Historical Jesus Criteria Podcasts

I commented here the other day (Snow and Podcasts) on the latest episodes of the NT Pod, which is finally back after a hiatus of several months.

I have released a couple more episodes since then (NT Pod 69 and NT Pod 70), also both on the discussion about historical Jesus criteria.

Now seems like a good time to gather the links together on all of these:


NT Pod 59: Historical Jesus Criteria
NT Pod 60: The Criterion of Embarrassment
NT Pod 61: The Criterion of Multiple Attestation
NT Pod 69: The Criterion of Discontinuity
NT Pod 70: Views Common to Friend and Foe

Or, if it is easier, I have them together under one label: Historical Jesus Criteria.

I'm a bit bored with the discussion about criteria now, so I'll leave it for a while, perhaps until I teach Historical Jesus again next year.  Episode 71 will be about something different.  I have a couple of ideas and I'll make my mind up over the next day or so.

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Criticizing the Criterion of Embarrassment in Historical Jesus studies

Both Loren Rosson and Doug Chaplin comment on my recent NT Pod 60:  The Criterion of Embarrassment and they make some excellent points.  There are also some very helpful remarks from Michael Barber on the post itself.  Here are some further thoughts, partly by way of clarification and summary, on the criterion:

(1) The major difficulty is the term itself, "embarrassment".  I simply do not believe that the evangelists were "embarrassed" about anything that appeared in their Gospels, unless of course one is thinking of the skandalon of the cross that all the early Christians were dealing with in different ways.  The evangelists were not sitting around, dictating the story of John's Baptism, fidgeting uneasily, with red faces.  When I read Mark's account, it's quite the contrary -- a bold proclamation of a theophany that establishes Jesus' identity clearly for everyone listening.

E. P. Sanders prefers the term "against the grain" and this is far more useful than "embarrassment", which sounds so horribly like attempts at pop-psychology of the evangelists. Looking for features in an account that go "against the grain" is what historians do all the time.

(2) The use of this criterion, like the other criteria, is often used too mechanistically. It is invoked, and the invocation is often regarded as sufficient to establish the historicity of the event or saying in question.  As I've been arguing in the recent podcasts, the value of the criteria is in teaching students about how the historian works, especially students who bring with them some confessional agendas that might interfere with the task.

As soon as the criteria become a kind of toolbox for the historical Jesus scholar, they become problematic.  It should give us pause when we remember that other ancient historians do not devote pages of their studies to discussing the special "criteria" for their topics.  Discussion of historical criteria is useful for training students.  Their use in scholarly invocation is the problem.

(3) Historical Jesus scholars seldom give any thought to how the criteria work in concert with one another.  As I have mentioned before, I cannot get my head around the apparent absurdity that the very traditions that are supposed to be "embarrassing" are the very same traditions that are supposed to be "multiply attested".  At the very least, some thought should be given to the contrast between the criteria.  One should inform and correct the other.

The point can be illustrated from the phenomenon of singly attested traditions, like the Blind Man of Bethsaida (Mark 8.22-26).  Scholars commonly provide good reasons for Matthew's and Luke's omission of the story from Mark -- the use of spit, the non-immediate healing.  The fact of the omission illustrates that the evangelists were not reticent about omission when they wished.  If a later evangelist was really "embarrassed" by material he found in an earlier account, he simply omitted it.  By analogy, one can imagine the same thing happening at different stages in the tradition, with different tradents.

At the very least, I would like to underline the problems with the terminology.  If we can talk instead about material that is "too much with the grain" and "against the grain", I suspect that we will improve our historical sensitivity.

NT Pod: Historical Jesus Criteria

I have recently been focusing on criteria in the Historical Jesus quest in my regular podcast, the NT Pod.  I'm in the middle of a course on the Historical Jesus at Duke at the moment, so the topic has been very much on my mind.  So far, I have three episodes on this theme, NT Pod 59: Historical Jesus Criteria, NT Pod 60: The Criterion of Embarrassment and NT Pod 61: The Criterion of Multiple Attestation.   There should be more to come in this series soon.

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NT Pod 59: Historical Jesus Criteria

The latest episode of the NT Pod begins a series on the search for criteria in historical Jesus research. In NT Pod 59, I introduce the idea of the historical Jesus criteria and offer some first reflections on what it is that scholars are attempting to do.

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Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity

Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity is edited by Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne and it will be out this summer, published by T & T Clark.   I have contributed an article the volume entitled "Criticizing the Criterion of Multiple Attestation: The Historical Jesus and the Question of Sources".  The book also features essays by Morna Hooker, Dale Allison, Scot McKnight, Loren Stuckenbruck, Jens Schroeter, Dagmar Winter, Rafael Rodriguez and the editors.

Here's how T & T Clark are blurbing the book:
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Criteria of authenticity, whose roots go back to before the pioneering work of Albert Schweitzer, have become a unifying feature of the so-called Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, finding a prominent and common place in the research of otherwise differing scholars. More recently, however, scholars from different methodological frameworks have expressed discontent with this approach to the historical Jesus. In the past five years, these expressions of discontent have reached a fever pitch.

The internationally renowned authors of this book examine the nature of this new debate and present the findings in a cohesive way aimed directly at making the coalface of Historical Jesus research accessible to undergraduates and seminary students. The book’s larger ramifications as a thorough end to the Third Quest will provide a pressure valve for thousands of scholars who view historical Jesus studies as outmoded and misguided. This book has the potential to guide Jesus studies beyond the Third Quest and demand to be consulted by any scholar who discards, adopts, or adapts historical criteria.
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Sounds interesting, doesn't it? There is a conference associated with the book and I'll be blogging about that tomorrow.

Where single attestation is preferable to multiple attestation

Further to my thoughts about the contradiction between "multiple attestation" and "embarrassment" in Historical Jesus Research, I'd like to throw out a related thought that I think compromises the value of the "multiple attestation" criterion.  Sometimes single attestation might in fact be a far better indicator of historicity than multiple attestation.

Mark is often rightly seen as more primitive in its representation of Jesus in comparison with Matthew, Luke and John.  There are moments where Mark provides a rough witness to an earlier stage of the tradition, where single attestation is a better indication of historicity than multiple attestation would be.  Where Jesus heals the Deaf Mute with physical agents (Mark 7.31-37) and where he heals the Blind Man of Bethsaida with some apparent limit to his abilities (Mark 8.22-26), these pericopae are not included by Matthew and Luke, no doubt because of the uncongenial picture of Jesus they imply.  Here, single attestation is a better indicator of primitivity than multiple attestation would be.  To put it another way, is the Multiplication of the Loaves, attested six times in the Gospel tradition, the more likely to be historical than Jesus spitting in the mouth of the deaf mute, which is attested only once?

I am aware, of course, that multiple attestation, as it is usually configured, refers to multiple independent attestation, and so one is searching for material that occurs in allegedly independent sources like Mark, Q, Thomas and John.  Notwithstanding my scepticism about the existence of Q and the independence of Thomas, the point still stands by analogy between the written Gospels and attestation in traditions, that uncongenial material will often have dropped out, so that some of the more unusual, primitive features will be at best singly attested where they are attested at all.  In this context, multiple attestation is actually a weaker indication of historicity than is single attestation.

On the contradiction between "multiple attestation" and "embarrassment" in Historical Jesus Research

I am writing a piece at the moment on the criterion of multiple attestation in Historical Jesus research and I came across this nice piece of wisdom in a quotation in an article by John Lyons:

"I can’t help thinking that one cancels out the other. If everyone, Q, an independent Thomas, Mark, Matthew, Luke all have this same material, who is embarrassed about it? The multiple attestation is itself an argument against embarrassment" (W. J. Lyons, “A Prophet Is Rejected in His Home Town (Mark 6.4 and Parallels): A Study in the Methodological (In)Consistency of the Jesus Seminar”, JSHJ 6 (2008): 59-84 (79).

It turns out that it's something I once said here on the NT Blog while I was reflecting on an SBL session that used the criteria of multiple attestation and embarrassment side by side. I am grateful to John for drawing attention to the passing comment (and, incidentally, for his article, which is an excellent discussion of the problems with the way that the Jesus seminar uses Historical Jesus criteria) because I think there may be something in it.

What other area of the humanities would manage to come up with something so counter-intuitive as criteria that apparently contradict one another?  When we are embarrassed about something, do we keep repeating the information?  If members of the early church were seriously embarrassed about John's baptism of Jesus, for example, why did they keep repeating it, even celebrating it?  Would multiple witnesses really begin their accounts of the "good news" by trumpeting something they all found embarrassing?

If a tradition is multiply attested, it is a tradition that on some level the evangelists were proud to repeat.  When they were embarrassed about things, they could easily omit them.

The Golden Rule and the problem of Historical Jesus criteria

In an enjoyable post on The Busybody, Loren Rosson asks Did Jesus teach the Golden Rule? with reference to the fourth volume of John Meier's Historical Jesus project.  I haven't read the new Meier yet, but I would like to comment on something that emerges from Loren's post.  His answer is that Jesus did not teach the Golden Rule -- "Meier shows that the Golden Rule doesn't meet any of the criteria of authenticity, least of all discontinuity"; it is only singularly attested and it is "thoroughly inconsistent with Jesus' demands stated elsewhere".

Are these criteria adequate to the task of establishing that Jesus did not teach the Golden Rule? I don't think so. "Discontinuity", more commonly "dissimilarity" is a notoriously problematic criterion. There must have been substantial continuity between Jesus and his Jewish context, and between Jesus and the first Christians. Käsemann's use of the criterion of dissimilarity only served to create a Lutheran Jesus. Single attestation (Matthew or Q) is, of course, problematic if one is a fan of the criterion of multiple attestation, but those of us who are sceptical about the existence of Q, the independence of Thomas or the independence of John have precious few independent sources anyway. And the alleged inconsistency of this saying with Jesus' other ethical teaching presupposes a use of the criterion of coherence that is at variance with the likelihood that Jesus was inconsistent, like other charismatic leaders of new religious movements (Jack T. Sanders).

But even if these criteria were strong, it is in the nature of criteria in historical research that they cannot demonstrate what Jesus did not say. The point of the criteria, as I see it, should be to help us to work out where the strongest evidence can be found, to adjudicate on what material is the securest in our pool. In other words, we might decide to avoid the use of a particular saying in our reconstruction of the Historical Jesus because that saying is not part of what we think we know for sure.  But that is different from saying that Jesus did not say the thing in question.

Jesus Creed Historical Jesus Series: Jesus Seminar

Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed series on Historical Jesus studies continues with the Jesus Seminar (see my previous comments in Jesus Creed Historical Jesus Series: Bultmann). Under his summary of the criteria used by the Jesus Seminar, Scot writes:

2. If a saying or event is found in more than one of the Gospel sources then it is from Jesus. This like the “more than one witness” element in law. If it is found in Mark and in Q and in “M” (stuff only in Matthew) and “L” (stuff only in Luke) and in John and in Gospel of Thomas etc it is more likely to have been said or done by Jesus. The less sources, the less provable. (Jesus practiced table fellowship with sinners.)

I want to question this. My reading of the Jesus Seminar publications is that they in fact privilege only two alleged sources, Q and the Gospel of Thomas. A given feature can occur in Mark, Q, M and L and still not be red; indeed it will often not be pink. A good example of this is all apocalyptic Son of Man material, which is witnessed in all of those strands, Mark, Q, M and L, but which is never given a red/pink colouring by the Jesus Seminar. For material to get through their filter, it needs ideally to witnessed by Q1 (the earliest layer of Q) and the Gospel of Thomas. A good example is Q 6.20 // Thomas 54, "Blessed are the poor".

In practice, the criterion of multiple attestation is not especially important for the Jesus Seminar. The Parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, is red, in spite of the fact that it is only attested in one, late Gospel source (L).

Forgotten Criteria in the Jesus Quest II: View Common to Friend and Foe

I blogged last week on the first Forgotten Criterion in the Quest for the Historical Jesus, accidental information. This comes from a suggestion made almost thirty years ago by Michael Goulder. The suggestion is that we are on secure ground when someone like Paul gives away material that he is taking for granted, assuming as given between himself and his audience in an argument or discussion about something else. I don't think that enough people have reflected on just how strong the Pauline evidence here is, especially the evidence from 1 Corinthians, and I would like to return to this in a future post. As far as I am aware, no one has developed Goulder's interesting suggestion about this as a criterion in the historical Jesus quest. I suspect that part of the problem there is that Goulder's article was only a sketch, and it appeared in a book (The Myth of God Incarnate) that was notorious at the time for its theological reflections on the incarnation, in which Michael Goulder's comments on the historical Jesus were quickly forgotten. Goulder himself never developed those ideas in print, except in one place, a book review of Ben Meyer's Aims of Jesus, in which he commented on the similarity between Meyer's "indices" and his criteria.

In this post, I would like to bring forward another forgotten criterion in the search for the historical Jesus, the view common to friend and foe. I have looked through several discussions of criteria in historical Jesus research and have not found, yet, a single reference to this criterion, let alone any engagement with it. More is the shame, because here we are on solid ground.

E. P. Sanders and Margaret Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989):

At first it seems that all the evidence is biased towards jesus. It is, however, extremely important to note that, while we have for Jesus no equivalent to Aristophanes on Socrates, we can discern in the gospels that he offended many and that he was executed on a serious charge. That is, the gospels, though biased in his favour, give us a glimpse of the views held by those who were biased against him.

Once we can discern both favourable and unfavourable portraits of Jesus, we can ask what is common to both portraits and we may have considerable confidence that what is common is historically sound . . . (302).

. . . .The gospels are based on 'propaganda', bias (in this case, in a good cause). We would understand more about Jesus and his impact -- or lack of it -- if we knew what his enemies thought. What friend and foe agreed on is presumably reliable material. Two facets of his career and message stand out as proved on this basis.

1. Miracles. In Jesus the Magician Morton Smith pointed out that we possess the enemies' view of Jesus as a miracle-worker. He was a magician. He could, they granted, cast out demons, but he did so by invoking Beelzebul . . . . (330)

This discussion gets ignored, I would guess, for the same reason that many others of the gems in Studying the Synoptic Gospels get missed (e.g. the best discussion of form-criticism available anywhere, brilliant discussion of the Synoptic Problem). For some reason that I have never been able to fathom, scholars do not seem to read this book. Sanders's second example of this criterion (or "test", as he calls it) is the king / kingdom material, and I am less sure of the historicity of the kingship material in Mark's Passion Narrative than Sanders is, and I don't want to take away from the discussion of a strong criterion by bringing in a less certain example. But I would want to add other elements in the tradition that this criterion helps us with, on which more anon.

Update (Sunday, 17.55): Gary Greenberg emails: "I think this criterion needs stronger controls. The example cited doesn't really show that the foes had the view attributed to them. It is a polemic written long after the event by someone who was not a witness and it may be an invention or misrepresentation of what was said. What I suggest may be more useful is where a view is attributed to a foe contemporaneous with the author, say as in the disputes mentioned in Paul's letters between Paul and the Jerusalem Church or factional disputes in the Churches founded by Paul. While not a perfect control, it seems to exert more pressure on the author to come closer to what the opponent says than if he were writing about someone who wasn't around to respond."

See also the comments. I will comment on these points when I next have a moment.

Historical Jesus Forgotten Criteria I: Accidental Information

I am doing some thinking about the notorious "criteria" for dividing authentic from inauthentic material in Historical Jesus research, brought on because I am in the middle of teaching this at the moment. Having re-read various of the scholarly discussions of criteria, I have been struck by a couple of promising and helpful criteria that are missing in recent literature. The first of these is particularly badly represented in the literature. Indeed, the only person I know who mentions it is Michael Goulder, almost thirty years ago:

Accidental Information. “Paul is trying to tell the Corinthians that Jesus rose from the dead, and he says, ‘He appeared to Cephas’: he tells us by accident that there was a man known as Cephas, and this is therefore dependable. Detection, both criminal and historical, is largely based on this criterion.” (Michael Goulder, “Jesus: The Man of Universal Destiny” in John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM, 1977): 48-63, 50).

I need to think about this a little more, but I reckon that this is actually a criterion people are often working with without realizing it. The problem with Goulder's discussion is that it is only a sketch, and he gives few examples of this kind of material, where early Christian writers reveal information en passant, but he also points to "the Twelve" in 1 Cor. 15.5 as another example (Goulder, "Jesus": 54). One might add other information that Paul provides in passing, like the fact that Jesus had brothers who were married (where the point is that people have a right to take a believing wife on mission, 1 Cor. 9.5), or likewise that Cephas was married (also 1 Cor. 9.5). And I reckon the criterion could be applied to some of the Gospel material too, e.g. that Jesus had a house in Capernaum (Mark 2.15)?

Update (14 January, 09.48): thanks for all the comments on the post, several of which show that some more clarity is required in defining this criterion. Goulder's point, as I see it, is that a given author will give away information that is shared by him/herself and his/her audience in the course of constructing an argument about something else. So when Paul says "Have I not got the right to take a believer as wife . . . as do the brothers of the Lord" (1 Cor. 9.5), the information here provided en passant is "Jesus had brothers" and, what's more, "Jesus' brothers were married". His point is not to convey this information; he is not narrating this information, or making it available afresh to readers who previously knew nothing of it. Rather, it is shared information that Paul can take for granted, but which gets conveyed (to us as historians) while he is relating other information as part of an argument. To try to make the point more clearly still, Paul's point in 1 Cor. 9.5 only makes sense if it was reasonably widely known that Jesus had brothers who went on mission. The argument takes for granted that there were such people, and the assumption is necessary for the argument to work. It is not the point of the argument.