The Historical Jesus and the Parting of the Ways

Next week should see the publication of the massive tome Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, edited by S.E. Porter and T. Holmen (Leiden: Brill, 2011), which includes 4 volumes with over a 120 essays. Note, this will be a library resource as opposed to a personal buy at the bargain basement price of $1329 USD (but then again it's USD which ain't so bad these days). Still, this will be one of the definitive resources for study of the historical Jesus for decades to come, so you should at least know about it if you are involved in Jesus/Gospel studies.

However, with permission from Brill, I'm able to put on-line my own contribution to the volume in the essay, The Historical Jesus and the 'Parting of the Ways'.

Michael Horton on Jesus vs. Paul

Over at the White Horse Inn, Michael Horton chimes in on the Jesus vs. Paul debate. My own thoughts are in the comments section of the post.

Dale Allison: The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus

Over the SBL period I read Dale C. Allison's The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009). I enjoy Allison's books, but I have to confess that I always come away feeling a little depressed at the end. Allison strikes me as such a melancholic author. But in many cases he's right. We simply do not get out of historical Jesus research what we would like to get: historical certainty, a Jesus like us, a Jesus concerned about our concerns, etc. In this book, Allison writes a lot about the relationship between theology and history as well as the mistaken certainty of history in Jesus questing. One thing I took away from the book is that I think Allison makes a key point when he notes that even those who shaped the Jesus tradition were themselves shaped by Jesus. Consequently, the divide between authentic and inauthentic sayings is artificial. Even materials that are judged to be verbally inauthentic, can still summarize Jesus' authentic viewpoint. Allison is also on the money when he notes the pervasive nature of eschatology in Jesus' teaching/theology. He writes: "The matter of Jesus' own christology cannot be disentangled from his eschatological expectations, for in the Synoptics it is chiefly in logia about the last things that his status is most exalted" (p. 90). Next is to read his other new book Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2009).

More on the Historical Jesus and Christ of Faith

Here is a well-known quote from Kittel on the historical Jesus vs. Christ of faith:

The Jesus of History is valueless and unintelligible unless He be experienced and confessed by faith as the living Christ. But, if we would be true to the New Testament, we must at once reverse this judgment. The Christ of faith has no existence, is mere noise and smoke, apart from the reality of Jesus of History. These two are utterly inseparable in the New Testament. They cannot even be thought of apart … Anyone who attempts first to separate the two and then to describe only one of them, has nothing in common with the New Testament.

Gerhard Kittel, G. K. A. Bell and A. Deissman (eds), Mysterium Christi (London, 1930), 49.

Preview of Dale Allison's New Book

James McGrath provides a quick preview of Dale Allison's forthcoming book on Constructing Jesus for those into historical Jesus studies.

John Meier on the Halakic Jesus

I'm just finishing a review of John P. Meier's A Marginal Jew vol. 4: Law and Love which has been a great read. One quote I have to mention is this one:

"We return, then [after a study of the love commandment], to our theme song of the historical Jesus being the halakic Jesus. A 'historical' Jesus who is not involved in the lively halakic debates of his fellow Jews in first-century Palestine, who does not reason about the Law in typically Jewish fashion, and who does not display his charismatic authority as the eschatological prophet by issuing some startling legal pronouncements, is not the historical Jesus. He is instead a modern and largely American construct, favored by some Christians because he is appealing to the marketplace of popular religion in the United Stated today - a religion that is highly emotional, mostly self-centred, predictably uninterested in stringent commandments, and woefully ignorant of history. This American 'historical' Jesus could never have interacted with first-century Palestinian Jews, a community centred on the Law and a community that, unlike many present-day Americans, understood perfectly what its God meant when he commanded love." (p. 528).

"The Intention of the Evangelists"

C. F. D. Moule wrote a very interesting piece in a collection of essays in honor of T. W. Manson in a book titled, rather plainly, New Testament Essays (Manchester University Press, 1959). I don't remember now how I became aware of the essay . . . perhaps in my research for the essay I'm writing on Paul and Matthew. While its content was not relevant to my essay's interest,  its argument is quite poignant especially in light of the discussions being had at least on this blog about the Historical Jesus. The essence of the essay is that the narratives of the four Gospels should be differentiated from the epistles of the NT because they are not strictly part of the "liturgy" of the church, but to the church's apologetic and outward evangelistic witness. Moule compares the Gospels to the narrative books of the OT:

At the time when the Gospels were being written and first used, the Church was well aware of a distinction between the "the Jesus of history" and "the Christ of faith" to use the modern cliches; and that, in so far as the Gospels were used in Christian worship at all (and we shall have to ask how far, after all, that was the case), they filled a place broadly comparable to the narrative parts of the Hebrew Scriptures in the Synagogue, as the historical background against which the interpretative writings might be read (165).

He contents that the Gospels as narratives would not have their most proper place in the context of worship, but rather in the support of the worship life of the church as its foundation story. Moule is answering the widespread view in his day that the Gospels cannot be viewed as reliable history since it was thought they represented only religious convictions and were infected beyond hope with the interpretation of the church; and thus the Gospels belong rather to liturgy and to "high theology" than to history. Their value as history was [still is] suspect. Moule admits that this dichotomy is a false one; these are not devoid of value-judgments or eccelesiastical interests. Nevertheless, he beleives that the Gospels, when read on their own terms, reveal, as it has been said, "the past of Jesus".  "The Christians knew the difference between the two--between the pre-resurrection situation and the post-resurrection situation--and that their aim was to try to tell faithfully the story of how the former led to the latter". Their intentions, where they have been discerned, constrained the Evangelists to keep embellishments and interpretive glosses to the barest minimum. Moule argued that the Gospels as narrative 

Remain in some sense distinguishable from theological deductions, form the preaching of the way of salvation, and from adoration. It is only one ingredient in worship; and its very nature demands that, so far as possible, it be kept in this distinguishable condition and not overlaid by interpretation.

One more quotation about the nature of the Gospels is significant in view of  discussion of the necessity of historical study of Jesus:

And--another point--its purpose accordingly was not only or even chiefly to be sued for worship. Still more, it was to equip Christians with a knowledge of their origins, for use in evangelism and apologetic. The real core of worship was the experience of the risen Christ within the Christian church through the participation in the Spirit [this sounds like Bonhoeffer -- forgive me I'm reading Joel Lawrence's book]. But [heres the important bit] Christians knew well that if they lost sight of the story behind that experience their worship would be like a house built on sand; and that if they preached salvation without the story of how it came they would be powerless as evangelists; and that if they could not explain how they came to stand where they did, they would be failing to give a reason for their hope.

It is the task of the church to read these narratives of Jesus historically so as not to fall into the same pit. 

Can the Canonical Jesus be Historical? 4 Theses

Amidst the swelter of interest in debate about the historical Jesus vs. the canonical Jesus, I wish to add my own four cents.

1. The Historical Jesus is not ...

a. The untheological Jesus. Our only access to Jesus is through the faith and theology of the early church. The Gospels contains a mixture of fact and faith, history and hermeneutic, authenticity and artistry. Jesus himself was theologically grounded and his message was about God (i.e., his message about God addressed the socio-political circumstances of Palestine and the position of Israel vis-a-vis God) . So we can expect to find theological matter (not abstract theology) in the historical Jesus and in the memory that Jesus himself generated.

b. A fifth Gospel. The historical Jesus will always be a reconstructed Jesus by historians and makes no attempt to become the authorizing narrative of the orthodox churches. It is a tool for reading the Gospels, not a replacement for them (note, liberal churches may disagree).

c. A harmony of the Gospels. There simply are historical incongruities in the Gospels (e.g., the cleansing of the temple in John and Mark) and attempts to sanitize the Gospels from certain alleged inconsistencies maligns the Evangelists as incompetent custodians or poor storytellers of the Jesus story.

d. A conflation of the Gospels. To stock pile the narratives one after the other with a mix of harmony and addition is to render the Tetraevangelium superfluous. The distinctive of each Gospel is flattened and its unique contribution jettisoned in want of a single narrative.

2. The Historical Jesus is Faith Seeking Historical Understanding

a. The Gospel's may be the authorized witnesses to Jesus, but they are not the only witnesses to Jesus. The church fathers were more than aware of other legitimate traditions (oral traditions, agrapha, sayings in non-canonical Gospels) that relayed reliable or relevant information about Jesus and they utilized it accordingly.

b. The church fathers had to wrestle with the historical character of the Gospels and were aware of claims of fiction and alleged inconsistencies, and endeavoured to read the Gospels theologically and historically. Origen wrestling with Gergesa or Gadara is a prime example (Mk. 5.1 and par.).

c. The Gospels themselves claim to have a historical character and invite critical scrutiny (e.g., Luke 1.1-4).

d. The "historical Jesus" is the narratives that emerges when the Evangelists invite sociologists, archaeologists, Talmudic scholars, and Graeco-Roman historians to work on seminar project about Jesus.

e. Study of the historical Jesus is a necessary question since sooner or later Christians are bound to ask, who is the kyrios how did he become ho stauromenos?

f. Study of the historical Jesus is a canonical question, as the Gospels ask it themselves, and invite historically informed answers (e.g., Mk. 4.41).

g. The danger of theological readings is not docetism or traditionalism, but that we end up with a study of the Gospels that tells us more about what people believed about Jesus rather than about Jesus himself. The danger is that we will end up back in the old form critical trap where the Gospels are little more than narrative expressions of the church's faith in Jesus, but not actually about Jesus himself.

3. The Canonical Jesus is Faith seeking Narratival Understanding

a. The Gospels are written from the vantage point of faith and to commend the faith. Seen not the least by the cameo appearances of post-Easter christology at certain points (e.g., the use of "Lord" in Lk. 11.39, etc.) and the references to faith and believing (e.g., Lk. 18.8).

b. The Gospels are not simply dialogues with the risen saviour or narrative representations of the church's faith. The Gospels recognize the back then-ness of Jesus and that his time as a human being is different from their time between the ages (Leander Keck is very good on this in his Jesus in Perfect Tense).

c. The task of the Gospels is to narrate the gospel of Jesus as part of Israel's history and religious literature and in light of the church's witness to Jesus and worship of Jesus.

d. Most of all, the Gospels place the story of Jesus within the story of Israel's God.

4. Jesus: Historical and Canonical.

Therefore, I propose that the historical Jesus has a place within a New Testament Theology in the following way:

a. The historical Jesus is not the presupposition to a New Testament Theology, rather, it is the prolegomena to a theology of the Tetraevangelium.

b. The historical Jesus is the opening precis about who Jesus is by setting forth the mission and ministry of Jesus as part of Roman Palestinian history which was invaded by the story of God.

c. The historical Jesus is the attempt to explain why there was a church with four Gospels in the first place.

d. The "Jesus" part of a New Testament Theology should have the following tasks: (1) To answer the question of "Who is Jesus?" in light of historic testimony; (2) to postulate how the historical Jesus led to the formation of the Four Gospels; (3) To define the literary, rhetorical, social, and theological fabric of the Four Gospels in their own right; and (4) To summarize what the Four Gospels and their reception in the church have to say about Jesus as a whole.

What is the point of the evangelical study of the historical Jesus?

I think Wright in his lecture at the recent Wheaton conference hit the nail on the head with respect to the apologetic point of Historical Jesus studies. The quotation occurs at about 50th minute. I could not agree with this more.

We have to reconnect with the real Jesus who the canonical Gospels give us . . .but whom we have so misunderstood . . . Yes there is an apologetic task . . . not to prove Jesus’ divinity by some arm twisting fashion . . . But rather we need to speak truly and wisely about Jesus and show that the Gospels, as they are and not as the tradition has shrunk them into being, really do make sense, historical sense. And that the overwhelmingly best explanation for the Christian faith and its rise is that Jesus was and did what the Gospels say he was and did. Otherwise it seems to be that there is the danger [as in Barthian theological circles] of getting to this closed, charmed circle where we don’t allow any natural theology. There is no way to break in. When God has laid his hand on you then the whole system works but you’ve really got no point of contact with the outside world or from outside in.

I think it is interesting how he defines the "historical Jesus" that he aims to study. When I subtitled my essay on the historical Jesus: "Why I'm not a 'historical Jesus' Scholar?" I was not referring to what Wright describes here. The Jesus to which he refers here is a crucial apologetic project for which I myself am fully committed.

However, and again I'll state it, the question is one of definition: what are we studying historically?  The canonical Jesus, the Jesus the Gospels reveal, or the so-called historical Jesus, a Jesus who is the result of a minimalistic historical methodology?

Gathering from both Craig Keener's response in the CT article (I have not yet read his book) and Darrell Bock's at CT online (see also his blog as well as in the comments in the former post here) I think they aren't that far from McKnight. No one is saying that we should not firmly root Jesus historically for Christian doctrinal re-formation and for apologetics with the wider world. I think the  crucial point is for which Jesus do we contend?

The So-called Historical Jesus

In light of the discussion that has arisen from Scot McKnight's CT article as well as the paper Richard Hays gave at the recent Wheaton Conference engaging N.T. Wright, I want to include here part of the conclusion of an essay I wrote in 2004 entitled "Presupposition and Procedures in the Study of the 'Historical Jesus': Why I Decided Not to Be a 'Historical Jesus' Scholar". The abstract reads:

This article provides a detailed description of the presuppositions and procedures of a representative group of six scholars who are currently contributing to the study of the Historical Jesus. The intention of the study was to draft a 'handbook', a 'recipe', of the best methods and the surest presuppositions for achieving the result of a solid historical conclusion about Jesus. What resulted from the project was not what had been hoped. In fact, what resulted was a deep scepticism about the quest, at least as it is currently being conducted. Though, admittedly, not offering solutions, this article seeks to raise questions about the real potential and usefulness of any quest for the 'so-called' historical Jesus. 

While it is certainly neither as well written as Scot's piece nor as theologically well-rounded as Hays' lecture, I do think that I had my finger on just the kind criticisms both men are raising of the so-called historical Jesus project. As you'll see, one of the main thrusts I make is on the definition. I would even push that question onto my esteemed blogmate in his recent post on Scot's article. 

Here it is:

In spite of the foregoing conclusions I have, nevertheless, a fundamental scepticism about the entire endeavour—at least as it has been practised[1]—especially from the standpoint of an evangelical presupposition. Moreover, I have read conservative and moderate evangelical works on the historical Jesus and, though they have greatly contributed to the Third Quest by rooting Jesus in his 1^st century Jewish context, I find them equally unsatisfying in that they have adopted, similar procedures, though the presuppositions are vastly different. In the rest of the conclusion I wish to highlight, in quite a random order, the primary points of scepticism with the pursuit of the historical Jesus. It is my hope that these comments, while not novel, will spur dialogue about the purpose and process of the historical study of Jesus.

The first point is one of definition. Many scholars have not defined who or what it is they are attempting to study when they use the phrase ‘the historical Jesus’. Though I think there is a basic and ‘shared’ understanding of the term (i.e., the uninterpreted, human Jesus of Nazareth), often scholars have different objects in view. I noticed this problem most recently in the work of a prominent evangelical scholar. Darrell Bock, a mentor of mine from my seminary days, has written a two volume work on Jesus, the first of which is titled, Studying the Historical Jesus.[2] Yet in reality this is not an appropriate title for the book, at least if one defines the ‘historical Jesus’ as most scholars today do. On the second page of the introduction Bock describes more appropriately what he is doing; he is ‘studying the Jesus as presented in the four Gospels’.[3] And then later he admits ‘my subsequent work [Jesus According to the Scriptures] belongs to the third quest, although in focusing so heavily on Scripture, it is not a historical work in the technical, critical sense’.[4] The title of the second volume is much more descriptive of his project, Jesus According to the Scriptures and, thus, the first would be better titled Studying the Canonical Jesus.[5] My point here is not at all to call into question Bock’s work, but I reference his recent book on Jesus to show that we must be more careful in our use of the term the ‘historical Jesus’. The phrase quite possibly is no longer useful as a descriptive term, since it carries the baggage of earlier critical scholarship. Many, it seems, take the meaning for granted or take the terminology up uncritically. I myself was guilty of this very thing before my supervisor asked me this very question.

For most scholars who study the historical Jesus their object is a person disconnected from any interpretation. The ‘historical perspective’ to them means removing the husk of interpretation to find the seed of history: getting to ‘what really happened’, uncovering ‘who he really claimed to be and what he actually did’.[6] They are attempting to get to the uninterpreted Jesus. I question whether this objective is an appropriate historical pursuit. What does it mean to study Jesus from a historical perspective? Does it mean that we ‘tell it like it was?’ It seems to me that honesty whispers that this quest is not possible and we, perhaps, should be more attentive to its voice. Moreover, maybe scholars, even evangelical scholars, are misguided when they write something like: ‘We must distinguish historical data contained in this text from what the fourth Evangelist is doing with this material and the narrative framework in which it is now found’.[7] Honestly, do we really think this is possible? Do we really believe that we possess the tools, let alone the capability, to achieve the result? From where I stand, I think the answer is no. I think the last century of Jesus research, of which we remain heirs, quite possibly, has been misguided presuppositionally and procedurally. Thus, I find Green’s contribution to the discussion refreshing and his assessment of Jesus-research accurate: ‘critical inquiry in Jesus-research has not been critical enough—that is self-critical enough’.[8] Additionally, I wonder if it is not only inappropriate for evangelical scholarship to maintain this inadequate definition of ‘historical Jesus’—since we affirm the truthfulness and authority of the Gospel presentation of Jesus, but also for scholarship in general to pursue the ‘what really happened’ behind the Gospel narratives as the task is currently construed.[9] As scholars, we are certainly entitled to imagine, to create and to invent, but to what end? What do we really accomplish?

A second issue with over which I am quite sceptical in the quest for the ‘historical Jesus’ is the value of tradition criticism. Scholars argue that the Gospels can be divided into roughly three layers: what comes from Jesus, what was created by the oral tradition of the early church and what was produced by the editorial work of the evangelist. According to them, the Jesus scholar’s task is to work back through the tradition history to the first layer of tradition to find the historical Jesus. As I pointed out in an earlier discussion, however, scholars are not able to distinguished legitimately one layer from another any more than one can divide a river into its constituent sources. The problem is that though scholars acknowledge the weaknesses of tradition criticism—as they have been well documented in recent years, they still assume, in their very confident application of them, we can be bias-free in our use of them. This is simply not the case. The tools alone do not get us back to the sayings and deeds of Jesus.[10] Over-confidence in what the tools of the historical critical method can satisfactorily produce pervades Jesus research.

A question that I continue to mull over in my mind is what value does tradition criticism with its criteria of authenticity really have? Even those who consider themselves evangelical scholars affirm the use of tradition criticism and say it is important in order to show that a particular saying or deed goes back to Jesus and was not simply made up by say Matthew or Mark.[11] Meanwhile others encourage one to look at places where the event or teaching goes ‘against the grain’ of the authors’ general purposes and it is in these areas that one can be ‘more confident’ that these traditions go back to Jesus.[12] In response to the latter point the determination of what constitutes ‘against the grain’ is extremely difficult, and not obvious. This is especially true in light of the recent acknowledgement by Gospels’s scholars that the absence of an evangelist’s finger prints on a tradition does not, in itself, necessarily imply anything since the inclusion of a tradition implies approval.[13] This truthful observation makes redaction criticism all the harder. The delineation of the sources an evangelist used and the manner in which he used them are nearly impenetrable.[14]

With respect to the first appeal of the usefulness of tradition criticism, in spite of the assertion to the contrary, I am still left wondering what one has really gained by the application of the criteria of authenticity. If I apply these criteria to a given saying or deed what assurance will it provide for me? Does it really anchor the idea in the historical person of Jesus? Can we really separate the authors from their traditions? Can we really distinguish the authors’ from the story they narrate? The fact is these criteria cannot be applied neutrally and will be affected by the one using them. Moreover, it is unrealistic to think that these criteria can act as a neutral arbiter between two competing views. For instance, as an American-protestant-Baptist-evangelical scholar, I come to the study of Jesus with certain preconceived notions, of which one is a high view of the veracity of the Four-fold gospel account of Jesus of Nazareth. This being so, I come to a Jesus tradition with a preconceived confidence in the authenticity of that tradition and I use the criteria to justify my belief. If I am honest with myself there is no tradition that I would be willing to label as ‘inauthentic’ because of the application of a criterion. Equally there is not a tradition that I will doubt simply because someone else applied a certain criterion. This circumstance, however, is not simply the problem of a naïve, pre-critical evangelical, but, in truth, it is the common experience of all interpreters. So what real purpose does tradition criticism serve? It is true that criteria when used positively can verify a given traditions authenticity. But, that conceded, what still is the usefulness of this kind of argument? When we have come to believe its authenticity and then applied the criterion. One might argue ‘apologetic’, but who are we kidding?

Related to this discussion is the third issue over which I am sceptical, namely, the so-called problem of subjectivity. As I argued earlier, subjectivity has not been sufficiently accounted for in the historical process. I do think that scholars like Wright, Theissen and Winter, and especially Allison have moved significantly forward by not simply acknowledging the presence of presuppositions, but even embracing their subjectivity in the process of doing an investigation. I would like to suggest that rather than our subjectivity being considered a virus that needs to be eradicated, we look on it as an attribute; something that should be valued as an important part of our method. Some will certainly object to this suggestion on the grounds that if our subjectivity is not kept in check we will fall under Schweitzer’s criticism of constructing a Jesus that is nothing more than the reflection of ourselves. The position I would advocate, however, is one that first and foremost must be humble. Because subjectivity is endemic we as scholars must always be humble about our positions, even the ones dogmatically held.  Second, our subjectivity is always in relationship with the ‘effective history’ of Jesus—the Four-fold Gospels. Thus, our subjectivity is fenced in, so to speak, by the concrete reality of the Gospel accounts of Jesus. It must always takeinto account the historical reality of the emergence of the canonical Gospels and the witness of the church.

Finally, I am completely sceptical of the assumption that has provided the motivation for the pursuit of the historical Jesus, namely, the Gospels are unreliable and, therefore, another historical narrative needs to be created that is more historical. This assumption is faulty because it is based on ‘positivist pretensions’ of 19^th century historicism which ignores the realities of selectivity and narration in every historical account.[15] Because of this faulty assumption, it should not be the reason for studying Jesus. I am not suggesting that more historical narratives should not be manufactured about the person of Jesus. He is arguable one of the most important figures in history and scholars and lay persons alike will always be interested in this person. What I am suggesting, however, is that these ‘new’ historical narratives not be given pride of place over the four narratives that have been passed down to us through the church, which survive from a period of time very near the events they narrate. What is more, perhaps we should spend less of our time as scholars reconstructing new historical narratives and more time wrestling with the meaning of the Four-fold gospel which we possess in all its diversity of historical contexts and complementary portraits of Jesus. In this regard, I find that Bock’s book, Jesus According to the Scriptures, is a welcomed contribution to the endeavour even though most would not consider it a contribution to the our understanding of the ‘historical Jesus’.[16] Yet, I am inclined to think that, perhaps, it is more of a contribution to our understanding of Jesus of Nazareth than the works of the scholars this paper has considered.

---

[1] This qualifying statement is very important, as will become clear below. I am in no way suggesting that history should be abandoned; or is of the utmost importance to the study of the Gospels and early Christianity.

[2] Darrell L. Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002).

[3] Bock, Historical Jesus, p. 14.

[4] Bock, Historical Jesus, p.  152.

[5] Darrell L. Bock, Jesus According to the Scriptures: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002).

[6] Bock, Jesus, p. 17.

[7] Robert L. Webb, ‘Jesus’ Baptism: Its Historicity and Implications’, BBR 10.2 (2000): 261-309 (303).

[8] Green, ‘Quest’, p. 553.

[9] Green (Green, ‘Quest’, p. 553.) writes, ‘‘History’, in the sense of ‘historical knowledge’, is not and cannot be ‘what actually happened.’ Instead, ‘history’ and the ‘past’ exist in a kind of bartering relationship—the past providing environmental situations, personages, and events; history providing significance through selectivity and narration. Hence history is both less and more than the past.’

[10] Cf. Allison (Jesus, pp. 7-10.): the problem of Faustina.

[11] Grant Osborne, ‘Redaction Criticism’, in New Testament Criticism and Interpretation (ed. David Alan Black; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 199-224 (207).; cf. also more recently Bock, Historical Jesus, pp. 199-203.

[12] Sanders and Davies, Synoptic Gospels, p. 301; cf. also Bockmuehl, Jesus, p. 20.

[13] Cf. Graham Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), p. 52. What needs to be emphasized here is the fact that the evidence of redaction (or scarcity of evidence) is not nearly as significant in interpreting the Gospels as once thought. Recently it has been rightly recognized that even when an evangelist takes over a tradition without any evidence of redaction, in taking it over he is putting his stamp of approval on that tradition. In other words, the traditions an evangelist uses and the alterations he makes both provide a picture of his theological perspective. This observation provides a welcomed realism to the study of Gospels and provides the balance needed in assessing the theology of the evangelists.

[14] The identification of an evangelist’s sources in a given pericope is, firstly, difficult since all we possess are the literary compositions in their final form. Moreover, the ability to distinguish between the sources an author used and his redaction is equally tenuous. Since we do not know the sources explicitly, it is difficult to determine when the author is adding to or subtracting from his source. Cf. Stanton (Stanton, A Gospel, p. 41.) who writes, with respect to Matthew: ‘the formation of Matthew’s gospel may have been the result of a much longer and a much more complex process than the ‘one-stage’ redaction commonly envisaged. Even though it is very difficult indeed to isolate with confidence changes made to Mark, Q, or ‘M’ traditions by redactors other than Matthew, there are good grounds for urging caution: not every difference between Matthew and the sources which he drew represents a modification introduced by the evangelist Matthew himself’.

[15] Green, ‘Quest’, p. 553.

[16] Cf. Blomberg’s (cf. Bock, Jesus.) endorsement on the dustcover of Jesus According to the Gospels: ‘Neither a contribution to historical-Jesus research nor a conventional textbook on the Gospels . . .’

Historical Jesus We Never Knew

Over at CT is a spate of intriguing articles on the historical Jesus. First, there is Scot McKnight on The Jesus We'll Never Know, which basically argues that the quest for the historical Jesus is over and it does not give us anything of value any ways. Then there are responses by N.T. Wright (No, We Need History), Craig Keener (No, Jesus Studies Matter), and Darrell Bock (No, We Need Context). Then there is also a poll about the question!

In recent years I've gained a greater appreciation for the canonical Jesus as providing the bricks and mortar of the Christian faith. Yet at the same time, I'm convinced that the Gospels are pressing us to look back to something that we call the "Historical Jesus", i.e., an actual figure and what he said and did, but in the context of early church's proclamation about him. So for me the big the question is not a historical vs. a non-historical Jesus, but whether we will examine the history through the lens of a kergymatic or non-kergymatic way of looking at him. Do we sympathize with the Gospels as we read about Jesus, or do we read against the grain to find the "real" Jesus? Ultimately, I think the historical Jesus and canonical Jesus are different domains of discourse, but ultimately they are complimentary and necessary for an understanding of Jesus.

Crossley on the Jesus Project

My friend and sparring partner, James Crossley, has a thoughtful and careful article in Bible and Interpretation about the prospects for historical Jesus study in light of the purposes of the Jesus Project. James proposes greater focus on the study of the Aramaic behind the Jesus tradition and attention given to socio-historical and anthropological explanations for illuminating the emergence of Christianity. Fair and reasonable points on anyone's score card. Though I would point out to James that: (1) Not all historical Jesus scholars operate with the "great man" view as evidenced by John Meier's "Marginal Jew" and Gerd Theissen's somewhat illusive "Galilean". (2) You cannot "explain" Christianity simply by reference to its socio-historical context and surrounding cultural currents because sooner or later you still need to do business with the text of the Gospels themselves: we need biography and sociology in our historical reconstruction! I assume that James would agree with me here, why else would you learn Aramaic unless you're prepared to go logion for logion and pericope for pericope. (3) I also plea to James to be equally "deconstructive" to the Jesus Project as he is to other bastions of scholarship on the subject matter because he rightly recognizes how theologically and ideologically loaded all historical Jesus scholarship can be.

What bothers me about the Jesus Project is two things: (1) The rhetoric that they will be objective and scientific is simply delusional to anyone who knows the meaning of the word "postmodernity" (and we have to ask what are they implying about the rest of us not part of their circle?), and (2) Does anybody out there really think that they are going to be any less ideologically driven than their predecessors the "Jesus Seminar"? For instance, the fact that they include Derreck Bennett's A Skeptic's Letter to Lee Stroebel on their website (Bennett is not a scholar as far as I can tell and he describes himself as a "pesky Internet blogger" and relies heavily on the work of Robert Price for his conclusions) indicates that this "project" has atheist propaganda as its objective. Look at the other array of anti-apologetics articles here too which don't strike me as disinterested scholars offering a careful and cautious voice in a complex scholarly conversation. You could easily download half of this stuff to internet infidels (a mixture of scholarly and amateur atheism on the web) and no-one would be able to tell the difference.

Where will the Jesus Project take us? Well, we call the Jesus of the Jesus Seminar the "Californian Jesus" (to use Gerd Theissen's colourful term). I suggest that the Jesus Project has a pre-fabricated Jesus ready to go which I will call the "Promethean Jesus", i.e. a Jesus who, if he exists at all, will be conducive and appealing to the editors of Prometheus Press an atheist book publisher.

Francis Watson on the Historical Jesus

I've just finished reading Francis Watson's article "Veritas Christi: How to Get from the Jesus of History to the Chrsit of Faith without Losing One's Way" in Seeking the Identity of Jesus, eds. R.B. Hays and B. R. Gaventa. (You can see how it has stirred my thinking on the post below). One of the highlights of the volume so far. Watson purpose is to show, "how the scholarly constructed known as the 'historical Jesus' can be reintegrated into the canonical image of the historic, biblical Christ" (p. 101). He believes that: The Theologically significant Jesus (the Christ of faith) is the Jesus whose reception by his first followers is definitively articulated in the fourfold Gospel narrative (p. 105). In particular I liked this quote from the conclusion: "Even from a historical point of view, however, it is not at all easy to detach Jesus from his first followers. Their reception of him is also his impact on them. The concrete details of the historical Jesus belong within an account of the 'historical, biblical Christ' and should not be allowed to take on an independent life of their own. The distinction is inevitable, but it exists only in order to be transcended" (p.114).

The Historical Jesus and New Testament Theology

Does the historical Jesus belong to Christian Origins or New Testament Theology? Bultmann made the historical Jesus the presupposition for New Testament Theology whereas others such as Joachim Jeremias and N.T. Wright have made him the starting point for it. More recently, Bob Gundry has argued that the traditional Jesuses of the Gospels are more important than a reconstructed historical Jesus. Why does New Testament Theology even need a historical Jesus when it has the portraits of Jesus in the canonical Gospels?

First, we start with the recognition that the Gospels are theological biographies and contain historical memories and a theological interpretation of those memories for communities in the Greco-Roman world. While their narratives as a whole contain theological texturing, it is their redaction of historical materials that often tells us of their theological purposes. Thus, in order to see the theology we often have to look for the history. Second, the Gospels themselves are part of the process of the reception of the historical Jesus and the Easter event in Christian communities. Third, the Gospels point in a pre-Easter direction and provide us with information about the historical sequence of events that constituted Jesus' ministry and the circumstances leading to his death. Even the Fourth Gospel with more of the vox than verba of Jesus still retains a degree of historical authenticity that is said to be validated by the testimony of the Beloved Disciple. Fourth, as long as we believe that theological utility is not tied to historical authenticity, then we have no fear of the historical Jesus. Alternatively, the historical Jesus is theologically significant in terms of showing that Christians cannot be docetists and rooting God's revelation of himself in his Son in the theatre of human history.

In other words, the historical Jesus is a crucial component of the canonical Jesus because (1) the canonical Gospels include the impact of the historical Jesus, and (2) the historical Jesus is only available through the testimony and confession of the early church's faith.

Koester on the Historical Jesus

I am very happy to quote Koester on the current state of the study of the Historical Jesus from the preface of his book From Jesus to the Gospels:

Isolating particular types of traditions as belonging to Jesus of Nazareth--no matter how critical or how conservative this approach is--has proven to be a dead-end road . . . The question of the historical Jesus of Nazareth . . . should be laid to rest for the time being.

But I have no idea what he means by this very amorphous statement: 

The historian can be liberated from such presuppositions and prejudices only by the establishment of a historical trajectory. In such a trajectory it is necessary to consider the totality of the historical, religious, theological political, and social components of the entire history that reaches from the prophetic tradition of Israel (rarely considered in modern studies of the historical Jesus!) and the Roman imperial eschatology to the reception of the tradition about Jesus in the surviving Gospel materials.

The IBR Jesus group has nearly concluded it's ten years of study on aspects of the historical Jesus' life. The results should be published in 2009 and is edited by Bob Webb. The contributions include:

Baptism by John (Robert Webb)

Gathering of the Twelve (Scot McKnight)

Exorcisms and the Kingdom (Craig Evans)

Sabbath Controversies (Donald Hagner)

Table Fellowship with Sinners (Craig Blomberg)

Confession by Peter (Michael Wilkins)

Triumphal Entry (Brent Kinman)

Temple Incident (Klyne Snodgrass)

Last Supper (Howard Marshall)

Jewish Examination (Darrell Bock)

Roman Examination and Crucifixion (Robert Webb)

Empty Tomb and Appearances (Grant Osborne)

Jesus "Ministry"?

Should we talk of Jesus' "ministry"? Or should we talk about his vocation, his mission, his work, and his range of activities instead? The word "ministry" can obviously conjure up a very specific Christian understanding of a religious vocation which is anachronistic to import into Jesus' context. In Christian depiction Jesus is undoubtedly a servant or minister to Israel (e.g. Rom. 15.7-8), but what word should we use to describe Jesus' activities that respects the language of the Gospels to describe what Jesus was doing but at the same time fits into the religio-social sphere of Palestinian Judaism? Is a reference to Jesus' "ministry" a too Christian designation to use?

How Do We Discover The Real Jesus? Four Foundational Ideas and One More

Here is the outline of my talk on the approach to the study of Jesus historically.

1. The evidence you use will determine the Jesus you find.
2. The four Gospels tell us four unique stories about the one Jesus and they are our fullest and most reliable source of information.
3. Jesus must be understood as a first-century Palestinian Israelite whose worldview is shaped by the story of ancient Israel.
4. The person of Jesus is best discovered by careful attention to both his words and works.
5. The appropriate view of knowledge (epistemology) is a critical realism that understands we can’t access historically “what actually happened”—our knowledge of Jesus is only ever a mediated one and, try as we may, we can't get behind the sources.

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If you were speaking to High School students about the Historical Jesus what things might you have talked about when providing a foundation for such a study?

High School Winter Retreat on Jesus

This weekend, Feburary 16-19, I have the privilege of speaking at a Winter Retreat for the High School ministry at College Church in Wheaton. In my former life, unlike Mike's career as a dancer, I was a full-time youth worker for a number of years. Some have asked me how one goes from Junior High pastor to University professor, but that is a story for another time--perhaps the give away was that I was teaching my 8th grade boys small group Greek in the late 90's.

The topic for the weekend is the Historical Jesus; here is the outline of my talks:

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Session 1: Why Do We Need to Understand Jesus Historically?
Session 2: How Do We Discover the Real Jesus? (4 Foundational Ideas for Studying Jesus)
Session 3: Who is Jesus? Jesus' Message
Session 4: Who is Jesus? Jesus' Work
Session 5: What is our calling? Jesus' Ongoing Mission

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As I once wrote I am not a big fan of the whole Historical Jesus enterprise, but I am wholly committed to the idea that to properly understand Jesus' mission and message we must firmly root him in a 1st century Palestinian Israelite context. After suggesting some points on studying Jesus I will attempt to put Jesus' message and work in his context for the students. Perhaps most importantly I want to convince these students that we have to guard against ahistorical interpretations that do not adequately capture the nature of the Gospel.

Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus

Routledge is soon to publish the Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus edited by Craig A. Evans. The blurb reads:

This Encyclopedia will bring together the vast array of historical research into the reality of the man, the teachings, the acts, and the events ascribed to him that have served as the foundational story of one of the world's central religions. This kind of historiography is not biography. The historical study of the Jesus stories and the transmission of these stories through time have been of seminal importance to historians of religion. Critical historical examination has provided a way for scholars of Christianity for centuries to analyze the roots of legend and religion in a way that allows scholars an escape from the confines of dogma, belief, and theological interpretation. In recent years, historical Jesus studies have opened up important discussions concerning anti-Semitism and early Christianity and the political and ideological filtering of the Jesus story of early Christianity through the Roman empire and beyond. Entries will cover the classical studies that initiated the new historiography, the theoretical discussions about authenticating the historical record, the examination of sources that have led to the western understanding of Jesus' teachings and disseminated myth of the events concerning Jesus' birth and death. Subject areas include:
- The history of the historical study of the New Testament: major contributors and their works
- Theoretical issues and concepts
- Methodologies and criteria
- Historical genres and rhetorical styles in the story of Jesus
- Historical and rhetorical context of martyrdom and messianism
- Historical teachings of Jesus- Teachings within historical context of ethics
- Titles of Jesus
- Historical events in the life of Jesus
- Historical figures in the life of Jesus
- Historical use of Biblical figures referenced in the Gospels
- Places and regions
- Institutions
- The history of the New Testament within the culture, politics, and law of the Roman Empire