Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §8.1
8.1. Jesus the Founder of Christianity 3
We have already noted the irony that for most of its existence, the 'quest of the
historical Jesus' was not historical enough in that it attempted to distance Jesus, by
one means or another, from his historical context as a Jew. As many of the rationalists,
savaged by Strauss, had attempted to 'save' the miracle-working Jesus by
allowing a little bit of miracle, so most of the Liberals had attempted to 'save' the
real Jesus by 'inoculating' the quest with a little bit of history. At the same time,
the other strand in 'life of Jesus' research, from Reimarus to the neo-Liberals, has
attempted to 'save' Jesus from Christian dogma by distancing him from the movement
which followed his death and which became Christianity. In the most common
scenario, it was Paul who counts (or is to be blamed!) as the real founder of
Christianity. 4 This has been one of the real peculiarities of the quest, that it has attempted
to find a Jesus who was neither a Jew nor founder of Christianity, or who
was contingently one but not the other. 5 But in seeking to avoid the Christianized
Jesus as well as the Jewish Jesus, all that remained, all that could remain, was the
idiosyncratic Jesus, who could hardly be other than an enigma to Jew and Christian
alike, and who reflected little more than the quester's own idiosyncracies.
In fact, the obvious way forward is simply to reverse the logic. If the starting
assumption of a fair degree of continuity between Jesus and his native religion
has a priori persuasiveness, then it can hardly make less sense to assume a
fair degree of continuity between Jesus and what followed. 6 The initial considerations
here are straightforward.
a. The Sociological Logic
Several indicators have long been familiar. For one thing, it has long been recognized
that the historian needs to envisage a Jesus who is 'big' enough to explain
the beginnings of Christianity. 7 For another, the first followers of Jesus were
3. For convenience I use the title of Dodd, Founder, similarly B. F. Meyer, 'Jesus Christ',
ABD 3.795, though of course, the use of 'Christianity' as a term for what Jesus 'founded' is
anachronistic.
4. See again Wrede cited above chapter 1 at n. 18.
5. The attitude was typified by the second quest's criteria of double dissimilarity which
set the distinctiveness of Jesus over against both Judaism and church (see above §5.4 at n. 68).
T. Holmen, 'Doubts about Double Dissimilarity: Restructuring the Main Criterion of Jesus-of-
History Research', in Chilton and Evans, eds., Authenticating the Words of Jesus 47-80, argues
that 'dissimilarity to Christianity alone suffices as an argument for authenticity' (74-75).
6. Cf. Wright's argument for a criterion of double similarity (above chapter 5 n. 132).
7. Sanders put the point well by referring to the second half of 'Klausner's test': a good
hypothesis regarding Jesus will explain why the movement initiated by him eventually broke
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