CX

It's put out by Sheffield Academic Press. I just received the June 2003 volume (1.2). It appears to have very high production values though as yet I'm unsure of the quality of the scholarship and I wondered if anyone else was familiar with it. The subscription price is pretty weighty.

Anyway if anyone else has it or has access to it. I thought it might be interesting to review Mark Allan Powell's "Authorial Intent and Historical Reporting: Putting Spong's Literalization Thesis to the Test". (pp. 225-249)

Peter Kirby

Yes, I have it. I've finished reading only the first (1.1) issue though!

I got a free book with subscription, Stanley Porter's The Criteria of Authenticity in Historical Jesus Research: Previous Discussions and New Proposals. Porter had a good discussion of the traditional criteria, but his advancement of three new criteria was uninspiring. Porter suggests that we can vouch for authenticity when the saying was spoken in Greek in the gospel context, and that we can be sure of the wording when we've established the wording with text criticism. Say what? Something might be salvaged from Porter's sally into discourse analysis, but it is jarring that the paradigmatic text chosen for authentication is Mark 13. But, on reflection, all that this third item does in the hands of Porter is to identify the redactional features of the individual evangelists, which allows us to identify made-up stuff and traditional stuff but not to sort out the traditional stuff into church stuff and Jesus stuff. As much as I hate to be blasé about attempting objective methods of uncovering history (which would be helpful for more than this Jesus thing!), Porter's book is not going to make someone budge from the position that the criteria in Jesus research aren't so hot. On the other hand, it is worthwhile for the criticism of the traditional criteria and bibliography. I think that Theissen's book on the question of criteria will be much better, but that will have to be seen. Probably the approach of "build up a database of authentic bits by applying hard-and-fast rules and then figure out what kind of person you are dealing with" has to be modified in the direction of an approach that recognizes the role of the overall explanation from the beginning of the investigation. Even Meier recognizes this with his "criterion of rejection and execution," in which he chastizes secular professors for proffering a feckless Jesus, who wouldn't be worth the wood he was nailed to. But but... Dr. Meier, if we apply your four other major criteria faithfully and reach the conclusion of a tweedy poetaster... and then we run up against this criterion of the execution that says all we've done is wrong... then what the hell are we supposed to do?

best,
Peter Kirby

Doctor X

Does it have a centerfold?

--J.D.

Toto

Ha. In this thread I said

Rick Sumner

I'm still waiting on 1.2 Any thoughts on the Twelftree essay from 1.1? I think he's right in that there is no hope of understanding Jesus outside of the miracle tradition, but I don't know that I'd make it central, which he seems inclined to do.

Regards,
Rick