines did introduce a security vulnerability. A client-side exploit known as the "Windows Animated Cursor Remote Code Execution Vulnerability" used a buffer overflow vulnerability to load malicious code via the animated cursor load routine of Windows.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: A pointer editor is software for creating and editing static or animated mouse pointers. Pointer editors usually support both static and animated mouse cursors, but there are exceptions. An animated cursor is a sequence of static cursors representing individual frames of an animation. A pointer editor should be able to:


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: Pointer editors are occasionally combined with icon editors because computer icons and cursors share similar properties. Both contain small raster images and the file format used to store icons and static cursors in Microsoft Windows is similar.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: Despite the similarities, pointer editors differ from icon editors in several ways. While icons contain multiple images with different sizes and color depths, static cursors (for Windows) only contain a single image. Pointer editors must provide the means to set the hot spot. Animated pointer editors additionally must be able to handle animations.


title: Cursor (user interface)

text: The idea of a cursor being used as a marker or insertion point for new data or transformations, such as rotation, can be extended to a 3D modeling environment. Blender, for instance, uses a 3D cursor to determine where operations such as placing meshes are to take place in the 3D viewport.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: The Volkswagen Jetta (A5 or Mk5, codename 1K) is a compact car, the fifth generation of the Volkswagen Jetta and the successor to the Volkswagen Bora which was manufactured by Volkswagen between 2005 and 2010, and up to 2012 in China. It is a three-box sedan derivative of the Golf Mk5. It was marketed as the Volkswagen Bora in Mexico and Colombia, Volkswagen Vento in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, and Volkswagen Sagitar in China.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: The fifth generation debuted at the Los Angeles Auto Show on 5 January 2005. After the New Beetle, it was the second Volkswagen product to make its world debut at a U.S. auto show. The Mark 5 sedan went on sale in the USA prior to any other country, reflecting the importance of the car in that market for Volkswagen. VW spent US$800 million to upgrade its Puebla facilities for this model's production. This included a US$290 million new engine production line for the 5-cylinder power plant, a US$50 million investment in the press shop, as well as a US$200 million purchase of 460 robots, which increased automation by 80%.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: Although produced in the largest volumes in Mexico, final assembly of the car also takes place in China and South Africa for those respective markets. Like initial production of the second generation in China, the Asian and African plants build the car from a complete knock down (CKD) kit shipped from the factory in Puebla. Local assembly in Kaluga, Russia, started in early 2008. Assembly also began in India in 2008 at the Škoda factory in Aurangabad As with the previously mentioned assembly plants, CKD kits from Volkswagen de México will be used.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: The A5 Jetta is longer, wider, and has a longer wheelbase than the previous iteration. Interior room has increased from 2.46 cubic metres (87 cu ft) to 2.58 cubic metres (91 cu ft). In particular, rear legroom was increased by over the fourth generation. Luggage compartment volume is up to 453 litres (16 cu ft). One major change is the introduction of the first multi-link independent rear suspension in a Jetta. The design of the rear suspension resembles to the one found in the Ford Focus. Volkswagen reportedly hired engineers from Ford who designed the suspension on the Focus.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: Styling reflects a new direction for the Volkswagen brand, with a new chrome front grille, first seen on the Golf Mk5 R32, which was trickled down to other models. Some critics appreciated the new styling, whilst others dismissed it as just as bland as the 4th generation.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: For model year 2009, certain markets saw a new base model internal combustion engine and automatic transmission. The previous 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine and six-speed automatic transmission were replaced with a smaller, more powerful, and more fuel efficient, 1.4-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine and six-speed DSG transmission (the same as used in the new Golf Mk5). As a result of the change, fuel consumption has been improved (by 17% for the manual, from down to ), and 23% for the automatic, from down to . Power increased 7% from to , while torque is up 20%. In addition, acceleration times 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) have improved, from 9.2 s to 8.5 s for the manual (an 8% improvement), and from 9.9 s to 8.5 s for the automatic (a 14% improvement).


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: The body of the fifth generation used high strength steel and laser welding with 35% of its body parts, resulting in double-digit increases in both dynamic and torsional rigidity. An impact-absorbing front bumper which yields slightly in the event of a collision with a pedestrian, reducing the chance of injury. A new door design allows just the outer panel to be removed and replaced if damaged, rather than the entire door. Safety features included side curtain airbags, seat-mounted rear side airbags, Electronic Stability Programme with Anti-Slip Regulation and Brake assist, as well as active head restraints. A Direct-Shift Gearbox (DSG) transmission, available dual-zone automatic climate control, and electro-mechanical power steering were also available.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: The fifth generation car features a redesigned electrical system. Control modules are used for various systems, digitally transmitted over Controller Area Network (CAN) buses at 500 kilobits per second — reducing the number of wires needed, and the opportunity for faults. Cars equipped with halogen headlamps have a 'VW' logo integrated into the bulb shield. In most markets, the rear lights use light-emitting diodes (LEDs). In North America, standard filament bulbs with a different design are used to comply with FMVSS 108.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: Volkswagen has developed a very specific motor oil quality standard; oil meeting this standard must be used to ensure full warranty coverage.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: The internal combustion engines available are dependent on the destination market. In Europe, a range of the new generation Fuel Stratified Injection (FSI) engines are available. Additionally in that market, the car can be had with an engine known as the 'Twincharger'. This 1.4 litre petrol engine combines turbo- and supercharging, to make a small but powerful engine with low fuel consumption. The Jetta available in the Americas and the Middle East is powered by a 2.5-litre 5-cylinder 20-valve engine in most trims. This engine shares its cylinder head design with the V10 engine found in the Lamborghini Gallardo and Audi R8.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: When the Mark 5 Jetta was introduced, the Turbocharged Direct Injection (TDI) diesel engine was not offered in five U.S. States due to the tight emission standards promulgated by the California Air Resources Board. In addition to California, four other states adopted the more stringent California standards. Where it was available, it fell into the least-restrictive emission category. That category was removed in 2007, prompting the diesel Jetta to be unavailable for more than a year until the introduction of a new common rail diesel engine, which appeared in August 2008. The introduction was delayed for approximately six months due to technical issues with the new emissions control system. The TDI Clean Diesel engine is rated , and uses advanced features such as a diesel particulate filter and NOx-storage catalyst (vs. AdBlue) to reduce NO in order to qualify as a Tier II Bin 5 vehicle (equivalent to California's LEV II rating), and thereby allowing it to be sold in all 50 U.S. states. AdBlue (urea injection fluid) is not required, further reducing maintenance requirements. In 2015 it was found that this engine's emissions had been falsified.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: In the U.S., in August 2010, it was reported that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was investigating 37,889 2009 Jetta TDI's regarding a stalling problem. There were complaints to the agency about the Jettas going into "limp-home" mode and then stalling almost immediately while being driven. "Motor Trend" reported that there were also complaints about premature failures of its high-pressure fuel pump.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: In Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash testing the Jetta received an overall "Good" rating in both front offset and side impact tests. In the side impact test the Jetta received "Good" marks in all nine measured categories. In 2005, the Institute noted that the side impact protection performance was the best they had ever rated. In 2006, the car received a "Top Safety Pick" award from the Institute. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave the fifth generation Jetta for both driver and passenger protection in a frontal impact, while the car received stars in a side impact crash test. To tout the safety of the car, a series of television commercials with the tag line "Safe happens" showed the car being involved in a collision whilst afterward the occupants are shown to have emerged unscathed.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: The fifth generation received generally positive reviews with some reviewers complaining the car lost some of its character with the redesign. Most reviewers found the ride to be firm and well controlled but not always as forgiving as the previous generation. Handling was a strong point, with quick and precise steering and minimal body roll due to the MacPherson Strut suspension up front. Fit and finish received excellent marks, with reviewers noting the car felt very upscale. The front seats were firm but well liked, and the rear seat was roomy, in contrast to the cramped quarters in the fourth generation. Controls and displays were decent, but fell apart and started shorting out with age. Reviewers were particularly impressed with the "Sportline" models (known as the GLI in North America). Equipped with sport seats, a firmer suspension lowered by , and low profile tyres, critics praised the excellent handling that was an improvement over the already good performance on the standard model. Additionally, the 2.0 Turbo FSI engine also won commendation for its high power figures, smooth operation, and low fuel consumption. Along with its hatchback brethren, the fifth generation ranks among the top cars on the market in independent reviews of resale value.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: Although improved over the fourth generation, the Mark 5 still took over 42 hours to assemble at the factory in Mexico. Part of this disparity is blamed on the switch to the more complex independent rear suspension. Volkswagen has publicly stated its discontent over the excessive assembly time, and pledged to streamline manufacturing in the next generation of A platform cars. In the interim, Volkswagen de México is making a concerted effort to further increase productivity at the plant by consulting outside experts from Toyota and other Japanese companies. By implementing many lean manufacturing principles and techniques, a goal has been set to increase productivity levels at the factory by 30% or more in the coming years.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: Volkswagen debuted a station wagon variant of the Golf at the 2007 New York International Auto Show, with a cargo volume of and (rear seats up/down) and an optional panoramic sunroof.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: VW marketed the station wagon as the Jetta SportWagen in the United States, Bora Sportwagen in Mexico, Golf Break and later Golf SW in France, Jetta Variant in Brazil, Vento Variant in Argentina, Jetta Wagon in Canada (2009 only), Golf Wagon in Canada (2010 onwards), Golf Estate in the United Kingdom and Golf Variant in the German domestic and most other markets.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: In 2010, the Sportwagen received a minor interior and exterior facelift, and remained based on the fifth-generation Golf, with front end styling mirroring the sixth-generation Golf.


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: This version commemorated the 2008+ Jetta TDI Cup Race series, the last year of the Mk V, and was based on the TDI Clean Diesel sedan. The same and of torque diesel motor was supplied, and the package included GLI brakes, suspension, and sway bars. Additional upgrades from the base TDI were "TDI Cup Edition" body side stickers, 18 inch wheels with Pirelli P-Zero or Yokohama ADVAN 225/40R18 sport tires, aluminum pedals, leather-wrapped steering wheel, chrome door linings, aerodynamic body kit (front, side & rear), an Interlagos cloth interior with heated sport seats, short shifter, faux carbon fiber inlays (as opposed to metallic), and a black interior (headliner/doorcards/dash).


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: It could be purchased with either a 6-speed Manual or DSG transmission (DSG includes paddle shifters), and a "Thunderbunny" body kit was optional (and available from VW only on the Cup edition).


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: The vehicle was unveiled in the 2008 SEMA Show. The production version went on sale in January 2010 with a base MSRP of US$24,990 (not including destination fee or options).


title: Volkswagen Jetta (A5)

text: Per VW North America, worldwide only 1,501 Jetta TDI Cup Editions were produced. 588 were manufactured with a manual transmission and 913 were built with DSG transmissions.


title: Diriyah

text: Diriyah (), formerly romanized as Dereyeh and Dariyya), is a town in Saudi Arabia located on the north-western outskirts of the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Diriyah was the original home of the Saudi royal family, and served as the capital of the Emirate of Diriyah under the first Saudi dynasty from 1727 to 1818. Today, the town is the seat of the Diriyah Governorate, which also includes the villages of Uyayna, Jubayla, and Al-Ammariyyah, among others, and is part of Ar Riyad Province.