Shopping cartJournal for the Study of the Historical Jesus
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Editorial Foreword
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Memory, Orality, and the Fourth Gospel: Three Dead-Ends in Historical Jesus Research
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Three recent approaches to historical Jesus studies are assessed in this article. First, the use of memory studies as a means of validating the historical authenticity of Gospel traditions. Secondly, claims that Gospel traditions should be understood as primarily reaching the evangelists orally, and that this process provides greater confidence in the historicity of such traditions. Thirdly, the Fourth Gospel is seen in some quarters as an important source in historical Jesus research based upon new paradigms and radical redefinitions of historicity. Contrary to such claims, here it is argued that for a series of different reasons that none of these methods offers any significant advance in accessing the ‘historical Jesus’, as that term is usually understood. This is not to say that the methods are without value. Rather, it is the over-confident application of such approaches to the ‘historical Jesus question’ that is critiqued. This is especially the case when it is claimed that they provide a key methodological break-through, enabling reclamation of more Gospel traditions as being securely founded in the ministry of the historical Jesus.
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Guarding Entry to the Kingdom: The Place of Eunuchs in Mt. 19.12
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The article argues that, contrary to the majority view, the metaphor of the eunuch in Mt. 19.12 should be understood against the backdrop of the royal eunuch, as encountered in story, if not in experience. As such the saying must be situated with other sayings that speak of entry to the Kingdom. The change of the metaphor’s focus from that of guardian/gatekeeper to that of sexualized trope, as it is now met in Matthew, was facilitated by the saying’s performance to a new audience, i.e. to a Greek-speaking rather than Semitic-speaking audience. At the same time the saying was repunctuated to idealize the last class of eunuch who now became the model of chastity within the ekklesia.
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John the Baptist and Jesus the Baptist: A Narrative Critical Approach
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Narrative criticism is not usually employed as a means of exploring historical knowledge. However, in this article it is argued that narrative patterns can be indicative of history masked by overt rhetoric. In the narrative of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee the Gospel of Mark includes the persistent presence of water, often in combination with wilderness places and crowds. This pattern replicates the same features associated with John the Baptist, creating a narrative template for Jesus continuing John’s baptism, which Mark knew to be concerned with ritual purity, and yet explicit mention of Jesus’ baptizing is avoided. Mark focuses instead on Jesus as the promised immerser in Holy Spirit, proven by his healings and exorcisms, in which purification flows outwards from him. Mark points to a historical scenario in which Jesus’ healings and exorcisms are understandable within the same purity framework that governed water immersions: they were remedies for the most stubborn cases of people who, because of their chronic ailments and disabilities, were unable to obtain the inner purity that was normally established by repentance and forgiveness of sins. Jesus then fulfils John’s prediction and continues John’s work.
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SIEGERT, Folker, Synopse der vorkanonischen Jesusüberlieferung: Zeichenquelle und Passionsbericht, die Logienquelle und der Grundbestand des Markusevangeliums in deutscher Übersetzung gegenübergestellt (Schriften des Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum, 8/1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 172 pp. ISBN 9783525542071. 65.00 €. Hbk.
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CAREY, Greg, Sinners: Jesus and His Earliest Followers (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009), xiii + 221 pp. ISBN 9781602581463. $29.95. Pbk.
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