dissimilarity essay

Question 1

intro

Answer 1

understandable that people question authenticity of sources
strauss = pioneer
criteria = reflective and products of both form (impact of church on jesus tradition - rejected by dissimilarity)
argument – don’t use exclusively, must consider other. Maybe better approach = thematic. If something is dissimilar, what does it reveal about contemporary society? How does it fit into wider narrative?

focus
divorce
family
temple

Question 2

para 1

Answer 2

1) Divorce
• separates JC from Jewish/early-Xian context
• jesus’ teachings on divorce - Mk 10:11-12, Lk 16:18
• strongly condemns divorce
• attested in Mk and Lk
• but slightly different approach to both other gospel writers and jewish tradition
• 1 cor 7:10-11, ‘I give this command - not I but the lord - that the wife should not separate from her husband’
• also matt 19:8 - Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
• JC = reinterpreting Jewish law. but enough for dissimilarity - moves away from jewish tolerance towards divorce. e.g. mark 10:4-9 highlights how the law of Moses sanctioned divorce

Question 3

para 1 ao2

Answer 3

• important to combine criteria e.g. embarrassment for paul, ‘not i, but the lord’. goes onto modify it slightly - But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so.
• meier - this is a conflict between the practical and the prohibited
• divorce is also attested so it conforms with all 3 criteria

Question 4

para 2

Answer 4

• luke 14:26 - “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters— yes, even his own life— he cannot be My disciple. “
• goes against exodus 20 - honour your father and mother
• seems to attest to authenticity - even if message is not to outrightly reject parents, it still seems dissimilar enough to be deemed authentic

Question 5

para 2 ao2

Answer 5

• theissen - should examine plausibility of JC actions in light of context
• porter - theissen’s view shifts ‘minimalistic conclusions’ drawn from redaction criticism and is more positive about context. also combines dissimilarity with other criteria
• teachings on family = dissimilar and authenticity
  o Mt 10:35-37, ‘For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me’

Question 6

para 3

Answer 6

disagreement with authority
Horsley - it is ‘virtually impossible to separate the religious dimension from the political dimension of Jesus’ ministry’.

cleansing of temple
- criticises through emphatic actions, overturning tables etc.
Jesus justifies his actions through alluding to Old Testament scripture, as he directly recalls both Jeremiah 7:11 and Isaiah 56:7.
impact can be seen in reaction of chief priests who ‘kept looking for a way to kill him’

prediction of temple destruction

• As Theissen and Merz highlight, whilst the Gospel of John depicts the cleansing and prophesising of the Temple in the same passage, Mark separates the two, due to an ‘interest… in detaching it from the context of the cleansing of the temple which compromised Jesus, so as not to confirm the ‘false’ witness as truth’. Theissen and Merz argue that this is a testimony to the authenticity of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple, for it seems to conform with the criterion of ‘embarrassment’.
• prediction used as false testimony during trial

Question 7

para 3 ao2

Answer 7

but does that count? conforms with OT eschatological ideas and yet disagreeing with jewish authorities

• difficulty in knowing if something is truly dissimilar
• subjective application - how can we know
• discovery of Qumran material - ‘we should be cautious about over-confidence in supposing that we know the whole truth about first-century judaism’ (Hooker)
• JC was jewish! don’t separate from context - perhaps a tactic to be more understandable?
• e.g. eschatological teachings - jewish expectation. Isaiah 24-27, Zech 9 and Josephus. eschatological teachings reflect this idea and so are plausible.
• link to 3rd quest scholars (sanders/wright - emphasis on Jesus’ Palestinian and jewish context)
• solution - look at thematically. theme of temple and eschatological promise branches from OT to NT. seems likely that JC engaged with those ideas