Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria, The

The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria. By Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter. Translated by M. Eugene Boring. Louisville: Westminster John Rnox, 2002, xxiv + 344 pp., $29.95 paper.

This is a fine translation of a significant work that first appeared in German in 1997 as Die Kriterienfrage In der Jesusforschung: Vom Differenzkriterium zum Plausibilitätskriterium. The original German title is a better approximation of the relative shape of this jointly authored volume, since the bulk of the book is concerned with the criterion of double dissimilarity, even though its positive contribution is in presenting the authors' new criterion of plausibility. Theissen is of course widely known in NT studies for important work in historical Jesus research, among other areas. Winter was his doctoral student at Heidelberg University (finishing in 1995). This volume is a joint product that develops work on the criteria for authenticity by Theissen, but incorporates major research that comes from Winter's doctoral dissertation on the criterion of double dissimilarity (part 2). The critique of double dissimilarity constitutes well over half of this volume. This is especially evident when one includes the lengthy and useful (though somewhat limited) appendix that presents formulations and comments upon the criterion of dissimilarity (45 pp.). As a result, there is some imbalance both in the content and especially in the style of the work, between the doctoral portion and the other chapters. In a sense, this is really two books, a major one by Winter, and a much briefer but no less important one by Theissen and Winter. However, the research by Winter is necessary for establishing the foundation for the proposal regarding the criterion of plausibility.

The first part is concerned with the issue of the quest for criteria in historical Jesus research, emphasizing the development of the criterion of dissimilarity. One of the several important observations that it makes is that what the authors call the "crisis of historical interest in Jesus" (p. 2) that occurred alongside the development of form criticism and "kerygma theology" (p. 2) (sometimes called the "no quest" period of historical Jesus research) was really a German phenomenon: "While in English language scholarship-despite Schweitzer and Bultmann-a broad stream of interest in the historical Jesus continued without interruption . . ." (p. 2). They also note that the so-called Third Quest of historical Jesus research was "relatively unnoticed in Germany" (p. 4). In other words, Theissen and Winter provide useful evidence that the typical three- or fourstage conception of historical Jesus research is really only a characterization of a very narrow and often distinctly German type of historical Jesus research. This chapter also discusses the major issues that have arisen in defining the criteria and then focuses upon the criterion of dissimilarity in terms of defining it and its relation to other criteria, such as the criterion of coherence.

The second part offers a thorough and lengthy discussion of the criterion of dissimilarity. This survey, dependent upon Winter's research, reaches back to the Renaissance and traces its development through the Enlightenment to nineteenth-century notions of personality and heroism. After this broad sweep, the authors concentrate upon how the two prongs of the criterion, dissimilarity to early Christianity and dissimilarity to Judaism, were developed by the major figures in historical Jesus research, from Strauss to the present. Although the authors recognize that the quest continued unabated in the twentieth century (see above), they still utilize a form of the typical schema to depict historical Jesus research and still select one person's work as representative of the period. So, for the liberal and history-of-religions quest (what some would recognize as the original or first quest) they discuss Wilhelm Bousset; for the period of dialectical theology and skepticism fostered by form criticism (what some would recognize as the "no quest" period) they discuss the work of Rudolf Bultmann (a recognition that there was questing during this period); for the new quest the work of Günther Bornkamm; and for the third quest the work of James Charlesworth. The authors recognize that one could have selected other scholars (others no doubt would have!), but these suffice to make their point. The point is that the criterion is really two distinct criteria, with scholars emphasizing sometimes one and sometimes the other dimension, often to the neglect of the other. They find an ahistorical bias behind both, and conclude that the criterion fails to perform what it was designed to do and ends up with a Jesus who was "without historical antecedents" and had "no continuing effect on history" (p. 168).

In the light of this depressing (though no doubt accurate) conclusion, Theissen and Winter propose a new criterion of plausibility. This is in effect a four-fold criterion that sees a plausibility of relation between an event or person and its historical effects and a plausibility of relation between a historical context and what it produces. They also recognize that a figure such as Jesus would sometimes agree and sometimes disagree with these respective contexts. Surprisingly, the extended example that they use is the analogous one of sayings of Montanist prophets, rather than one from the NT. This chapter is usefully supplemented by what has been presented in Theissen and A. Mertz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (trans. J. Bowden; London: SCM Press, 1998) 116-18.