RT Article
T1 The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research
JF Journal for the study of the New Testament
VO 38
IS 4
SP 426
OP 455
A1 Keith, Chris 1980-
LA English
YR 2016
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1776997166
AB The article argues that current debates over method in historical Jesus studies reveal two competing ‘models’ for how to use the gospel tradition in order to approach the historical Jesus. These models differ over their treatments of the narrative frameworks of the gospels and, concomitantly, their views of the development of the Jesus tradition. A first model, inspired by form criticism and still advocated today, attempts to attain a historical Jesus ‘behind’ the interpretations of early Christians. A second model, inspired by advances in historiography and memory theory, posits a historical Jesus who is ultimately unattainable, but can be hypothesized on the basis of the interpretations of the early Christians, and as part of a larger process of accounting for how and why early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did. Advocating the latter approach to the historical Jesus and responding to previous criticism, this article argues further that these two models are methodologically and epistemologically incompatible. It therefore challenges the suggestion that one can affirm the goals of the second model while maintaining the methods of the first model.
K1 narrative and historiography
K1 post-Bultmannians
K1 criteria approach
K1 memory approach
K1 Historical Jesus
DO 10.1177/0142064X16637777