Title: Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity
Editors: Chris Keith (PhD, Edinburgh) Anthony Le Donne (PhD, Durham) Publisher: T & T Clark (London) / Continuum (NY) Why this book is timely: In the past five to ten years, historical Jesus research has taken a turn away from the traditional “authenticity criteria”. In previous decades, criteria such as Dissimilarity, Embarrassment, Multiple Attestation, Semitic Influence, Coherence, Multiple Forms, et cetera enjoyed a prominent place in Jesus studies. But what were once staples of the so called “Quest for the Historical Jesus” have fallen toward obscurity. Not only have several key studies in the field openly abandoned their use, those who include these criteria now do so with heavy qualification. The authors of this book target several criteria and show them to be in utter disrepair. What makes this book most timely is that it undermines the foundation upon which much of historical Jesus study stands. The guiding thesis of this book is that the Quest for an “authentic” Jesus - one who is isolated and disconnected from the narrative representations of him - was launched with the presuppositions of historical positivism and the notion that an uninterpreted past can be recovered. Very few critical historians now think that facts from the past can be distilled from the packaging of human perception, bias, memory, and identity-invested reflection. Many of the authors of this book argue that historical Jesus study will continue to be important for future generations. As such, it is high time that historians part ways with the pitfalls of historical positivism. All of the authors of this book will take issue with these assumptions and argue either (a) that one or more of these criteria are broken, or (b) that the assumptions that led to the prominence of these criteria must be abandoned. Pre-order Today |