The Indebtedness of the Criteria Approach to form Criticism and Recent Attempts to Rehabilitate the Search for an Authentic Jesus

The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research

“…He thus claims, ‘Keith never attends to the methodological discussions in historical Jesus research prior to the emergence of form criticism’, and cites the works of Strauss and Schmiedel, as well as Theissen and Winter’s history of the criterion of dissimilarity (2015: 51). I, however, not only cite Strauss’s and Schmiedel’s discussions of authenticity in my work (Keith 2011a: 9, 28 [Strauss]; 2012: 34 n. 38 [Schmiedel]), but also point to Theissen and Winter’s demonstration of the age of the criterion of dissimilarity and Le Donne’s demonstration of the age of the criterion of coherence (Keith 2012: 28, 30 n. 21; 2014: 73 n. 12), having co-edited a book in which Winter and Le Donne make these points (Keith and Le Donne 2012). Furthermore, contra Hägerland, I have never argued that every individual criterion of authenticity grew directly from form criticism.…”

“…8 I have consistently signalled this focus upon the convergence of the criteria into a formal methodology by referring to the ‘criteria approach’ or the ‘enterprise of criteria of authenticity’ (Keith 2011a: 30), their ‘formative development as a methodology in historical Jesus research’ (2011a: 30) and ‘the criteria approach as a formal methodology’ (2014: 74). I even explicitly state at one point that my argument ‘offers a macro-level criticism of the criteria approach rather than addressing individual criteria of authenticity’ (2012: 26). I also likewise note that, ‘despite the fact that the sustained development of the criteria approach occurred in the period of the New Quest … the appeal to criteria of authenticity is not beholden to any particular quest’ (2012: 28).…”

“…My contribution to that volume (Keith 2012) argued that attempts to rehabilitate the criteria of authenticity by N. T. Wright (1996), Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter (2002), and Anthony Le Donne (2009; 2011a) had not faced fully the implications of the fact that the concept of 'authentic' and 'inauthentic' Jesus tradition is built upon form criticism's understanding of the Jesus tradition. 4 When criteria of authenticity came together as a formal methodology in historical Jesus studies among post-Bultmannian scholars (see further below), those scholars imported form-critical categories for the tradition and identified 'authentic' tradition as uninterpreted history from Jesus' life and 'inauthentic' tradition as anything that cohered with early Christian interpretive categories in the Gospels (or, in the case of dissimilarity, also Second Temple Jewish interpretive categories; Keith 2011a: 35 n.33).…”

“…My contribution to that volume (Keith 2012) argued that attempts to rehabilitate the criteria of authenticity by N.T. Wright (1996), Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter (2002), and Anthony Le Donne (2009; 2011a) had not faced fully the implications of the fact that the concept of ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ Jesus tradition is built upon form criticism’s understanding of the Jesus tradition.…”

New Testament Media Criticism

“…The first section of the collection (pp. 25-70) is comprised of essays from Chris Keith (2012) and Jens Schröter (2012). The former provides an overview of the criteria approach, its own history, and an assessment of recent attempts to rehabilitate it.…”