Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§5.4 The Flight from History
Morna Hooker pertinently asked, do we know enough about either the Judaism
of Jesus' time or earliest Christianity for the criterion to be applied with any confidence?
79 Or as Lee Keck wisely observes: 'Instead of the distinctive Jesus we
ought rather to seek the characteristic Jesus'. 80 The criterion of coherence may
simply reinforce an imbalanced core and bracket out incoherencies typical of
real life. 81 Multiple attestation may be of little more help, since, conceivably, the
variations between, say Mark and Q, go back to a common post-Easter source. 82
Alternatively, the identification of several other sources may seem at first to
boost the importance of this criterion (Crossan), 83 but the tendentiousness of the
claims involved simply produces a fresh spatter of question marks against the results
obtained. 84 The criterion of Aramaisms is similarly problematic, in that the
criterion of itself cannot distinguish between an Aramaic-speaking Jesus and an
Aramaic-speaking church. 85 The criterion of embarrassment runs the same
gauntlet as the criterion of dissimilarity: should the relatively few embarrassing
sayings be regarded as any more characteristic of Jesus or as any more capable of
catching the essence of Jesus' proclamation than dissimilar sayings? 86
Theissen's criterion of historical plausibility is more a restatement of historical
method than a criterion. And Porter's criteria depend on the highly disputed argument
that Jesus used Greek (he finds seven instances) and on being able
clearly to determine that a discourse was given in toto by Jesus rather than composed
out of earlier Jesus tradition.
Whither then this new phase of the quest? It would be untrue to say that
'the second quest' has ended, 87 whether 'with a bang' or 'with a whimper'. That
there has been a 'bang', equivalent to the bangs which caused the first quest to
implode, we shall see shortly (see §5.6 below). But there are still those who pursue
the quest largely in the old terms, with confidence in the historical method
unshaken. Joachim Gnilka and Jürgen Becker see no need to provide more than a
79. M. D. Hooker, 'Christology and Methodology', NTS 17 (1970-71) 480-87; also 'On
Using the Wrong Tool', Theology 75 (1972) 570-81. See further Porter, Criteria 13-16.
80. Keck, Future 33 (my emphasis).
81. J. T. Sanders, The Criterion of Coherence and the Randomness of Charisma: Poring
through Some Aporias in the Jesus Tradition', NTS 44 (1998) 1-25.
82. The problem is nicely posed by Allison, Jesus of Nazareth 2-10.
83. See above §4.7 and further below §§7.6 and 7.8.
84. See again Allison, Jesus of Nazareth 10-33.
85. See further Porter, Criteria 92-99.
86. See also Crossan, Birth of Christianity 144-45; Porter, Criteria 106-10. Meier is
fully aware of the weakness of the criterion (Marginal Jew 1.171, 184; also 'The Present State
of the "Third Quest" for the Historical Jesus: Loss and Gain', Biblica 80 [1999] 459-87 [here
475-76]).
87. E.g., Funk thinks 'the brief life of the new quest came to a close around 1975' (Honest
to Jesus 63); and Patterson thinks it lasted only about ten years (The God of Jesus 41-42).
83