Dunn on the Historical Jesus

Today I went to an event in Oxford featuring James Dunn, along with a few others from Nottingham.  He was critiquing the Quest of the Historical Jesus, and presented three main protests – each with an attached proposal:

1. Protest: The QHJ reacted against dogmas that had obscured Jesus, and attempted to find the “real”/”historical” Jesus, who was assumed to be different to the Christ of faith, and can only be accessed by stripping away Pauline Hellenism & Easter spectacles… Proposal: It should be recognised that we can discern Jesus from the impression he left on/in the tradition – an impression of faith-commitment, which began before Easter.
2. Protest: The QHJ has been dominated by a literary mindset – seeing the early transmission of Jesus tradition in terms of documents that were copied and edited… But Galilean society was predominantly oral; thus Jesus tradition must have circulated in oral forms first… Proposal: We should not expect a “single origin edition” – and we should recognise diversity in the Gospels as representing the varied oral performance of the Jesus tradition in different disciple groups – including both stability and diversity.  To illustrate: a punch-line joke can be performed in varying ways for different contexts, but it is essential to get the punch-line “right”.
3. Protest: The QHJ sometimes assumes that Jesus must have been different from his environment, and thus seeks items of distinctiveness/difference in Jesus tradition as the only sure signs of authenticity… Proposal: Rather than seeking out the distinctive, we should seek the characteristic Jesus: Any material within the Gospels which is characteristic through and across the Gospels is likely to reflect characteristic features of Jesus’ own mission.

Did Darwin Kill God?

April, BBC Two

“The debate between religion and evolution has been hijacked by extremists: on one side stand fundamentalist believers who reject evolution, and on the other side are fundamentalist atheists who claim that Darwin’s theory rules out the possibility of God.

Philosopher and theologian Conor Cunningham declares that it’s time to set the story straight and argues that it is possible to be both a Christian and accept the theory of evolution.”

The above is publicity for a BBC programme featuring Conor Cunningham, from the Department of Theology here at Nottingham.  I won’t comment at this point on the description of the programme, but will be very interested to watch it in April.

XXXIII

Well tomorrow, the 20th June, is my birthday.  I will be turning a very significant age: The same age that a certain historical figure was when, in a showdown with political leaders, he died… following predictions that he would return…

I’m speaking, of course, of David Koresh.  Nah, you know who I’m talkin’ about.

And what will I be doing to celebrate?  Attending a conference at the University of Nottingham on Pope Benedict’s book ‘Jesus of Nazareth’.  This book is an interesting read, going through the life of Jesus from his baptism to the transfiguration (part two, on Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection, is yet to be produced).

Ratzinger/Benedict aims to counter a hermeneutical commitment to the sufficiency of the “historical-critical method”, by urging its necessary supplementation with both canonical criticism and ecclesial criticism: A book of the Bible cannot be rightly interpreted without reference to its placement in the canon and its reception by the church throughout the ages.

I think that in practice his approach can perhaps be illustrated by the following quote:

The Our Father has been transmitted to us in a shorter form in Luke, whereas it comes down to us in Matthew in the version that the Church has adopted for purposes of prayer.  The discussion about which text is more original is not superfluous, but neither is it the main issue.  In both versions we are praying with Jesus…  (Jesus of Nazareth, p133)

For Benedict, this seems to be the way history and faith relate: Questions of historicity are not superfluous, but neither are they sufficient.  On the one hand, it’s utterly important to Christianity that the events of Jesus as they are transmitted in the Gospels (virgin birth, life in Galilee/Judea, death, resurrection, ascension) find agreement with the rigorous study of history; but on the other hand, this rigorous historical enquiry itself is not “the main issue”.

I’ll be curious to see how it goes.