boundary making

I'm currently working through my notes from Daniel Boyarin's Border Lines, which is in my view one of the most important texts in the last ten years among "parting of the ways" scholarship (and which largely subverts that scholarship) and has important implications for contemporary historiographical praxis. Here, however, I'd like to try to conceptualize a problem (a feeling, really) I've had whenever I read constructionist texts like Boyarin's.

First, a quote:

Ania Loomba’s statement of the current theoretical position that “no human utterance could be seen as innocent,” that, indeed, “any set of words could be analyzed to reveal not just an individual but a historical consciousness at work,” is crucial for me, for it is this postulate that enables my work as historian. This set of notions, to which I can more or less only allude in this context, does not quite dissolve completely (as sometimes charged) but surely renders much more permeable any boundary between linguistic (or textual) practice and “the real conditions” of life within a given historical moment and society. (2004:27)

Here I find articulated what both excites me and gives me pause about Border Lines (and cf. also Boyarin's earlier work, Dying for God). Boyarin develops and advances a genuinely sophisticated program of textual analysis that illumines not just the intention of the text but also its consequences. For example, applying Boyarin's program to, say, Matthew's gospel would reveal less about Jesus and more about the effects of Matthew's writing (better: performing) his account of Jesus' life. This surely isn't new; what is exciting is the significant advance on the now-traditional redaction-critical approaches to these types of questions. (For more detail you'll just have to read Boyarin's books.)

But there is a significant blind spot in Boyarin's work that has to be challenged. Border Lines blurs the clean and clear lines that ancient orthodox Christians and rabbinic Jews were drawing between "Judaism" and "Christianity." This blurring is ostensibly motivated by Boyarin's sympathy for "the folks . . . who dwelt in the interstices of the texts and objected to or simply ignored the work of the religious customs officers" (2004:7). As the first quote provided above makes clear, this does not result in the deconstruction of any and every distinction between "Jews" and "Christians," but it does highlight problematic aspects of that distinction.

But in blurring the lines so powerfully, Boyarin (inadvertently?) emphasizes another boundary that, I suggest, wasn't as clean and clear as contemporary theorists and historians like to imagine. The distinction, separation, and opposition between "lay folk," "the majority," "the oi polloi" (if I may be redundant), on the one hand, and "authority," "elites," "center[s] of power," on the other, is ubiquitous in contemporary analysis, especially political analysis, of historical and religious texts. And in many ways these two categories have contributed much to that analysis. But rarely do critics turn their category-blurring gazes upon this very powerful boundary that they themselves (we ourselves?) have in large part constructed. Like Boyarin, I'm not suggesting that distinctions between centers of cultural currency and the margins aren't real, but rather that they're not as impermeable as we like to think. This is not simply a point about social mobility, either; even in societies where upward social mobility was largely, if not totally, denied, the construction of the categories the elite and the masses was discursive and contested.

I admire and would like to advance Boyarin's deconstruction of the distinction between Christianity and Judaism, especially in the first 150 years C.E. I think our reification of this border has inflicted serious violence (ideological as well as actual) on our interpretations and appropriations of the NT texts throughout the last two millennia and not least in the last 100 years. But to accomplish that deconstruction at the expense of reifying another opposition — between the people and the elites, the Little and the Great Traditions, the Hidden and the Public Transcripts, and so on — is too high a price. Rather, the real historical (and, I think, theological!) promise lies in our ability to examine and appropriate the interaction and contestation precisely between our categories!

[For another instance of this problem and a significantly more advanced response to it than I have provided here, see John Bodnar's Remaking America (1992) and the extensive critique found in Barry Schwartz's Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (2000).]

BIBL 5107 Lesson 1:relating text and context

I am currently teaching two online courses for my institution's MA New Testament program, and each week I will try to comment briefly on one or two lessons from each course. Students enrolled in my courses can click on your class's label to see only those posts relevant to the class you're taking. (nb: These comments are also posted on the Discussion Board on your course's Blackboard site.)

As I was looking over the first lesson, which simply aims to introduce the course and its subject, I was thinking about an issue that this lesson implicitly raises but nowhere discusses: How does the study of the context of the NT texts relate to and affect our study and understanding of the texts themselves? In other words, What do we think we're doing when we study "The World of the New Testament"?

I have a sense (and this is only a gut feeling; I haven't verified this point empirically) that at least two motives drive research into the context of the NT texts, one historical and the other hermeneutical. The historical program seeks to either substantiate the historical claims made by the NT texts or subvert them. So, for instance, some scholars will suggest, with respect to the portrait of Herod in Matt. 2.16–18, that had Herod initiated any gruesome program of murder and terror as the Matthean evangelist reports, we certainly would read of it in Josephus or one of the Roman historians. Others, from exactly the same perspective but toward exactly opposite ends, will point out that Matthew's description of Herod's paranoia and cruel protection of his power matches exactly, say, Josephus's description of the end of Herod's reign in end of the first book of his Jewish War. For both arguments, insight afforded by study of the NT world serves to validate (or not) a NT report.

On the other hand, a hermeneutical approach to NT context seeks not necessarily corroborate NT historical claims so much as to understand them, irrespective of (or at least with less emphasis on) the "whether-or-not-ness" of more historical approaches. As another example, there has been considerable debate at least since Sanders's Jesus and Judaism (1985) whether or not Jesus had any significant conflict with the Pharisees of his day. While many "historical" approaches to this question have sought to prove or disprove genuine conflicts between Pharisaic theology and Jesus' teaching, other ("hermeneutical") research has sought to place the NT reports of such conflict in their proper context.

Curiously, Sanders himself provides salient examples of both approaches. On the one hand, Sanders vigorously denies that the Pharisees would have conflicted with Jesus if the latter had ever summoned "sinners" to repent and worship Israel's God in accordance with Torah and established Jewish practice. This, I suggest, is a historical judgment: What the NT reports to have happened could not have happened because of what we know from research into the NT world (viz., the Pharisees and their theology).

On the other hand, Sanders famously proposed that the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees was rooted precisely in Jesus' acceptance of "sinners" without calling them to repent. Though this is also a historical judgment, I would like to draw our focus on its more intentionally hermeneutical focus. Here Sanders doesn't question the gospels' reports of conflict with Pharisees but rather reinterprets the causes and significances of that conflict. This reinterpretation is called for precisely because Sanders knows more about the Pharisees than what is reported in the NT texts and so can interpret those texts with some clearer idea of how the texts would have been interpreted by their original audiences (who likewise would have known more about the Pharisees).

Clearly the distinction between "historical" and "hermeneutical" research is neither hard nor fast. But I would like to suggest that our research into the World of the New Testament holds out particular promise for our interpretation of the NT, and not simply our estimation of its "reliability." As an experiment to text this hypothesis, as you read about "the historical Jesus," whether in the news or in scholarly monographs, notice how often some piece of contextual evidence is said to prove Jesus could not have said some thing he is reported to have said.

The current story of "Gabriel's Revelation" [see my previous post here] is a compelling instance. For some, the discovery of this particular datum of NT context (that some Jews spoke of/expected a dying and rising Messiah-figure) "proves" that the NT kerygma of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection on the third day is a repackaging of a traditional story and not a report of a historical event. Even granting the authenticity of this ink-on-stone tablet (which April DeConick has aptly described as "odd"), the most this text offers to NT research is a crisper focus and clarification of the (after all) Jewish message of an actually crucified and resurrected Messiah-figure, Jesus.

As our discussion progresses, we ought to shift our understanding of NT context away from verification and authentication of historical claims to consider the way our understanding of the NT world affects our reading and understanding of the texts themselves.

My last 'last words' on authenticity

Okay, so I actually have other thoughts about authenticity and historical Jesus research apart from which the internet is somewhat less than complete, but I promise not to continue harping on this subject for too much longer. To be fair, I have a feeling this is actually another issue, perhaps of somewhat broader interest.

Nearly a week ago Eddie mused about ' What Does it Mean to "Be Critical" in Studying the Historical Jesus'? If I understand his post rightly, his basic thrust is that historical Jesus research ought to attend to two different tasks: (a) assessing the general relationship between the primary sources (i.e., the gospels) and the actual flow of events that is 'history', and (b) on the strength of that relationship, analysing whatever individual traditions we are interested in. Also, if I read him right, scholars should set themselves to these two tasks in this order. I think this is a basic 'hermeneutical circle' problem, in that I would doubt that we can perform either task apart from some tentative conclusions about the other. My stance on the reliability of the gospels undergirds my treatment of any part of them, and my treatment of individual gospel units affirms or subverts my stance vis-à-vis the gospels as wholes. But it also seems to me that the concept of the reliability of a source (as a whole) is a slippery thing to quantify. Per my perspective on authenticity in general, I find 'burden-of-proof' comments that those for or against the general trustworthiness of the gospels have to argue their point difficult to agree with because they allow us to rest upon our presuppositions. I think Sanders had it right: the burden of proof falls on anyone who wants to prove anything, and this applies both to those who generally trust the gospels and those who generally doubt them.

But I think Eddie is right that, too often, the results of our analyses of individual gospel units is prevented from informing our views of the gospels as wholes. A similar point is made by Stan Porter, who writes

. . . genre theory is often neglected or misunderstood by Jesus scholars. The level of discussion of much historical Jesus research is in terms of individual pericopes. These form the basic units for comparison among Gospels and analysis in relation to extra-canonical sources. However, this level of analysis assumes the form-critical agenda, but fails to consider the Gospels in terms of the kinds of family resemblances that are relevant to biographies or, to use the terms of genre theory, in terms of intrinsic generic characteristics. This is not to deny that biographies have individual units, such as stories, sayings, and speeches, but that these are not the basic units of analysis. When the larger patterns are considered, the Gospels are seen to reflect biographical literature in most if not all essential features. ('Reading the Gospels and the Quest for the Historical Jesus', Reading the Gospels Today, 42)

My point doesn't concern genre criticism per se, but rather that the quality of the gospels' biographical testimony in its parts ought to affect our stance toward them as wholes.

To illustrate, I have argued elsewhere (no link available, sorry) that the Markan aside at 7.19b ('Thus he cleansed/declared clean all foods') is an important indicator of the evangelist's ability to distinguish Jesus in his own historical and theological context from his significance for the evangelist's circumstances. In a nutshell, Mark is able to state baldly that Jesus did make all foods acceptable for consumption, but he does so without putting a statement to that effect into Jesus' mouth. In other words, Mark doesn't write 'Jesus said, "All foods are clean"', but he does understand it to be the legitimate/inevitable outcome of what Jesus did say.

(Note: James Crossley argues for a different reading of Mark 7.19b altogether, largely on the basis of his early dating of Mark. While I remain sceptical of James' reading [viz., that Jesus said it was okay to eat all kosher foods irrespective of the condition of one's hands] it is still possible that later readers of Mark [interestingly, apparently not Matthew] may have read Mark 7.19b as making it okay to eat pork, or perhaps even meat sacrificed to idols [cf. 1 Cor. 8-10]. If James is right, then all this is, of course, speculative. But he isn't right, so this isn't speculative.)

The point, then, is that if Mark is able at this instance to make Jesus' story relevant to his circumstances without rewriting Jesus, then this ought to affect the way we approach Mark's gospel as a whole. If Mark demonstrably avoids retrojecting what he wants Jesus to have said into his mouth, at least in this instance, then we should avoid the cavalier assumption that Mark retrojected his own circumstances onto Jesus' life without better argumentation. This is particularly the case with respect to Sanders' (and many others') view that the conflict stories, especially, reflect the early Christian communities' conflict with post-70 Judaism as the latter went about reconstituting itself after the destruction of Jerusalem. The significance of Jesus' conflict with his contemporaries was certainly apprehended from the point of view of later (emerging) Christianity, but I suspect the evangelists are hardly responsible for making up the theme as a whole. We should still be on the lookout for how the tradition appears to have developed in the Markan narrative, but we should also be just that much more confident that Mark was, in fact, interested in Jesus for his own sake.

My last words on 'authenticity'

I apologise for having dropped off the bloggosphere for so long; my wife and I have moved and no longer have internet access at home. That means that I can only blog from work, when I ought to be . . . well, working.

At any rate, over on Earliest Christian History Prince Humperdinck has responded to my concerns (again) about 'authenticity' (cf. 'More on "authenticity" and Rafael is soft'). Just so that I don't have to actually defend a position I haven't argued for, let me first of all admit that James knows more about arguments about the resurrection than I do, so I defer to him. I'm using it as an example and have not done the research necessary to argue intelligently with him. (I should admit, though, that I do disagree with his conclusion [viz., that it didn't happen], if you were wondering.) But it still seems to me, despite his claim to be focussing on 'Did the resurrection happen?' rather than 'Could it have happened?', that the question of historicity re: the resurrection (or the stroll atop the Sea of Galilee, or the 'All-You-Can-Eat-As-Long-As-It's-Less-Than-Two-Fish-And-Some- Toast' episode) is fundamentally different than, say, Jesus' kingdom preaching. I suspect 'Did it happen' is intimately bound up with 'Could it happen', but I await James' JSHJ article to see if he grants the latter and argues against the former, or if the fate of the former is doomed precisely because it is so closely linked to the latter.

About the 'Son of Man/son of man' example, James writes:

If Jesus used a standard Aramaic idiom and it meant just man and was sort of tranlated in a similar way into Greek and had no reference to Daniel is that as useful for understanding the historical Jesus as a saying which (say) the early church found when reading Dan 7 and linked it to the second coming. Let's just assume that's right for the sake of these question: would both be of equal usefulness in reconstructing the life of Jesus? Or would one be of greater use?

Here the problem, innocently enough, is the phrase, 'Let's just assume that's right for the sake of these question[s]'. Both times I've heard James argue this point, this phrase is the crucial one of the argument. But let's not assume it, simply because it is the point we're trying to decide. Of course if we could assume one way or the other that Jesus said 'son of man' but not 'Son of Man' (or some other option regarding this problem), then some traditions would be authentic and others would not. But how, on the basis of the text, can we determine authenticity rather than just assume it? Even Maurice Casey's careful argument, at least as far as I can understand it (and this should not be overestimated!), tends to assume Jesus didn't speak of the Son of Man, that he did speak of 'son of man', and that his later followers found 'Son of Man' a useful and meaningful christological title. This makes good sense, of course, but it seems to me that we haven't made the necessary argumentation that Jesus himself didn't find 'Son of Man' a useful and meaningful way of referring either to himself or to another eschatological figure.

In the end, though, all of this is caught up (once again) in the problems I was originally trying to raise in my SBL FORUM essay about 'authenticity' in general and its use as an analytical category in historical Jesus research. James, as usual, has a keen sense of what is ultimately at stake:

To broaden things out beyong the debate between me and Rafael, there has been a lot of debate on the blogs about authenticity and I think one good way to put things to the test is to steal a tactic from Jim West here (there are certain parallels with the Hebrew Bible/OT debate on the blogs) and ask the open questions: did Jesus really on water or not? Did he multiply the loaves or not? Did he turn water into wine or not?

Again, I think these three questions (and others just like them) are bound up with theological and philosophical arguments that are antecedent to the historical discussion that both James and I would prefer to have. I must admit that my knee-jerk reaction to James' questions is, 'No', but that's because of my socialisation into a philosophical milieu where such things don't happen and reports of such things happening are immediately suspect. That's not to say that my philosophical perspective is wrong, exactly. But if I ignore the question of could and immediately focus on did then I'm assuming my philosophical perspective is right. In other words, if I affirm Jesus really did turn water into wine (and man do I hope that he did; how nifty would that be?!), I suspect the [probably appropriate] suspicion that I'm being too credulous is based on the commonly held belief that water doesn't turn into wine (at least, not this conveniently). But in a purely historical discussion, can such a thing be taken for granted? If we're making historical judgements (and not philosophical/theological ones), shouldn't our discussion assume such a thing is possible and then argue that, despite this, Jesus didn't do it? But this is precisely the type of historical discussion that doesn't happen (and of course it doesn't; it's silly - and impossible - to insist that historiography proceed without philosophical presuppositions). But now it appears - to me, at least - that historiography is less about determining precisely what did and what did not happen as making reports about what happened meaningful to people (us) from a different philosophical perspective.

But let's pretend this isn't true, and that James' questions are pertinent. I presume he selected these three issues (walking on water, multiplying bread, transmogrifying water into wine) precisely because of the philosophical problems associated with affirming their 'authenticity'. If this is the case, how helpful is it, for thinking about the Jesus tradition en toto, to say that these things of course didn't happen. Am I any closer to determining, without assuming for the sake of argument, that Jesus didn't speak of himself as the Son of Man, or speak of his death as 'a ransom given for many', or hand over to Peter a new set of keys? So even at its most helpful, the concept of authenticity doesn't take me very far. But I think, as historians and, at least in some cases, as theologians, we should be able to be okay with this.

Re: First blog blood and an attempt to slow the haemorrhaging

On Earliest Christian History James has responded to my earlier posts re: the concept and use of authenticity in gospels and Jesus research. James responds to two posts that actually make very different points, so I will try to distinguish them below.

First, I question whether 'authenticity' is useful at all for helping us organise and analyse the Jesus tradition, primarily because the two don't actually look/sound that different. Inasmuch as a post-Easter perspective has affected/transformed the tradition, it has effected a transformation of the significance/meaning of the tradition rather than created that tradition ex nihilo. Actually, the 'rather than' of the previous sentence is too strong; the resurrection may have exerted a creative influence, but it did so even as it exerted a hermeneutical one. But the question, I think, is whether we can positively (or even probably, or even usefully, for that matter) distinguish between newly interpreted and newly created traditions. (The interesting discussion in the Jesus seminar [not Seminar] at the BNTC re: the Son of Man/son of man between Maurice Casey and Andy Angel is an example of the difficulty we have in this regard.)

I suppose, briefly, that this is my point re: the resurrection and, say, Jesus' teaching on the kingdom. James asks:

Why must the example of the resurrection be decided on different grounds to the teaching on the kingdom? Either Jesus preached on the future kingdom or he did not. Either Jesus' dead body went the way of normal human beings or it did not. In theory (and I would say in practice) it must be the case that either Jesus' bones were there somewhere in some tomb on the fourth, fifth, six etc. days or Jesus was bodily raised.

There is no philosophical discussion about whether or not Jesus could have proclaimed a present kingdom, an imminent one, a future one, or any combination of the three. But this is precisely the first step in addressing the authenticity/historicity of the resurrection: Could the historical Jesus have experienced bodily resurrection? I think the difference is obvious; I apologise if it isn't. (NB: James asks, 'Why is that so different from the analysis of any other miraculous event?' First, Jesus' teaching about the kingdom or a future coming Son of Man isn't miraculous. Second, I've yet to hear anyone seriously suggest that death was a psychosomatic condition that Jesus could 'heal' or 'be healed of' [unlike healing the blind or the lame], though some of the old resuscitation theories tend toward this.)

As this is getting long, let me get to the second point re: authenticity and the problem regarding the rhetoric of critical inquiry. James asks:

If the so-called 'uncritical' scholar has carefully evaluated the entire gospel tradition and finds most of it authentic would this no be a little unlikely? Would the same degree of openness towards authenticity be extened to non-Christian traditions? Statistically, surely, at least some degree of the gospel material must tell us things that are nothing like what happened in the historic ministry, esp. given that Jewish and pagan traditions have lots of creative storytelling elements?

Obviously, James is right. Only faith in the text (as inspired or whatever) could foster the belief from the outset that nothing in the gospels gives us an inaccurate or misleading image of Jesus. But does this automatically lead to credulous/uncritical gospel scholarship? I have my doubts. It seems to me that a number of scholars have faith in the text and yet are able to evaluate it critically, often to the effect that their understanding of both the text and their faith is developed in the process of critical inquiry (Wright is explicit on this point). But when analysis from a faith-perspective becomes uncritical (i.e., when it cannot draw the conclusions to which it has been leading), then this, surely, is the point at which it must be assailed as 'uncritical'. The point: I think critical scholarship would be well served by shifting its focus to the process of biblical historiography rather than its product. If I cannot rattle off '10 things about the Gospels I don’t believe' (this is Michael Bird's phrase), this neither adds to nor detracts from the value of my research as critical. (I must say at this point that my friendship with a number of scholars from different perspectives, especially James, suggests that the shift in focus for which I'm calling isn't necessarily a radical shift.)

But all of this must be qualified, finally (and this was my original point), by recognising that the meaning of the designations 'authentic' and 'inauthentic' requires its own discussion. Much could be said here, but I find the longish paragraph at the end of Michael Bird's post (cf. the link above) makes this point sufficiently well.

Oh yeah . . . one last point. It seems to me that questions such as, 'Would the same degree of openness towards authenticity be extened to non-Christian traditions?', aren't very helpful. On the one hand, Evangelical scholars are said to be credulous because they suppose the gospels (or at least the synoptics) are reliable sources for the historical Jesus, but on the other they are criticised for not being credulous enough (for refusing to accept all the sources as reliable). I understand James' point (and, as he is fond of pointing out, our disagreement here is rather minor) and agree that why some of us prefer the canonical or synoptic gospels as historical sources should be a subject for analysis. But a preference for certain sources can be the result of critical reflection (granted that, nevertheless, it frequently isn't).

Thinking authentically (follow up)

Over on Hermeneutica Edmund Fearon just posted on the criteria of authenticity, which is of course similar to my previous post. I think it's really interesting to think about the early Christians' (and particularly the evangelists') use of the criteria. Obviously, it is doubtful that, say, Matthew examined the traditions at his disposal, asking, 'Is this dissimilar?' or 'Is this multiply attested?' But, as Edmund suggests, first-century Christians may (must?) have been in a better position to verify traditions about Jesus' sayings and deeds than we are.

But I think this impinges on another issue: the rhetoric of critical historiography in Jesus research. It seems, in some circles at least, that being a critical (= good) historian of Jesus requires us to judge some traditions about Jesus 'inauthentic'. Not that there is one tradition that must be considered inauthentic, but that a good scholar will think at least one tradition to give false information about Jesus. Anyone who doesn't is 'credulous' or 'uncritical' (= bad). But this seems, to me, as weak a position as the fundamentalist one that requires that we automatically, and beforehand, adjudge every tradition authentic.

Rather, it must surely be better (and more scholarly) to reserve judgement until after analysis. Relatedly, that analysis must not be solely focussed on the Jesus tradition, but also upon our own status as historians. What it means, in other words, for us to find a tradition authentic or inauthentic says something about both the tradition in question and the status of critical historical inquiry in the twenty-first century, and this latter aspect of our work too easily escapes attention.

In the end I suspect I'm preaching to the choir. Most of us are at least somewhat aware of the complexity of the issues concerning reconstructing Jesus and of the difficult issues invovled in doing history today. But, if only for my benefit, it would be good to name the subtle pressure to be 'critical' (= unbelieving), and in so doing to start coming out from beneath it. But I hope this only helps me to be a more sensitive, careful, even 'critical' (= questioning) student of the early Christians and their traditions.

Thinking authentically

In my SBL FORUM essay I try to question what it means when Jesus scholars identify some unit of tradition 'authentic' or 'inauthentic'. James Crossley has responded positively to my essay (cf. here), though he has also expressed concern that 'it seems to me that everything is historically valid in some degree or other'. He asks, 'There are plenty of historical examples where memories are deliberately or accidentally false (historically speaking) so couldn't the same thing being going on somewhere in earliest Christianity'? I think this has the potential to be a very interesting conversation.

In essence, the answer is, 'Yes', but I think James is missing the point (either that, or I am). My critique of the concept of authenticity is not an attempt to prejudge the entire Jesus tradition 'authentic', thereby sneaking in 'authenticity' by the back door. Rather, it seems to me that past and present interact in such a way that so-called 'inauthentic' memories, as well as 'authentic' ones, experience the same kinds of pressures, and it is through these that we can know something about 'the historical Jesus'. In more traditional terms, it may be true that early Christian theologising about Jesus generated traditions about him, but that theologising itself was constrained about what was already known about him. But then how does this affect our understanding of authenticity?

The whole point of authenticity/inauthenticity, as far as I am able to discern it, is to discriminate between those traditional units that accurately report the sayings or actions of the real Jesus from those that originated later, with his followers. Theoretically, we can so discriminate because 'inauthentic' Jesus tradition reflects the theology of early Christians, whereas 'authentic' tradition reflects Jesus' own theology (or, more often, at least does not reflect that of early Christianity). The problem is obvious: 'authenticity' only works if we posit a yawning chasm between the beliefs of Jesus and those of his followers. The more narrow that chasm, the less effective the concept 'authentic', and if, per chance, Jesus' followers actually continued to believe the things he taught before his death, then we are hardly in any position to discriminate between our traditions. As I've said elsewhere (cf. my paper, in .pdf format, here [p. 3]), 'we find ourselves in the somewhat awkward position that our categories "authentic" and "unauthentic" are indiscernible and, therefore, useless.

Here James would say that, for example, either Jesus was raised from the dead or he wasn't, so authenticity remains an analytically useful category. Yes, of course. And my point is not that authenticity is completely useless. But it seems to me that the example of the resurrection, especially, must be decided on other (e.g., philosophical) grounds. Unlike, for example, the question of whether Jesus thought of the kingdom as present or imminent, the question of the historicity of the resurrection is unlikely to be answered by textual analysis and determination of 'authenticity'. If Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, then of course every tradition that says he was or relates what he said or did after his resurrection is inauthentic (but not, ipso facto, those in which Jesus predicts the resurrection). But certainly it isn't very convincing to argue - with whatever level of sophistication - that Jesus' followers believed he had been raised from the dead, so that traditions saying he was have been generated by their theology and not a historical event (the resurrection).

This seems to me to be just the beginning of a discussion, but this post is already getting too long. More later?