The Prophet Jesus and the Renewal of Israel: Moving beyond a diversionary debate
Richard Horsley
Eerdmans £12.99
(978-0-8028-6807-7)
Church Times Bookshop £11.70 (Use code CT356)

Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity
Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, editors
T. & T. Clark £19.99
(978-0-567-37723-4)
Church Times Bookshop £18 (Use code CT356)

RICHARD HORSLEY, author of several books on different aspects of historical-Jesus research, rejects the schema championed by many since Schweitzer and Bultmann that Jesus was fundamentally an eschatological prophet, foretelling the imminent end of the world under the image of a universal catastrophe and the beginning of a new order of things.

He rejects also the commonly held view among scholars that this imagery was current in the writing of Judaism contemporary with Jesus. The whole attempt to discover the thought and mission of Jesus from straining out the truly authentic sayings of Jesus is mistaken.

Instead, he was "generating a movement of the renewal of Israel against the rulers of Israel", represented by "the representatives of the temple-state, the scribes and Pharisees". The whole apocalyptic scenario is "a synthetic modern construct", and the focus is really on the conflict between Jesus and the Jerusalem and Roman leaders. His aim was to liberate the people from their economically desperate plight, a "disintegrating society of people at each other's throats", by a return to the covenant. The prophetic message of Jesus was in the line of such prophets as Amos and Jeremiah.

Much of this message has already been expressed in Professor Horsley's 1993 book, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence. As is often true of veteran scholars, the author does not always express his evidence fully, relying on generalisations presumed established in his earlier works. Readers unfamiliar with these works might be grateful for clearer evidence that the plight of the people was really so desperate, and that the scribes and Pharisees (who took no part in the arrest and execution of Jesus) were representatives of the temple-state, and even that Jesus was acting to remove the Roman leaders.

It might also have been helpful to explain how Jesus acquired a convincing reputation as a healer without actually effecting any healings. It is also puzzling that his crucifixion "may well have been one of the factors that led some of his followers" to believe that he had been "vindicated by God in resurrection".

The title of the second book could mislead the unwary. It is a study in research for the historical Jesus, and sets out to signal the demise of the criteria, widely used since the era of form criticism, to establish the authenticity of words and actions of Jesus. Essays by a distinguished team of scholars show that each of the criteria is either unworkable or unfit for purpose. They are, as Chris Keith points out, too dependent on the historical assumptions of form criticism to survive the supersession of that movement.

The foreword is charmingly written by Morna Hooker, who has been proclaiming this message since 1970. Each of the common criteria is examined and found wanting in turn: Semitic traces by Loren Stuckenbruck, coherence by Anthony Le Donne, dissimilarity by Dagmar Winter, embarrassment by Rafael Rodriguez, and multiple attestation by Mark Goodacre.

The question must (and does) arise: where do we go from here? The book concludes with three essays that maintain that a historical Jesus formed out of individual sayings authenticated by the criteria would in any case be irrelevant. Scot McKnight holds that our faith is founded not on the historical Jesus, but on the Jesus of the Gospels and of the Church, painted differently by a whole host of historical-Jesus scholars.

Chris Keith concludes with the suggestion that anti-criterion scholars are going in the right direction by looking for broader patterns in the actions and sayings of Jesus. It is a return to C. H. Dodd, and to Morna Hooker herself.

Fr Henry Wansbrough OSB is a monk of Ampleforth, emeritus Master of St Benet's Hall, Oxford, and a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.