ESSAY - authenticity Flashcards
points from supo to consider
are they still valuable
question the entire apparatus
meta-considerations
should we reject them entirely?
if authentic, how does this fit into the narrative?
if not, what does it say abut contemporary society?
intro - general
understandable that people question authenticity of sources
strauss = pioneer
3 criteria = reflective and products of both form (impact of church on jesus tradition - rejected by dissimilarity) and redaction criticism (sitz Im leben - approach to context of pericope)
embarrassment may view church context as indicative of authenticity as it suggests JC’s action against contemporary norms
intro - argument and wider concerns
argument - cannot be used exclusively. but need to recognise contradictions that arise in collective use. but they should not be entirely rejected - useful guideline.
but aside from criteria - more general questions of authenticity: if something is authentic, you also need to consider how it fits into a narrative that makes sense
if not authentic - what does it say about contemporary society.
authenticity lends itself to questions of wider meta-significance
1 - dissimilarity part 1
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
1 - dissimilarity part 2
JC sayings on family
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
para 1 ao2 - general problems with dissimilarity
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)
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
para 1 ao2 - dissimilarity and other criteria
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
para 2 - attestation in literary sources
kingdom of god
- attested in multiple independent sources, also reflect contemporary concerns (what is an independent source? - synoptics, M, L, Q, non-canonical, Paul, John etc.)
link between Kofg and children - mark 10:13-16, ‘truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it’
paralleled in Mt 19:13-15 and Lk 18:15-17 and John 3:1-10)
para 2 - attestation in rhetorical strategies
dale: parables, antithetical parallelism and exaggeration - all relevant for paradigm of JC and eschatology
e. g. Q 12:51-53 ‘I have not come to bring peace to earth, but division’
- not attested in multiple sources, but rhetorically attested
- antithetical parallelism nd rhetorical questioning
para 2 - ao2 general
subjective application - what counts as a source? how do we know if it is independent?
grant - evangelists shared a lot of material from common sources. may suggest the congeniality of certain pericopes to the early church
characteristic but not authentic?
para 2 - ao2 example
jesus’ death - problem with variation in interpretations of an event that is attested
mark describes ‘strange darkness’ - Amos 8:9-10
matt 27:51-3 ‘strong earthquake’ - zech 14:5
- this shows the difficulty in evaluating whether a source is similar enough to be independent AND attested. need to question the reliability of the source itself before seeing if it is attested
- also need to fit it into a narrative framework
BUT…just because something is not attested in multiple sources does not mean it didn’t happen. unique info
para 2 - ao2 solution
USE ALL OF THEM
e.g. temple
attested - mark 13:2, John 2:14-22, antiquities 18.3.3 §54
also conforms with prophetic tradition - see OT basis for destruction of temple
but…criticising jewish authorities. does that count as dissimilarity???
solution - look at thematically. theme of temple and eschatological promise branches from OT to NT. seems likely that JC engaged with those ideas
para 3 - embarrassment
unlikely that church would fabricate sayings that would be potentially detrimental to church teaching
e.g. baptism - could threaten JC superiority
chilton - either through ‘correction, augmentation or omission’, the evangelists attempt to emphasise JC superiority
chilton and Evans - this editing suggests authenticity. why would they deliberately manufacture an embarrassing story
matt 3:13-17 - JC insists JB baptise him to ‘fulfil all righteousness’
mark emphasises JB as forerunner but still inferior
OT basis, Isaiah 42 - righteousness. attempt to quell embarrassment
mark - by John
matt - mentions John but does not specify that it is by John
luke - does not mention john’s name
heavenly voice - you are my son, the beloved
- isaac/abraham
superiority of JC - quasi-divine
para 3 ao2 - criticisms
Allison - if a pericope is present it means it can’t have been ‘sufficiently disconcerting to be expurgated’
but this fails to recognise evangelists attempt to mitigate embarrassment
e.g. crucifixion - most shameful form of execution, bandits and slaves
Meier - ‘constant struggle’ to explain away the ‘scandalous fact of Jesus’ death by crucifixion’
crucifixion was a political event ‘that could not help but make christians suspect in the eyes of roman citizens and their rulers’ Meier