Historiography and Hermeneutics in Jesus Studies

An Examinaiton of the Work of John Dominic Crossan and Ben F. Meyer

Donald L. Denton

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9780567493538
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

This work identifies two distinct methodological approaches in Jesus studies, as represented by the work of two prominent historical Jesus scholars, Dominic Crossan and Ben Meyer. Crossan's work is the apotheosis of a venerable approach centered on "tradition criticism." Meyer offered a critique of this approach in the form of a historiographic "holism." This work brings Meyer's proposals to light in a sharp comparison with the historiographic assumptions he criticized. It goes beyond Meyer, recognizing the full significance of narrativity in historical method.

Part I

JOHN DOMINIC CROSSAN AND TRADITION CRITICISM

Chapter 1

THE EARLY CROSSAN: POST-HISTORIOGRAPHIC STRUCTURALISM

Crossan once wrote that his historical Jesus work has always been characterized by a dialectic of diachrony and synchrony, that is, by an interplay between two types of analysis: (1) an analysis of the Jesus traditions chronologically, as they underwent change and development, and (2) an analysis of the traditions as they function as a system, or within a system, sharing particular, more or less atemporal and constant, features.¹ He made these comments in response to an examination of his work by Bernard Brandon Scott, who sought to relate the method seen in Crossan’s work in The Historical Jesus to Crossan’s earlier work on Jesus’ parables.² Crossan said Scott’s examination of his work seemed to reflect such a dialectic, and this dialectic was appropriate since Crossan’s own work is itself dialectical in this way.

I will eventually give some attention to the ‘dialectical’ part in this treatment of Crossan, but what I am most interested in now is the ‘diachronic’ dimension. A measure of development is probably characteristic of the work of most scholars, but Crossan’s work seems especially to lend itself to this type of examination, one that identifies distinct stages along with the evolution of concepts and tools throughout those stages. The present approach to Crossan is organized in two parts: the early Crossan, consisting of his work on Jesus’ parables in the 1970s (up to and including Cliffs of Fall); and the later Crossan, beginning with The Historical Jesus and continuing to the present. The works in between will be treated as a sort of transition phase, the nature of which will hopefully become clear as the study proceeds.

Consistent with the stated purpose of appreciating the interplay of hermeneutics and historiography in Jesus studies, I will examine the stages in Crossan’s work along these lines, considering his expressed or assumed hermeneutic and the historical methods he employs along the way. With these I will also review details of his understanding of the historical Jesus at each stage, and observe how it reflects his hermeneutic and historical method.

The tortured diction of the title of this chapter reflects an attempt to bring together distinct tendencies in Crossan’s early work on Jesus’ parables. On the one hand, Crossan’s fundamental interest has always been in recovery of the historical Jesus. This will be evident in the historiographic element in our observations. But Crossan’s other, consciously hermeneutical hand holds some surprises. The relation between the two hands has been variously evaluated,³ and I will offer my own assessment. But in spite of any estimation of consistency or otherwise at this stage of Crossan’s work, what arises here is seminal in the course of development of tools and orientations in this always-engaging interpreter of Jesus.

1. In Parables

Crossan opens his first work on the historical Jesus, In Parables, with interesting comments on the nature of parables and of all reality. First, parables are understood only from inside their own world. They speak their revelation to those who have learned to live ‘in parables’. Second, and following from this, reality itself is parabolic, it is ‘images projected on the white screen of chaos’.⁴ At this point Crossan elaborates little on these cryptic observations. He quotes Roland Barthes on von Ranke’s history; Barthes says that narrative is waning in historiography, being replaced by ‘structures’, because history is seen to be no longer about reality but about intelligibility; narrative is concerned with ‘reality’ while ‘structures’ are concerned with intelligibility. Crossan also quotes Heisenberg, whose Uncertainty Principle in physics implies that even in science, method and object (more properly, observation and object) cannot be easily separated. It will remain for Crossan’s interpretation of Jesus’ parables to flesh out the significance of all these comments. But it appears that Crossan opens his study of the parables of the historical Jesus with the general observation that ‘reality’ is at least partly fashioned by its observers, and is not simply ‘out there’.

Exploration of these musings is deferred by historiographic first things. After the Preface in which he comments on the parabolic nature of reality, Crossan begins the first chapter by situating his study squarely within what he describes as the twenty-year-old new quest of the historical Jesus. He outlines the five-step method of the new quest,⁵ which we can summarize as follows:

1. comparison of synoptic materials with one another, revealing dissimilarities between versions of a tradition that demand discovery of the earliest form of the tradition.

2. a temporary bracketing of the historicity question of these various extant forms.

3. uncovering a history of the transmission of the piece of tradition.

4. invoking the criterion of dissimilarity to determine the historicity of the earliest form of the tradition.

5. invoking the criterion of dissimilarity with respect to style and form, not just subject and content.

This outline constitutes the bulk of Crossan’s discussion of historiography in this work, and I would call attention to three items, corresponding to the first, third and fifth steps. First, comparison of the synoptic materials, revealing differences in accounts of the same tradition, forms the point of departure for historical method in relation to Jesus. These differences constitute a historical problem that calls for a method to deal with them. This is a consistent theme that we will encounter again in Crossan’s later works: similarities and differences among accounts cry out for an explanation, and it is of the essence of a historical approach to the data on Jesus that the explanation of these be given priority. The full significance of this point will emerge when Crossan responds to challenges to his method with the insistence that source relationships are the necessary presupposition of any study of the historical Jesus.

Second, the uncovering of the history of the transmission of the piece of tradition, followed by application of a ‘criterion of authenticity’, is what Crossan would eventually call the ‘classic methodological model’ for Jesus research.⁶ The history of the transmission of the tradition is traced by comparing the extant versions with one another, determining which among the versions was earlier and which later development. Once the earliest form of the tradition is determined, the criteria are applied to verify that this form derives from Jesus and not from some unidentifiable moment in the development of the tradition. This basic method, of tradition criticism followed by application of criteria, Crossan employs consistently throughout his historical Jesus works, culminating in his most sophisticated formulation of method in The Historical Jesus. What is at this point the primary criterion, dissimilarity, Crossan later rejects as inadequate, to be replaced with, first, a criterion of ‘adequacy’, and eventually with multiple attestation. But the basic method centred on tradition criticism followed by application of some criterion remains consistent and constitutive of a historical approach to the data for Crossan.

Third, Crossan points out that the criterion of dissimilarity is to be applied with respect to style and form, not just to subject and content. Crossan is in fact most concerned here with this final step in his method, considering the uniqueness of the form of Jesus’ words. Specifically, Crossan is interested in Jesus’ use of metaphor in sustained parabolic fashion and how this use is different from that of the early church and contemporary Judaism.⁷ He points out that this uniqueness will involve consideration of philosophy and poetry in examination of fundamental hermeneutical problems. This observation is his point of departure for extended discussion of the hermeneutics of metaphor.

So Crossan launches a career of exploration of the historical Jesus with a straightforward articulation of historical method, combined with intimations of a hermeneutic with far-reaching ontological implications. The methodological presentation is brief, but seminal. The hermeneutical suggestions are pregnant, and it is these that are the focus of Crossan’s study here. It is significant that historical method is briefly discussed but the hermeneutic is treated at length. We are set on a course here that will lead to interesting literary-critical territory in the ‘early Crossan’.

The form of Jesus’ parables is metaphorical. This is in contrast to parables that are allegorical. Metaphorical parables create participation in their referents; allegorical parables illustrate information on their referents. Metaphors seek to express what is inexpressible, or what can be expressed in no other way than by inviting participation in the referent. Metaphors are thus aptly suited to religious expression; they are fit for expressing the permanently inexpressible Wholly Other. ‘The Wholly Other must always be radically new and one can experience it only within its metaphors.’⁸ The metaphor is the incarnation of the poetic experience, and poetic experience is analogous to religious experience, so the language of religion is the language of poetic metaphor. Both poetic and religious experience can be said to be incarnate in metaphor.

Jesus’ use of parable as poetic metaphor is in contrast to the rabbinic use of parable as didactic figure. In the rabbinic use, parable functions as illustration of an independent dogmatic point, one which could just as easily be expressed without the parable. But Jesus’ parables are different; they are not linked to specific biblical texts requiring interpretation, as commentary or exposition of them; nor are they exemplifications of specific moral situations. The rabbis’ parables serve the teaching situation, while Jesus’ parables serve to articulate the revelation that exists through them.⁹ Jesus’ parables, as metaphorical, express his experience and invite participation in that experience. Crossan notes that the fact that Jesus expressed his experience in metaphor says something about that experience. There is an intrinsic unity between religious experience and its expression in metaphors or symbols. Religious experience involves both the moment of perception of the experience and the embodiment of the experience in symbolic form. ‘The fact that Jesus’ experience is articulated in metaphorical parables, and not in some other linguistic type, means that these expressions are part of that experience itself… There is an intrinsic and inalienable bond between Jesus’ experience and Jesus’ parables. A sensitivity to the metaphorical language of religious and poetic experience and an empathy with the profound and mysterious linkage of such experience and such expression may help us to understand what is most important about Jesus: his experience of God.’¹⁰

The function of Jesus’ parables has long been recognized to be the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Crossan treats the function of the parables in these terms, distinguishing Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom as characterized by a prophetic eschatology as opposed to apocalyptic, and a ‘permanent’ eschatology, as opposed to futurist (Schweitzer), realized (Dodd), or ‘in process of realization’ (Jeremias). Apocalyptic eschatology is concerned with the end to this world (the only world), and looks forward to an afterlife after the end. But prophetic eschatology, the more ancient of the two, is concerned with an end to world (in the sense of ‘one’s world’, the world within which one lives, or possibly an era or epoch) and has no concept of an afterlife. Permanent eschatology is of a piece with the prophetic view, seeing the presence of God as ‘the permanent presence of the one who challenges world and shatters its complacency repeatedly’.¹¹ ‘Jesus was not proclaiming that God was about to end this world, but, seeing this as one view of world, he was announcing God as the One who shatters world, this one and any other before or after it…God, in Kingdom, is the One who poses permanent and unceasing challenge to man’s ultimate concern and thereby keeps world free from idolatry and open in its uncertainty.’¹²

Jesus’ alternative understanding of temporality is key to his kingdom proclamation in the parables. Crossan criticizes a linear view of time and history as inconsistent with Jesus’ proclamation. The linear view sees history as a sort of structure abstracted from actual events; in von Rad’s words, time in this view is like ‘the blanks of a questionnaire, only needing to be filled up with data which will give it content’.¹³ Crossan suggests as an alternative God’s presence which, in calling us to a response, creates our history and our time, rather than acting in history or intervening in time. Thus history is like the spokes coming out of a wheel rather than a line or a circle. ‘Time is…the present of God.’¹⁴ Crossan says this understanding of time is based on Heidegger’s notion of the advent of Being in Ereignis. Authentic human time and history arise from a human response to Being as it comes out of the unexpected. The advent of Being destroys one’s projections of future and even the supposedly objectively given past. These are often reversed in the advent of Being, as the present is constituted by action. The succession of past-present-future in time is replaced by the ontological simultaneity of three modes in advent-reversal-action.¹⁵

In this light, Jesus’ parables are seen to express the ontological ground of his life. They contain the temporality of Jesus’ experience of God and proclaim and establish the historicity of Jesus’ response to the Kingdom.¹⁶ They are not illustrations of a separate message, but are constitutive of both Jesus’ experience of God and his historicity. By his parables Jesus attacked the ‘idolatry of time’ which was characteristic of the religious groups of Judaism in Jesus’ day (and of early Christian groups, to the degree that they were apocalyptic in their eschatology). Agai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: John Dominic Crossan and Tradition Criticism
• Part II: Ben Meyer and Critical Realism
• Part III: Historiography Proposals: From Holism to Narrative Intelligibility
• Appendix 1: The Criteria of Authenticity Criticisms and New Directions
• Appendix 2: Varieties of Critical Realism
• Bibliography
• Index of References
• Index of Authors