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Christology, History, and Frankenstein's Monster: The Evolution of the Historical Jesus in John P. Meier

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Christopher McMahon
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In the first three volumes of his projected four-volume work on the historical Jesus, John P. Meier has articulated a position on the nature of historical inquiry that would exclude theological concerns from the pursuit of properly historical questions. For Meier, historical inquiry proceeds by means of a rigorous and commonly accepted methodology and finds confirmation in the emergence of a consensus among historians. Meier concedes that this methodology yields only a profile of Jesus’ ministry and death. This profile is a compilation of various pieces of an inherently incomplete puzzle, and to this extent, he compares the results of historical Jesus research to the popular image of Victor Frankenstein’s monster—a mass of assembled pieces, hardly identifiable as a “real” human being. When brought to bear on properly theological questions, this profile—this monster—exercises a negative function. Since the historical Jesus is a hypothetical reconstruction, it is not the object of Christian faith, but can serve as a restraint against flights of theological fancy and preserve the autonomy of the historian (or the historical critical exegete) against the encroachment of theology, or ideology.

This paper contends that Meier’s practice of historical Jesus research goes beyond the narrow methodology and the modest goals he has articulated. While Meier has remained stridently faithful to his understanding of history and historical methodology, one can recognize, not massive shifts, but rather tensions, in his work, in particular, the tension between Meier’s formal statements on methodology and his performance of historical Jesus research. The paper will seek to advance the general discussion of the relevance of historical inquiry for the Christian faith by examining the work of John P. Meier on the historical Jesus and the manner in which that work has evolved through the publication of the first three volumes of A Marginal Jew.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 83 , Issue 981 , November 2002 , pp. 504 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the College Theology Society annual meeting on May 31, 2002 at St. John's University, Jamaica, New York.

References

2 Meier, John, Christ and His Mission: Essays in Christology and Ecclesiology (Good News Studies, 30, Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazer, 1990), 34Google Scholar.

3 This point has formed the nucleus of Luke Timothy Johnson's negative assessment of Meier's project (see The Real Jesus [San Francisco: Harper, 1995]; see also his reviews of A Marginal Jew in Commonweal April 24, 1992, pp. 24–26; Nov., 18, 1994, pp. 33–35; Nov., 9, 2001, pp. 21–23).

4 Galvin, John P., “From the Humanity of Christ to the Jesus of History: A Paradigm Shift in Catholic Christology,” Theological Studies 55 (1994): 252–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Loewe, William P., “From the Humanity of Christ to the Historical Jesus,” Theological Studies 61 (2000): 314–331CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 John P. Meier, “Who Really Was Jesus o Nazareth?” in the “Outlook” section of The Washington Post, December 23, 1984, pp. 1 and 5; idem, “Jesus Among the Historians,”New York Times Book Review, December 21, 1986, pp. 1, 16–19; idem, “Scripture as a Source for Theology The Catholic Theological Society of America Proceedings 43 (1988): 1–14Google Scholar; idem, “Jesus Among the Historians,”“Jesus among the Theologians I”“Jesus Among the Theologians II,” in The Mission of Christ and His Church Good New Studies, 30 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazer, 1990); idem, “The Historical Jesus: Rethinking Some Concepts,: Theological Studies 51 (1990): 3–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Although antecedent criteria have been discussed since the Enlightenment, a continuous discussion of the criteria of historicity has been sustained from the very beginning of form criticism until today. In this regard, Meier's criteria of historicity are dependant on the insights and shortcomings of form and redaction criticism. Unlike the rather unwieldy discussions of criteria in historical Jesus research, Meier presents a crisp and focused discussion of five primary criteria and several secondary criteria. His presentation of criteria is most directly inspired by Schillebceckx, but as always, Meier is familiar with the vast expanse of literature on the matter. For an important overview of the development of the criteria see Porter, Stanley E., The Criteria for Authenticity in Historical Jesus Research: Previous Discussion and New Proposals, JSNTS 191 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

7 Harvey, Van A. (The Historian and the Believer [New York: Crossroad, 1966, 1996]Google Scholar offers an important overview of this issue in terms of an ethics or morality of historical knowledge. For an interesting assessment of Harvey see Tilley, Terrence W., “Practicing History, Practicing Theology,” in Theology and the New Histories, Macy, Gary ed., (CTS Annual Volume 44; New York: Orbis, 1999), 1–20Google Scholar.

8 Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, v. I: The Roots of the Problem and the Person (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 1Google Scholar.

9 Meier, John P., “Jesus” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Brown, Raymond E., Fitzmyer, Joseph, and Murphy, Roland eds. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), 1317Google Scholar. Meier repeats this definition and those that follow throughout the three volumes of A Marginal Jew. This definition of the goal of historical Jesus research was not invented by Meier, but comes from Robinson, James M. (A New Quest for the Historical Jesus and Other Essays [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959], 31Google Scholar; see n.3 for further discussion and Biehl, Peter, “Zur Frage nach dem historischen Jesus,” Theologische Rundschau 24 [1956‐7]: 55Google Scholar).

10 A Marginal Jew, vol. 1,198.

11 Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, v. I: The Roots of the Problem and the Person (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 10Google Scholar. This approach to history is pejoratively labeled “scissors and paste history” by Collingwood, R.G., The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1946), 257–263, 269 f., 274–82Google Scholar as quoted in Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1994), 205Google Scholar.

12 Meier, John P., “The Present State of the Third Quest’ for the Historical Jesus: Loss and Gain,” Biblica 80 (1999): 463Google Scholar.

13 Meier, “Jesus,” 1328.

14 Lonergan, 197.

15 Meyer, Ben, “The Relevance of Horizon,” Downside Review 386 (1994): 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Reality and Illusion in New Testament Scholarship: A Primer in Critical Realist Hermeneutics (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazer, 1994). Others have followed in this line of criticism including Kelly, Tony, “The Historical Jesus and Human Subjectivity: A Response to John Meier,” Pacifica 4 (1991): 202–228CrossRefGoogle Scholar and N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol 2., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) among others.

16 Roch Kereszty, “Historical Research, theological inquiry, and the reality of Jesus: Reflections on the method of Meier, J. P.,” Communio 19 (1992): 576–600Google Scholar. Kereszty uses Paul Ricoeur's notion of the role of subjectivity in the historian's craft as articulated in “Objectivity and Subjectivity in History,” in History and Truth, trans. Kelbley, Charles A. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, 1965), 21–40Google Scholar.

17 John Meier accuses Ben Meyer of “rampant subjectivism.” See John Meier, “A Marginal Jew‐ Retrospect and Prospect,” (Archbishop Gerety Lecture at Seton Hall University, February 18, 1993, http://theology.shu.edu/gerety.htm).

18 A Marginal Jew, vol. 2, pp. 630–631Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 207–208.

20 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 241,252.

21 In some ways this is similar to N.T. Wright's reconstruction of the stories that informed the worldview of first‐century Judaism where he employs the structuralism of A.J. Greimas; see Wright, N.T., The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 1; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 215–243Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., 195 n.70.

23 Powell, Mark Allen, Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1998), 144Google Scholar; Hurtado, Larry W., “A Taxonomy of Recent Historical‐Jesus Research,” in Whose Historical Jesus, Arnal, William E and Desjardins, Michael eds. (Studies in Christianity and Judaism n. 7, Waterloo, Ontario: Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, 1997), 283Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., 247.

25 Ibid., vol. 3, p. 250, emphasis added.