Steven Carr

MCKNIGHT
I can count on one hand the number of historical Jesus scholars who hold orthodox beliefs.

CARR
While people like NT Wright believe there really must have been a coin in the mouth of a fish if an Old Book says Jesus told Peter how to get free money by looking in the mouth of a fish.

ecco

From The Jesus We'll Never Know

Damn, I always thought god created man in his own image. It never occurred to me that men created gods in their own images. Oh well, live and learn.

andrewcriddle

I've read the Scott McKnight article. (Thanks Toto for the link.)

IIUC McKnight does not share the radical scepticism about the historical Jesus held by many on this forum. He seems convinced that a substantial number of facts about Jesus can be established by historical Jesus studies.

His problem seems to be that historical Jesus studies cannot answer the questions that matter to him as a follower of Jesus. eg it is important to McKnight to determine how far Jesus anticipated/guessed/predicted/foresaw that his ministry would end in his violent death. However the Gospel texts that are prima-facie relevant are so likely to have been rewritten in the light of early Christian understanding of Jesus' death that it is impossible for historical Jesus studies to isolate a core going back to Jesus.

IE, if one sees historical Jesus studies as a means of better understanding of Jesus in order to follow him more closely then this hope will be disappointed. Historical Jesus studies can produce results, but not religiously helpful results.

Andrew Criddle

Steven Carr

What methodology does he think can do that,according to the article?

ANDREW
However the Gospel texts that are prima-facie relevant are so likely to have been rewritten in the light of early Christian understanding of Jesus' death that it is impossible for historical Jesus studies to isolate a core going back to Jesus.

CARR
Really?

I thought the Gospellers left in all sorts of embarrassing things, because they somehow forgot to rewrite history to make it look better than it actually was.

Is it a case of historical Jesus scholars admitting there are bits that no amount of spin can disguise the theological bias of the writers, while thinking they have a better case of claiming that other 'embarrassing' parts weren't subject to decades of spin before being written down?

Toto

Check the first chapter of Jesus and His Death: Historiography, the Historical Jesus, and Atonement Theory (or via: amazon.co.uk) (also on google books) for details on McKnight's views on historiography.

Steven Carr

Nobody could write such a chapter if he actually had evidence for his beliefs.

dog-on

"How did Jesus understand his own death?"

What a fucking hack...

Solo

icardfacepalm:

show_no_mercy

Yeah. Right off the bat, he's not doing history since this is a theological question.

OAO

I'm taking a graduate seminar on the historical Jesus I can say the following:

*The Jesus Seminar is outside the mainstream, including skeptical mainstream scholars.
*There is a lot of disagreement, not only only which sayings are plausibly authentic but on wider methodological issues (i.e. how relevant is archaeology? environment? what is the nature of first-century Judaism?)
*The view with the most adherents is that Jesus was an eschatological prophet, drawing from millenarianism in first-century Palestine and the sayings.

The criterion of dissimilarity might be useful for historical purposes, but it essentially begs-the-question against Christianity.