2011-09-26

Essential Guide to the Historical Jesus: Introduction (James H. Charlesworth)

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by Neil Godfrey

This book is an essential guide to the life and thought of Jesus . . .

That’s James H. Charlesworth’s opening line in the preface to The Historical Jesus: An Essential Guide, one title in Abingdon Press’s Essential Guide series.

James H. Charlesworth is George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature and Editor and Director of the Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project, an internationally recognized expert in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old and New Testaments, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, Jesus Research, and the Gospel of John.

In the twenties of the first century C.E., this man walked out of the hills of Nazareth and into world culture. (p. xiii)

Scholars say Jesus avoided large and cosmopolitan cities (until the last week of his life) so I look forward to learning what Charlesworth means by Jesus stepping out into “world culture”. At the same time Charlesworth describes Jesus as one who happened to “stand out as one of the most Jewish Jews of the first century”.

Jesus was driven by one desire: to obey God at all times and in all ways. For him, not a word of Torah may be ignored or compromised.

I’m not quite sure how one “stands out” for being “most Jewish” among other Jews. But the message Charlesworth wants to convey is clear.

More accurate historical knowledge

Charlesworth explains that today it is possible to “more accurately retell the story of Jesus” than it was 2000 years ago. Continue reading “Essential Guide to the Historical Jesus: Introduction (James H. Charlesworth)”


2011-09-21

15 ways of recovering reliable information about Jesus

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

What serious enquirer after the historical Jesus can bypass a title like The Historical Jesus: An Essential Guide by James H. Charlesworth?

Chapter 2 addresses ways of “obtaining reliable information” about Jesus and about two-thirds of this chapter discusses a number of “methodologies” that include our familiar criteria:

  1. Embarrassment
    • deeds and sayings embarrassing to the evangelists would not have been fabricated by them
  2. Dissimilarity
    • teachings unlike environmental Jewish thought and unlike those of his followers probably originated with Jesus
  3. Multiple attestation
    • a saying or deed of Jesus found in two or more independent sources is more probably original to Jesus than something found in just one source
  4. Coherence
    • when a deed or saying of Jesus is virtually identical to one that is shown to be very likely (on the grounds of the other three criteria above) then we may think of it as probably reliable
  5. Historical plausibility (Palestinian Jewish setting)
    • a tradition may be authentic if it reflects the culture and time of Palestine in the early first century.

We know the arguments for these and their logical flaws. But happily Charlesworth is offering readers more than the commonplace and familiar. He adds “ten additional supporting methods” to provide “supporting insight and information” about Jesus: Continue reading “15 ways of recovering reliable information about Jesus”