RT Article
T1 A Previously Overlooked Life of Jesus by Martha Louisa ‘Lily’ Watson (1885)
JF Journal for the study of the historical Jesus
VO 22
IS 3
SP 237
OP 257
A1 Soon, Isaac T.
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1908832576
AB This article provides an overview and analysis of a previously overlooked nineteenth-century Life of Jesus by Martha Louisa ‘Lily’ Watson. It takes as its starting point metacriticism as a vital task of present scholarship on the historical Jesus of Nazareth – in particular, the contributions of women and other scholars on the margins. This study provides a biographical overview of Watson and analyses the sources, methods, and historical approach she takes in her portrayal of Jesus, while also paying attention to some of the pitfalls of her study. Ultimately, engagement with Watson’s work is generative for new avenues of inquiry in historical Jesus studies such as (a) the need for an assessment of the nineteenth-century Lives of Jesus often ignored by scholarship, (b) nineteenth-century conceptions of non-canonical material and its relevance for the historical Jesus, (c) the rationalization of demonic possession over the unquestioning acceptance of Jesus’ other miracles, (d) the prevalence of anti-Jewish portrayals of Jesus, (d) and the use of rabbinic sources to reconstruct Jesus’ Jewish context.
K1 Anti-judaism
K1 Apocrypha
K1 metacriticism
K1 Lives of Jesus
K1 Nineteenth Century
K1 Martha Louisa ‘Lily’ Watson
DO 10.1163/17455197-bja10041