Ted Hoffman

Howdy folks. Below, I suggest criteria for evaluating the early Christian writings with an objective of determining whether or not the Jesus/Christ contained in them is the Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospels, and whether the Christianity presented in the respective texts entail a Historical Jesus. I also provide explanations/ justifications for the weights I have assigned to the criteria.

Your critical comments will be appreciated.

Summary and Weighting of the Criteria

Name of Criterion______________________Weight

1. Exclusion of Earthly Details Criterion__________50%
2. Nature of Savior Criterion___________________10%
3. Emergence of Savior Criterion________________5%
4. Knowledge Source Criterion__________________5%
5. Rejection of Godmen Criterion________________5%
6. Central Deity criterion______________________5%
7. Event Timing Criterion______________________5%
8. Saving Agency Criterion_____________________5%

Total_________________________________100%

Descriptions Of the Criteria

Criterion 1. Exclusion of Earthly Details Criterion.

Documents that satisfy this criterion are those that lack mention of Nazareth, Pilate, Mary, Pilate, Joseph or of any salvific death of the savior on earth. That is, no indication of an earthly career or presence of Jesus or the son. Documents that mention these earthly details with the exception of Marcion (see below) ipso facto contain a historical Jesus and require no further evaluation.

Applies to: Minucius Felix, 1 Clement, Shepherd of Hermas, Odes of Solomon, Epistle to Diognetus , Galatians, Ephesians, Phillipians, Corinthians, Hebrews, Epistle of Barnabas, Theophilus (To Autolycus), Athenagoras, Tatian (Address to The Greeks) and Didache.
(Polycarp, Papias, Ignatius, Irenaeus, The New Testament Gospels, Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Tatian's Diatessaron are knocked off at this point)

Criterion 2. Nature of Savior Criterion [Ontologic criterion].

Documents that satisfy this criterion have Jesus as a pre-existent being who came/comes down (as we see in Philippians 2:6-11) and undergoes suffering/crucifixion at the hands of demons, not Pilate. The crucifixion/ransom is cast in a supernatural setting. (Because of this, the resurrection or incarnation can only be perceived by those that are spiritually enlightened from scriptures or through revelation). Texts meeting this criterion may also have the savior's presence as illusory as per those who believed in a Docetic Jesus.
In some of the texts that fall under this criterion, like Marcion?s gospels, Christ is portrayed as a revealer figure, not as a savior figure.
Applies to: Marcion's Gospels, Phillipians 2:6-11, 1 Timothy 3:16, The Ascension of Isaiah 9:13-17, 1 Corinthians 2:6-8, Collosians 2:15, Tatian (Apology to the Greeks), Athenagoras.

Criterion 3. Emergence of Savior Criterion.

Texts that meet this criterion talk about a son or the word being revealed or shown (as opposed to having come to earth) this means a spiritual revelation. The verbs used vary between deiknumi (to show, present, to make known or to announce) and phaneroo which means to bring to light, become visible or to make known. Or the birth / appearance is placed in a mythical realm. In Romans 1:3, for example, the Greek word ginomai, which means to come into existence, is used, instead of genomenon, which means to be born.
The logos is born in the hearts or minds of believers, not on earth. That is, there is no mention of an incarnational birth on earth.
Applies to: Galatians 1:12, Epistle to Diognetus, Romans 1:3, Theophilus, Athenagoras

Criterion 4. Knowledge Source Criterion.
Texts that meet this criterion have it that knowledge from the son and about the son, like his salvific suffering, is obtained from Old Testament scripture, through God?s son or through revelation by God; not from what the savior taught during his ministry on earth, not from eyewitnesses and not from historical sources. This knowledge may lead to salvation.

Applies to: Romans 16:25-26, Colossians 1:26, 2:2, Ephesians 3:5, 2 Corinthians 1:22, 5:5, Gal 1:16, Ephesians 3:5,Hebrews 9:26, 1 Clement, Epistle of Barnabas, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Tatian (Apology to the Greeks), Didache, Marcion, Epistle to Diognetus.

Criterion 5. Rejection of Godmen Criterion.

Documents that meet this criterion are documents which have in them Christians condemning or denigrating the worship of man in general, whether as a savior or otherwise, on account of his mortality and his being made of impure matter. This may also entail rejection of the concept of the divine actually being part of the physical world as per Docetism. It can also entail denigrating the image of a crucified man whilst implying that such a man is not worthy of worship. Ebionites for example, rejected a divine Jesus but emphasized the humanity of Jesus as the son of Mary and Joseph [14].
Applies to: Minucius Felix(through Octavius), Theophilus, Marcion, Theophilus, Athenagoras.

Criterion 6. Central Deity criterion.

Documents that meet this criterion refer to the logos (the word) or the son or, in some cases, of (Jesus) Christ as the intermediary savior agent or redeemer who confers revelatory powers and wisdom. Not of Jesus of Nazareth. They believe in a son, not in someone who was the son. Or the son is spoken of as emanating from God as an agent of creation of the universe.
Or they focus on God as the primary agent of salvation. All thoughts, emotions, praise and devotion are directed toward God and none, or an insignificant proportion of the same, toward the son.

Applies to: Odes of Solomon, 1 Corinthians 8:6 and Hebrews 1:2-3, Theophilus, Athenagoras, 1 Clement 29:1, 38:4, 35:5, Shepherd of Hermas, Epistle to Diognetus, Didache, Tatian (Address to The Greeks)


Criterion 7. Event Timing Criterion.

Texts meet this criterion criterion if the salvific act (which could be the revelation of knowledge about God or crucifixion / ransom) that takes place is alluded to as taking place in the present or in the present continuous tense, and not as having taken place in the past.
Applies to: Hebrews 10:37, 9:26, 2 Cor 5:5 Epistle to Diognetus, Theophilus, Tatian

Criterion 8. Saving Agency Criterion.
Saving agency excludes a redeemer figure and instead is either wisdom, grace and so on. Not (through) the redemption or atonement via the death of Jesus of Nazareth.
Applies to: Odes of Solomon, Tatian (Apology to the Greeks), Athenagoras

Some Working Assumptions

Note that these criteria are meant to cumulatively point us to the absence of a historical Jesus in the version of Christianity under examination. They do not operate in isolation but mesh together, link by link to form a framework that can be regarded as a complete presentation of a religion, or a picture that, even though incomplete, can indicate the balance of probability regarding whether or not there was a historical Jesus in those flavors of Christianity. The criteria also do not have equal weight. For example, texts satisfying The Omission of Earthly Details Criterion are 50% likely to be presenting Christianity without a historical Jesus.

It is important to understand that this weight is assigned solely on the basis that Christianity is foundationally constructed to have Jesus of Nazareth as the central savior figure without whose death salvation cannot be attained. Jesus declares in John 14:6: “Nobody comes to the father except through me�. Because of the primary importance of the death of Jesus of Nazareth for Christianity, his being the “man� whose “ministry� inspired the religion, the significance of his resurrection and the centrality of Jesus as a redeemer, mention of his earthly life is regarded as a sine qua non of a presentation on Christianity. This assumption is maintained irrespective of whether the presentation is made to believers or to non-believers. In the broadest strokes, we can expect mention of:

1. The earthly death, suffering and or resurrection of Jesus.
2. His ministry on earth, his disciples, parents and Pontius Pilate.
3. Mention of Nazareth, Jerusalem, Bethlehem or other locations in the Gospels.

Faced with the exclusion of all these earthly elements in an entire presentation of Christianity, combined with the knowledge that Christianity emerged from a heterogeneous background fecundated with the confluence of Hellenistic Greco-Roman thought and Jewish philosophy, we can straightaway assign a 50% chance that the Christianity being presented could be without a historical Jesus.
This doesn’t mean they are 50% likely to be having a mythical Jesus: it can simply mean they may be logos-centric, theocentric and so on depending on the rest of content of the presentation under examination. Omission of the mention of an earthly life of Jesus places us at the borderline between the historical camp and non-historical Jesus camp. It places us on ground zero: the junction from which we could either go the historical Jesus route or the non historical Jesus route.
This is regarded as a reasonable assumption if the reader accepts the proposition that there were several competing Christian cults before orthodox Christianity was made a state religion at Constantine’s behest and all “heresies� stamped out. History has it that among some Gnostic Christian sects, there was belief in a docetic Jesus whose presence on earth was merely an illusion. Christians like Minucius Felix derided the idea that a man could, through his death, confer eternal salvation to fellow men . Other Christianities like the one embraced by Athenagoras held that it was wrong to imagine God could become physical and mix with what was corruptible. This background, which allows the possibility of Christian beliefs devoid of a historical Jesus, combined with the assumption that Jesus’ salvific death and ministry on earth were of primary importance to early Christians, should make the weight assigned to the omission reasonable.


Guidelines on Using the Criteria

While applying these criteria, one should visualize a scale with one end having a historical Jesus and the other end having a non-historical Jesus. Criteria 1 makes these two extreme ends balance by assigning them equal weight. Then the rest of the criteria will determine which side is more probable. Of course
The criteria provided must be balanced with other parts of a text at hand to arrive at a conclusion regarding whether or not the version of Christianity being presented lacks a historical Jesus or otherwise.
Detailed explanations that justify these weightages will be provided later but just to provide some of it, consider Criterion 5: Rejection of Godmen criterion. This criterion is mutually exclusive with the idea that Jesus died on earth to confer salvation to believers. It reduces the chances of the Christianity being presented as having a historical Jesus at its core by 5%. Strictly speaking, this criterion, by itself, is a negative criterion because it doesn?t positively tell us what the writer believes. It reduces the possibility that the Christianity presented entails a historical Jesus as a savior figure. But it leaves open the possibility that the Jesus presented, if any, was accepted as historical but was not a savior ;perhaps just the founder, or the Jesus may be regarded as having been chosen by God as the political messiah on account of his good deeds on Earth (see Ebionites in the notes).

It is however assigned a 5% weight of the likelihood that the Christianity presented lacks a historical Jesus because there are very few versions of pre-third century Christianity that are aware of a historical Jesus and at the same time do not regard him as a savior. In other words, the rejection of a resurrected Jesus by a Christian before the third century is treated as likely to be accompanying a rejection of a historical Jesus.

Criterion 2 has a weight of 10% because it is about the central fabric that the rest of the beliefs are centered about; that is, teacher, founder, redeemer, saviour and so on and is, per orthodox Christianity, the link to God (John 14:6).
Criterions 3 and 4 are also assigned the same weight on the basis of their significance. The rest of the criterions are assigned weights of 5% because they can be engulfed in by other beliefs that entail a historical Jesus and yet fail to create any significant incongruence in the minds of the believers. For example, Marcion?s saving agency may not have necessarily been the death of Jesus though he held that Jesus? presence on earth was illusory. Equally consider the Ebionites, who accepted a historical Jesus but only as an ordinary man, not as a savior, thus Ebionites would meet the rejection of Godmen criterion without much fuss. There is more on the Ebionites at the notes.

Comprehensiveness of the Texts
As an example of how to apply these criteria, The Didache, upon casual inspection, meets criterion one but it is simply a list of teachings. It doesn?t reveal in meaningful detail what the writer(s) believed regarding Jesus, or salvation or the means of salvation. Jesus is simply a means through which God makes his message known. Jesus is treated purely as a vessel, not a deity or a being. All praise and thanks are to God and not to Jesus. So Didache meets criteria 1, 4,7 and 6. It therefore has 80% probability of lacking a historical Jesus at its core. Or in other words, the picture of the religious beliefs behind the writer(s) is also 80% complete, yet it has no historical Jesus. But because it is silent on other issues, it gives us an incomplete picture and therefore doesn?t prove unequivocally that the believers lacked a historical Jesus.
In any event, we are secure in the knowledge that, from what is available, the Jesus mentioned in Didache was not a historical Jesus because he is treated simply as revelatory channel. The Way of Life is through obeying the teachings given in the text. There is no ransom God gave and there is no resurrection or salvific death that the believers can benefit from. The teachings are of God (the lord), not of Jesus. We therefore know that the Jesus in Didache was not a historical Jesus. But we do not know how the writer believed the Father made the cup known to them through the child Jesus. Because of this incomplete presentation, we can't advance far beyond 80% probability. We have eliminated a historical Jesus (whose primary purpose was to die in order to confer salvation to believers) but cannot account for what the writer believed regarding the manner in which Jesus operated and how he became a child of the father.
Any score beyond 85% is certainly Christianity without a Historical Jesus.

Historical Method and these Criteria

The application of the criteria must be done correctly. That is, if one incorrectly qualifies a text as meeting a specific criterion, they are likely to end up with absurd results. The context of each passage must be factored in and one?s approach must conform to the historical method.
Along with the criteria are some examples of writings that satisfy these criteria. These are meant to be used as a guideline. My examples go beyond the second century apologists and are only for illustrative purposes. It is important to remember that the divine entities (like Greek logos) that we find being mentioned in Hellenistic literature like Philo's heavenly man could be described in expressions that appear human-like as we see in Shepherd of Hermas which mentions the "body of Christ". These human-like expressions alone are not enough to make the beings in question historical or human. A text like Epistle of Barnabas never mentions Jesus or Nazareth but possesses unmistakable earthly references about ?the son? which are also in the gospels like in 7:3 where it is written: when crucified he had vinegar and gall given him to drink... However, the event alluded to is regarded as not historical because the entire the passage reads: One would then have to ask: How is it that Barnabas treats this information as a spiritual item that is revealed by the priests from the scriptures? Is history revealed from the scriptures or witnessed by all that are present when an actual event occurs at a specific point in time? If history is not revealed but witnessed, can the event alluded to be treated as a historical factoid yet it is not derived from a historical source?
This factoid, though possessing earthly elements cannot be regarded as speaking of a historical event because the source is not historical. It is therefore ahistorical on epistemological grounds. Doherty notes regarding Epistle of Barnabas 5:12: And even though it may happen to have what can be regarded as earthly elements, it is treated by Barnabas as an item of faith in the same fashion that Paul treats the idea that Christ resurrected.
The criteria provided here are neither rigorous nor comprehensive, but they provide a good starting point toward the development of such criteria that will help reduce bias and ad-hocness in the examination of early Christian writings in the light of whether or not they have as their nucleus, the Historical Jesus.

Limitations of These Criteria

1. Marcion poses as an unwieldy candidate for these criteria chiefly because Marcion provides earthly activities of Jesus whilst at the same time maintains that Jesus? presence on earth was an illusion. He provides a historical setting for a non-historical figure. His failure to place Jesus? activities on a different plane results in a hybrid setting that is unique. One possible solution to this conundrum is to switch the omission of earthly details criterion with the nature of savior criterion and assign the latter the weight of the former. A way of solving this conundrum without being ad-hoc is under examination.

2. At this point, the criteria have not been tested against all available sources. Third century sources like Eusebius, Origen, Tertullian and Cyprian have been purposefully excluded because by that time, almost all Christian sources are firmly entrenched in the gospel tradition. In addition, fragmented sources or texts that are inadequate for evaluation have been excluded like Quadratus from whose apology to Hadrian a sentence is cited by Eusebius, Claudius Apollinaris, Aristo of Pella's Disputation between Jason and Papiscus concerning Christ, Miltiades? Against the Greeks and Against the Jews The nine books mentioned by Eusebius attributed to Apollinaris bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia. Melito Bishop of Sardis' On Truth and Aristides work are also excluded because of being little to lend themselves to any meaningful evaluation or because of being unavailable.
Failure to examine all the texts is also allows us to test the criteria against such texts and check whether the criteria yield absurd results or otherwise.
In any event, all Christian texts will be evaluated against these criteria and a compilation of the results prepared in due course.

3. The score obtained from these criteria fail to bring out the idea that a Christian group like Ebionites accepted a HJ. But this weakness is considered mitigated by the fact that Ebionites can be regarded as Christians only in a very weak sense because of their rejection of Jesus as a messiah. Scholars have identified them as re-Judaizers and on this account, we can consider them as a sect that was an offshoot of Judaism. http://www.ebionite.org/ claims that Ebionites are not Christians. This weakness is therefore not significant.

Clivedurdle

A quick response to one point.

Is Marcion the missing link, like the archaeopteryx, between mythical and "real", - evidence of the evolutionary path? Would some cladistics help biblical criticism?

freigeister

This is just more of the scholastic end-game which hopes to keep Bible interpretation in the hands of an elite caste. The only difference between this and medieval scholasticism is that the words "religion" and "theologians" are discredited, so now this elite caste uses "science" and "scholars".

Here's Spinoza on the subject, with the relevant terminology updates in square brackets:

Peter Kirby

Hi Ted,

Thank you for this positive effort. I have a question.

What are the conditions under which we may apply these criteria to a text or set of texts (and get meaningful results)?

For example, how long must the text be? What other conditions are there?

kind thoughts,
Peter Kirby

Zeichman

Good point, Peter. I think 1 Corinthians, given its length and Paul's intentions would be knocked off at the first one. Could the same also be said of Galatian's mention of the brothers of the Lord, and 1 Thess. 2:14-16? I also think you should allow for some ambiguity (especially in the case of the Phillipians 2:6-11 [interpretation can lend itself to either HJ or MJ] and 1 Thess. 2:14-16 [as its authenticity is understandably contested]).


Also, the christology of Q1, for example, is very low, yet would fulfill your first criterion wholly, at least per Robinson's/Mack's reconstruction. Perhaps it would be best to allow the first criterion to have multiple levels.

This looks to be a very interesting thread.

Ted Hoffman

Yeah, cladistics would certainly help. Though I prefer to think of my effort here as more like taxonomy. Its an effort to organize knowledge in a manner that facilitates meaningful study. A taxonomical framework can help reduce adhocness and arbitrariness and redirect our energies to other levels of study. Once the criteria are improved, I intend to pick each source and test them.
Marcion straddles both camps. If we slice him into two, he ends up dead and I dont want blood on my hands. So I make him an exception. Who is it that said that there is an exception to every rule?

Ted Hoffman

Thank you Peter.

I have a question.
One would have to excercise judgement on this one but even more importantly IMO, one must consider the content.
For example, one may come accross a text that states "We the Anabaptines believe in Jesus of Nazareth who died...[missing section] ... and resurrected to free us from death"

From this text, one can straightaway tell that the Anabaptine Christians believed in a Jesus of Nazareth and in his salvific death.

One may equally encounter a volume of text containing a hymn or a hortatory document praising Christ or encouraging Christians. Or a document that only criticizes pagan religions without talking about Christianity. Such a document may fail to mention the following:

The nature of Christ - whether historical or otherwise.
Any earthly details about his life.
Atonement/Redemption or how to acquire salvation

Without this info, it is quite difficult to determine what kind of "Christ" the writer had in mind.

And of course if the text is too fragmented or inadequate to give us a picture with respect to the nature of Christ, it would also be inadequate for evaluation. I hope this answers your question.

Ted Hoffman

Please be specific.
No.
It is an interpolation. Read any of the following:
Paula Fredriksen: From Jesus to Christ, p. 122
Burton Mack: Who Wrote the New Testament? p.113
Wayne Meeks: The First Urban Christians, p.9, n.117
Birger A. Pearson: "1 Thessalonians 2:13-16: A Deutero-Pauline Interpolation," Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971) p. 79-94.
Helmut Koester: Introduction to the New Testament, vol II, p. 113
Pheme Perkins: Harper's Bible Commentary, p.1230, 1231-2
S.G.F. Brandon: The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church, p.92-93
Doherty addresses the passage in his book plus vinnie does a good analysis of the arguments.
And what weight do we assign "ambiguity"?

Chili

Here's my friend. Hear hear!

I think the biggest lesson for a scholar to learn is that he doesn't know nothing. Those who do will at least know that much and the rest will sooner or later admit that they had better been an honest garbage collector.

Zeichman

I was mostly referring to the creed in 1 Cor. 15, which offers a decent amount of details given that Paul probably wrote it.
What's the reason for the flat dismissal?

I don't think Pheme Perkins flat-out said it was an interpolation, but rather that it is contested by some scholars. - Even the analysis website quotes Raymond Brown as saying:
Not listed in scholars for authenticity, I can also add Gerd Theissen (The Historical Jesus, 429; authenticity is presupposed)

While an appeal to consensus would certainly be fallacious, but rather that the case is not as cut-and-dry as a simple dismissal.

And what would happen if one treated the uncontested Pauline corpus as a single unit, likewise with the Pastorals, the Johannine literature, etc...