Journal of the Jesus Movement in Its Jewish Setting, 2022
This essay argues that, in certain circumstances, Hebrew literacy and engagement with Hebrew manu... more This essay argues that, in certain circumstances, Hebrew literacy and engagement with Hebrew manuscripts played a crucial role in the construction of elite Christian identity in late antiquity. More specifically, it argues for the rhetorical role of the Hebrew language in claims for Christian superiority to Jews and their texts. Particular attention is given to the role of Hebrew knowledge in the legend of Origen's production of the Hexapla and Origen's Epistula ad Africanum.
Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit drei frühchristlichen Diskursen zum praktischen Umgang
mit Evange... more Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit drei frühchristlichen Diskursen zum praktischen Umgang mit Evangelienhandschriften – die öffentliche Lesung, die Änderung des physischen Manuskripts und dessen Verbrennung – und stellt heraus, dass das, was die Jesusnachfolger mit ihren Evangelienhandschriften taten, zumindest in einigen Kontexten ebenso wichtig für die Identitätsbildung war wie die christologischen Narrative in den Texten selbst. In Anlehnung an die Theorien von William A. Johnson und Jan Assmann zu Büchern als Teil der materialen Kultur und an Eve-Marie Beckers Theorie der Visualisierung und literarischer Bilder, wird die Bedeutung hervorgehoben, die das Evangelium nicht nur als Manuskript, sondern auch in der Darstellung als Manuskript hat.
Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries (3 vols.), 2019
Contribution to the Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries (3 vols.) on the public readi... more Contribution to the Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries (3 vols.) on the public reading of the Gospels in pre-Constantinian Christianity as a liturgical reception of the Jesus tradition.
This essay replies to F. Gerald Downing’s critical response to my article, ‘The Narratives of the... more This essay replies to F. Gerald Downing’s critical response to my article, ‘The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research’ (Keith 2016: 426–55). I focus on four matters: ‘authenticity’; ‘memory theory’; ‘tradition’; and the concept of going ‘behind’ the text.
The article argues that current debates over method in historical Jesus studies reveal
two compe... more The article argues that current debates over method in historical Jesus studies reveal
two competing ‘models’ for how to use the gospel tradition in order to approach the
historical Jesus. These models differ over their treatments of the narrative frameworks
of the gospels and, concomitantly, their views of the development of the Jesus tradition.
A first model, inspired by form criticism and still advocated today, attempts to attain
a historical Jesus ‘behind’ the interpretations of early Christians. A second model,
inspired by advances in historiography and memory theory, posits a historical Jesus who
is ultimately unattainable, but can be hypothesized on the basis of the interpretations
of the early Christians, and as part of a larger process of accounting for how and why
early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did. Advocating the latter
approach to the historical Jesus and responding to previous criticism, this article argues
further that these two models are methodologically and epistemologically incompatible.
It therefore challenges the suggestion that one can affirm the goals of the second model
while maintaining the methods of the first model.
Keywords
Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und Kunde der älteren Kirche, 2011
The question “What really happened?” is the Rock of Gibraltar of historical
studies generally an... more The question “What really happened?” is the Rock of Gibraltar of historical
studies generally and historical Jesus studies specifically. Waves upon waves
of scholars using various methodologies have insisted, persuasively even, that
answering that question is ultimately impossible. Nevertheless, as the waves of
Jesus scholarship pass, the question of historicity stands today, as it has in every
generation since the Enlightenment, as the primary generating force behind any
and every quest for the historical Jesus. It may indeed be naïve to think we can
answer the question of historicity in a final sense and without subjectivity; it is
equally naïve to think that either of these realities will stop us from trying to
answer it at all.
Against this broader background of scholarly approaches to the historical
Jesus, this article will join recent voices in advocating the “Jesus-memory approach”
to the historical Jesus. This method stands in contrast to the dominant
“criteria approach” to the historical Jesus, which employs criteria of authenticity
to sanitize Gospel traditions as authentic before connecting them to the
historical Jesus.The particular contribution of this article, however, is to make
explicit the indebtedness of the criteria approach to form criticism, and thus
why the Jesus-memory approach is a better means of postulating the actual past
of Jesus. For, foundationally, arguments about the Gospels and historicity are
actually about the nature and development of the Jesus tradition, and thus its
possible connections to the actual past. In this regard, this article will break
into two main sections. The first half will argue that the criteria approach has
accepted an inadequate form-critical conception of the development of the
Jesus tradition. The second half will then present the Jesus-memory approach,
which differs from the criteria approach both in its conception of the Jesus
tradition and its determination of the historian’s task in search of the historical
Jesus.
This essay argues that Luke’s strong association of Jesus with the manual-labor
class in Acts 4:... more This essay argues that Luke’s strong association of Jesus with the manual-labor
class in Acts 4:13b, and specifically with the disciples’ “illiteracy” and “unlearnedness,”
is out of step with a sustained redactional strategy in his Gospel, whereby
he consistently removed the Gospel of Mark’s associations of Jesus with the
manual-labor class and offered an alternative image of Jesus as a scribal-literate
teacher. This redactional strategy is particularly clear in Mark’s and Luke’s differing
portrayals of Jesus as a synagogue teacher. Acts 4:13b may constitute a Lukan
cameo of the Markan Jesus, but, regardless of this possibility, Acts 4:13b presents
a moment of discontinuity between Luke’s Gospel and Acts that has been overlooked.
The primary purpose of the article is to articulate the oddity of Luke’s
interpretive choice in Acts 4:13b in light of his other images of Jesus and his
portrayal of the Spirit in Luke-Acts. The essay closes with a possible solution:
Luke has, in his Gospel, portrayed Jesus in imago Pauli.
Journal of the Jesus Movement in Its Jewish Setting, 2022
This essay argues that, in certain circumstances, Hebrew literacy and engagement with Hebrew manu... more This essay argues that, in certain circumstances, Hebrew literacy and engagement with Hebrew manuscripts played a crucial role in the construction of elite Christian identity in late antiquity. More specifically, it argues for the rhetorical role of the Hebrew language in claims for Christian superiority to Jews and their texts. Particular attention is given to the role of Hebrew knowledge in the legend of Origen's production of the Hexapla and Origen's Epistula ad Africanum.
Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit drei frühchristlichen Diskursen zum praktischen Umgang
mit Evange... more Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit drei frühchristlichen Diskursen zum praktischen Umgang mit Evangelienhandschriften – die öffentliche Lesung, die Änderung des physischen Manuskripts und dessen Verbrennung – und stellt heraus, dass das, was die Jesusnachfolger mit ihren Evangelienhandschriften taten, zumindest in einigen Kontexten ebenso wichtig für die Identitätsbildung war wie die christologischen Narrative in den Texten selbst. In Anlehnung an die Theorien von William A. Johnson und Jan Assmann zu Büchern als Teil der materialen Kultur und an Eve-Marie Beckers Theorie der Visualisierung und literarischer Bilder, wird die Bedeutung hervorgehoben, die das Evangelium nicht nur als Manuskript, sondern auch in der Darstellung als Manuskript hat.
Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries (3 vols.), 2019
Contribution to the Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries (3 vols.) on the public readi... more Contribution to the Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries (3 vols.) on the public reading of the Gospels in pre-Constantinian Christianity as a liturgical reception of the Jesus tradition.
This essay replies to F. Gerald Downing’s critical response to my article, ‘The Narratives of the... more This essay replies to F. Gerald Downing’s critical response to my article, ‘The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research’ (Keith 2016: 426–55). I focus on four matters: ‘authenticity’; ‘memory theory’; ‘tradition’; and the concept of going ‘behind’ the text.
The article argues that current debates over method in historical Jesus studies reveal
two compe... more The article argues that current debates over method in historical Jesus studies reveal
two competing ‘models’ for how to use the gospel tradition in order to approach the
historical Jesus. These models differ over their treatments of the narrative frameworks
of the gospels and, concomitantly, their views of the development of the Jesus tradition.
A first model, inspired by form criticism and still advocated today, attempts to attain
a historical Jesus ‘behind’ the interpretations of early Christians. A second model,
inspired by advances in historiography and memory theory, posits a historical Jesus who
is ultimately unattainable, but can be hypothesized on the basis of the interpretations
of the early Christians, and as part of a larger process of accounting for how and why
early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did. Advocating the latter
approach to the historical Jesus and responding to previous criticism, this article argues
further that these two models are methodologically and epistemologically incompatible.
It therefore challenges the suggestion that one can affirm the goals of the second model
while maintaining the methods of the first model.
Keywords
Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und Kunde der älteren Kirche, 2011
The question “What really happened?” is the Rock of Gibraltar of historical
studies generally an... more The question “What really happened?” is the Rock of Gibraltar of historical
studies generally and historical Jesus studies specifically. Waves upon waves
of scholars using various methodologies have insisted, persuasively even, that
answering that question is ultimately impossible. Nevertheless, as the waves of
Jesus scholarship pass, the question of historicity stands today, as it has in every
generation since the Enlightenment, as the primary generating force behind any
and every quest for the historical Jesus. It may indeed be naïve to think we can
answer the question of historicity in a final sense and without subjectivity; it is
equally naïve to think that either of these realities will stop us from trying to
answer it at all.
Against this broader background of scholarly approaches to the historical
Jesus, this article will join recent voices in advocating the “Jesus-memory approach”
to the historical Jesus. This method stands in contrast to the dominant
“criteria approach” to the historical Jesus, which employs criteria of authenticity
to sanitize Gospel traditions as authentic before connecting them to the
historical Jesus.The particular contribution of this article, however, is to make
explicit the indebtedness of the criteria approach to form criticism, and thus
why the Jesus-memory approach is a better means of postulating the actual past
of Jesus. For, foundationally, arguments about the Gospels and historicity are
actually about the nature and development of the Jesus tradition, and thus its
possible connections to the actual past. In this regard, this article will break
into two main sections. The first half will argue that the criteria approach has
accepted an inadequate form-critical conception of the development of the
Jesus tradition. The second half will then present the Jesus-memory approach,
which differs from the criteria approach both in its conception of the Jesus
tradition and its determination of the historian’s task in search of the historical
Jesus.
This essay argues that Luke’s strong association of Jesus with the manual-labor
class in Acts 4:... more This essay argues that Luke’s strong association of Jesus with the manual-labor
class in Acts 4:13b, and specifically with the disciples’ “illiteracy” and “unlearnedness,”
is out of step with a sustained redactional strategy in his Gospel, whereby
he consistently removed the Gospel of Mark’s associations of Jesus with the
manual-labor class and offered an alternative image of Jesus as a scribal-literate
teacher. This redactional strategy is particularly clear in Mark’s and Luke’s differing
portrayals of Jesus as a synagogue teacher. Acts 4:13b may constitute a Lukan
cameo of the Markan Jesus, but, regardless of this possibility, Acts 4:13b presents
a moment of discontinuity between Luke’s Gospel and Acts that has been overlooked.
The primary purpose of the article is to articulate the oddity of Luke’s
interpretive choice in Acts 4:13b in light of his other images of Jesus and his
portrayal of the Spirit in Luke-Acts. The essay closes with a possible solution:
Luke has, in his Gospel, portrayed Jesus in imago Pauli.
In der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft des englischen Sprachbereichs liegt seit
2005 eine grundle... more In der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft des englischen Sprachbereichs liegt seit 2005 eine grundlegende Einführung in die social memory theory vor. Seitdem hat die neue Forschungsrichtung ebenso rasch Befürworter wie Gegner efunden. Viele Schlüsselfragen der neutestamentlichen Exegese werden inzwischen unter der Perspektive des sogenannten „memory approach“ diskutiert. Dieser zweiteilige Beitrag befasst sich mit dem status quaestionis nach den ersten zehn Jahren social memory research in der Evangelienforschung. Der erste Teil konzentriert sich auf die Arbeit dreier einschlägiger Theoretiker, deren Beitrag für die Evangelienforschung von besonderer Bedeutung ist: Maurice Halbwachs, Jan Assmann und Barry Schwartz.
The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media (DBAM) is a convenient and authoritative reference ... more The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media (DBAM) is a convenient and authoritative reference tool which relates specific terms and concepts to the study of the Bible and related literature in ancient communications culture. Particularly since the early 1980s, scholars have begun to explore the potentials of interdisciplinary theories of oral tradition, oral performance, personal and collective memory, ancient literacy and scribality, visual culture, and ritual for considerations of critical and exegetical problems in the study of the Bible, the history of Israel, Christian origins,and rabbinics. DBAM responds to the rapid growth of the field by providing a reference tool that offers definitions and discussions of relevant terms and concepts and the relationships between them.
This volume begins with an overview of "ancient media studies" and a brief history of research to orient the novice reader to the field and the broader research context of the book. It features individual entries of 300-5000 words on terms and topics commonly encountered in studies of the Bible in ancient media culture. Each entry defines the term/concept under consideration, then offers more sustained discussion of the topic often with particular attention to its relevance to the study of the Bible and related literature. For convenience, individual entries are catalogued alphabetically and cross-referenced to indicate connections between the various topics; electronic versions of this resource are internally hyperlinked using the same reference system.
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Papers by Chris Keith
mit Evangelienhandschriften – die öffentliche Lesung, die Änderung des
physischen Manuskripts und dessen Verbrennung – und stellt heraus, dass das, was
die Jesusnachfolger mit ihren Evangelienhandschriften taten, zumindest in einigen
Kontexten ebenso wichtig für die Identitätsbildung war wie die christologischen
Narrative in den Texten selbst. In Anlehnung an die Theorien von William A. Johnson
und Jan Assmann zu Büchern als Teil der materialen Kultur und an Eve-Marie Beckers
Theorie der Visualisierung und literarischer Bilder, wird die Bedeutung hervorgehoben,
die das Evangelium nicht nur als Manuskript, sondern auch in der Darstellung
als Manuskript hat.
two competing ‘models’ for how to use the gospel tradition in order to approach the
historical Jesus. These models differ over their treatments of the narrative frameworks
of the gospels and, concomitantly, their views of the development of the Jesus tradition.
A first model, inspired by form criticism and still advocated today, attempts to attain
a historical Jesus ‘behind’ the interpretations of early Christians. A second model,
inspired by advances in historiography and memory theory, posits a historical Jesus who
is ultimately unattainable, but can be hypothesized on the basis of the interpretations
of the early Christians, and as part of a larger process of accounting for how and why
early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did. Advocating the latter
approach to the historical Jesus and responding to previous criticism, this article argues
further that these two models are methodologically and epistemologically incompatible.
It therefore challenges the suggestion that one can affirm the goals of the second model
while maintaining the methods of the first model.
Keywords
studies generally and historical Jesus studies specifically. Waves upon waves
of scholars using various methodologies have insisted, persuasively even, that
answering that question is ultimately impossible. Nevertheless, as the waves of
Jesus scholarship pass, the question of historicity stands today, as it has in every
generation since the Enlightenment, as the primary generating force behind any
and every quest for the historical Jesus. It may indeed be naïve to think we can
answer the question of historicity in a final sense and without subjectivity; it is
equally naïve to think that either of these realities will stop us from trying to
answer it at all.
Against this broader background of scholarly approaches to the historical
Jesus, this article will join recent voices in advocating the “Jesus-memory approach”
to the historical Jesus. This method stands in contrast to the dominant
“criteria approach” to the historical Jesus, which employs criteria of authenticity
to sanitize Gospel traditions as authentic before connecting them to the
historical Jesus.The particular contribution of this article, however, is to make
explicit the indebtedness of the criteria approach to form criticism, and thus
why the Jesus-memory approach is a better means of postulating the actual past
of Jesus. For, foundationally, arguments about the Gospels and historicity are
actually about the nature and development of the Jesus tradition, and thus its
possible connections to the actual past. In this regard, this article will break
into two main sections. The first half will argue that the criteria approach has
accepted an inadequate form-critical conception of the development of the
Jesus tradition. The second half will then present the Jesus-memory approach,
which differs from the criteria approach both in its conception of the Jesus
tradition and its determination of the historian’s task in search of the historical
Jesus.
class in Acts 4:13b, and specifically with the disciples’ “illiteracy” and “unlearnedness,”
is out of step with a sustained redactional strategy in his Gospel, whereby
he consistently removed the Gospel of Mark’s associations of Jesus with the
manual-labor class and offered an alternative image of Jesus as a scribal-literate
teacher. This redactional strategy is particularly clear in Mark’s and Luke’s differing
portrayals of Jesus as a synagogue teacher. Acts 4:13b may constitute a Lukan
cameo of the Markan Jesus, but, regardless of this possibility, Acts 4:13b presents
a moment of discontinuity between Luke’s Gospel and Acts that has been overlooked.
The primary purpose of the article is to articulate the oddity of Luke’s
interpretive choice in Acts 4:13b in light of his other images of Jesus and his
portrayal of the Spirit in Luke-Acts. The essay closes with a possible solution:
Luke has, in his Gospel, portrayed Jesus in imago Pauli.
mit Evangelienhandschriften – die öffentliche Lesung, die Änderung des
physischen Manuskripts und dessen Verbrennung – und stellt heraus, dass das, was
die Jesusnachfolger mit ihren Evangelienhandschriften taten, zumindest in einigen
Kontexten ebenso wichtig für die Identitätsbildung war wie die christologischen
Narrative in den Texten selbst. In Anlehnung an die Theorien von William A. Johnson
und Jan Assmann zu Büchern als Teil der materialen Kultur und an Eve-Marie Beckers
Theorie der Visualisierung und literarischer Bilder, wird die Bedeutung hervorgehoben,
die das Evangelium nicht nur als Manuskript, sondern auch in der Darstellung
als Manuskript hat.
two competing ‘models’ for how to use the gospel tradition in order to approach the
historical Jesus. These models differ over their treatments of the narrative frameworks
of the gospels and, concomitantly, their views of the development of the Jesus tradition.
A first model, inspired by form criticism and still advocated today, attempts to attain
a historical Jesus ‘behind’ the interpretations of early Christians. A second model,
inspired by advances in historiography and memory theory, posits a historical Jesus who
is ultimately unattainable, but can be hypothesized on the basis of the interpretations
of the early Christians, and as part of a larger process of accounting for how and why
early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did. Advocating the latter
approach to the historical Jesus and responding to previous criticism, this article argues
further that these two models are methodologically and epistemologically incompatible.
It therefore challenges the suggestion that one can affirm the goals of the second model
while maintaining the methods of the first model.
Keywords
studies generally and historical Jesus studies specifically. Waves upon waves
of scholars using various methodologies have insisted, persuasively even, that
answering that question is ultimately impossible. Nevertheless, as the waves of
Jesus scholarship pass, the question of historicity stands today, as it has in every
generation since the Enlightenment, as the primary generating force behind any
and every quest for the historical Jesus. It may indeed be naïve to think we can
answer the question of historicity in a final sense and without subjectivity; it is
equally naïve to think that either of these realities will stop us from trying to
answer it at all.
Against this broader background of scholarly approaches to the historical
Jesus, this article will join recent voices in advocating the “Jesus-memory approach”
to the historical Jesus. This method stands in contrast to the dominant
“criteria approach” to the historical Jesus, which employs criteria of authenticity
to sanitize Gospel traditions as authentic before connecting them to the
historical Jesus.The particular contribution of this article, however, is to make
explicit the indebtedness of the criteria approach to form criticism, and thus
why the Jesus-memory approach is a better means of postulating the actual past
of Jesus. For, foundationally, arguments about the Gospels and historicity are
actually about the nature and development of the Jesus tradition, and thus its
possible connections to the actual past. In this regard, this article will break
into two main sections. The first half will argue that the criteria approach has
accepted an inadequate form-critical conception of the development of the
Jesus tradition. The second half will then present the Jesus-memory approach,
which differs from the criteria approach both in its conception of the Jesus
tradition and its determination of the historian’s task in search of the historical
Jesus.
class in Acts 4:13b, and specifically with the disciples’ “illiteracy” and “unlearnedness,”
is out of step with a sustained redactional strategy in his Gospel, whereby
he consistently removed the Gospel of Mark’s associations of Jesus with the
manual-labor class and offered an alternative image of Jesus as a scribal-literate
teacher. This redactional strategy is particularly clear in Mark’s and Luke’s differing
portrayals of Jesus as a synagogue teacher. Acts 4:13b may constitute a Lukan
cameo of the Markan Jesus, but, regardless of this possibility, Acts 4:13b presents
a moment of discontinuity between Luke’s Gospel and Acts that has been overlooked.
The primary purpose of the article is to articulate the oddity of Luke’s
interpretive choice in Acts 4:13b in light of his other images of Jesus and his
portrayal of the Spirit in Luke-Acts. The essay closes with a possible solution:
Luke has, in his Gospel, portrayed Jesus in imago Pauli.
2005 eine grundlegende Einführung in die social memory theory vor. Seitdem hat die neue Forschungsrichtung ebenso rasch Befürworter wie Gegner efunden. Viele Schlüsselfragen der neutestamentlichen Exegese werden inzwischen unter der Perspektive des sogenannten „memory approach“ diskutiert. Dieser zweiteilige Beitrag befasst sich mit dem status quaestionis nach den ersten zehn Jahren social memory research in der Evangelienforschung. Der erste Teil konzentriert sich auf die Arbeit dreier einschlägiger Theoretiker, deren Beitrag für die Evangelienforschung von besonderer Bedeutung ist: Maurice Halbwachs, Jan Assmann und Barry Schwartz.
This volume begins with an overview of "ancient media studies" and a brief history of research to orient the novice reader to the field and the broader research context of the book. It features individual entries of 300-5000 words on terms and topics commonly encountered in studies of the Bible in ancient media culture. Each entry defines the term/concept under consideration, then offers more sustained discussion of the topic often with particular attention to its relevance to the study of the Bible and related literature. For convenience, individual entries are catalogued alphabetically and cross-referenced to indicate connections between the various topics; electronic versions of this resource are internally hyperlinked using the same reference system.