James Crossley and the Criteria of Authenticity

Last updated on: August 23, 2014 at 2:03 am by Michael F. Bird

James Crossley and the Criteria of Authenticity 2014-08-18T07:22:16-04:00 Michael F. Bird

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Over at Harnessing Chaos, James Crossley comments on the value of the “criteria of authenticity” used in historical Jesus research.

After assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various “criteria,” Crossley concludes:

So what can we say in (what is hopefully) a post-criteria world? To some degree, we are simply left with an old fashioned view of historical interpretation: interpretation of the material (and, as Rafael Rodriguez has stressed, we are doing nothing but relentlessly interpreting even when using the criteria), guesswork about contexts and the combining of arguments to make an argument of collective weight. But an argument for what? Certainly not proof of what Jesus said or did. Jesus may or may not have said word-for-word what some of the Gospel passages claim but we have no idea if this is in fact the case. All we can do is make a general case for the kinds of themes present in the early Palestinian tradition. I think this is actually a good thing. It gets us away from the obsession with, and impossibility of, trying to extract Jesus the Great Man from the swirling mix of traditions. It also allows a range of material (which might simultaneously be contradictory) which may, for all we know, have come from Jesus, may have come from his earliest interpreters, may have come from fictional haggadic traditions, and may have been associated with people other than Jesus. We might then be able to make some general cases for the ways in which people (not just this elusive and supposedly overwhelmingly influential Great Man) engaged with the social changes in 20s and 30s Palestine.

I confess that I’ve gradually lost my confidence in the criteria in being able to prove or disprove anything in the Jesus tradition. The claim that the criteria can provide an objective or empirical history seems particularly naive now. I’ve used the criteria in my past research, with due caveats and cautions, simply because they were part of the toolkit that I inherited as an emerging historical Jesus scholar. But I’ve come to the view that, at the end of the day, the best we can probably do is weave a story about Jesus from the sources that has the most explanatory power and accounts for most of the evidence … with our without any criteria for doing so.

That said, I’m not a 100% sold on abandoning the criteria in toto, since I think that they can have tertiary or ancillary value, and sometimes make a lot of sense (there might be a forthcoming book on this topic, wait and see!). Also, in contrast to Crossley, I’m not prepared to say that all we can do is go back to primitive traditions since those traditions presumably have a referent and source in Jesus at least some of the time. But how do you know and can you know? Social memory theory provides at least a hermeneutical framework for tackling some of these issues, but it still lacks the nitty gritty tools for evaluating perciopae and sayings as authentic or inauthentic, which is often what historians want to know. That is the new epistemological crisis in historical Jesus research in a post-criteria world! So what do you do now? Abandon the “quest” (like Scot McKnight) or did I just hear someone say “Fourth Quest for the Historical Jesus”?

Uncategorized

Previous Post

August 22, 2014

Gospel of John for Logos Mobile Education

Next Post

August 23, 2014 The Story of Israel is "the story of the world's redemption"

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Bible Lands Blogosphere Book Review Calvinism Colleges & Universities Ecclesiology Emerging Adulthood Evangelicalism Foreign Affairs Gospel of John Greco-Roman World Humor Just War N. T. Wright Old Testament Resurrection Terrorism Theological Education Travel Uncategorized Writing

Select a Month September 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 January 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

I saw my master taken up to heaven in a whirlwind and received a double portion of his spirit. Who am I?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Elijah Samuel Elisha Joshua

Books by This Author Books by Mike Bird

See All Titles »