The Social Contexts of Jesus the Teacher: Construction or Reconstruction
The importance of an awareness of the wider social context of any movement or individual is widely acknowledged, and does not need arguing. It constitutes a necessary criterion of the adequacy of any historical account. Yet there does not seem to have been any significant development in our critical...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1987
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| In: |
New Testament studies
Year: 1987, Volume: 33, Issue: 3, Pages: 439-451 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | The importance of an awareness of the wider social context of any movement or individual is widely acknowledged, and does not need arguing. It constitutes a necessary criterion of the adequacy of any historical account. Yet there does not seem to have been any significant development in our critical appraisal of it among other criteria, and we still fail to produce agreed results. As a check on how things stand with other historians we may take, as a typical current survey, C. Behan McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions. McCullagh makes a distinction that I have myself made before, but he makes it rather more elegantly. It lies in a contrast between the explanatory ‘scope’ and the ‘power’ of an historical account. An historical reconstruction may have a very wide scope, appearing to include all the data that is conventionally allowed to be relevant, and thus seem very persuasive. But the question remains to be asked, what power has it to exclude competing explanations? |
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| ISSN: | 1469-8145 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: New Testament studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0028688500014387 |