05-10-2007, 05:21 PM | #1 | |
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Dissimilarity principle
This is really a question for CHC, Solon, and Jeff Lebowski. The other day I read a blog entry by April DeConick about form criticism and the historical Jesus. She seems to be very negative about the principle of Dissimilarity. Is there a movement to not use this principle or is this pretty idiosyncratic? Here is what she said:
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Last edited by pelagius; 05-10-2007 at 06:34 PM. |
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05-10-2007, 06:04 PM | #2 | |
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1- Her criticism of the application of dissimilarity that she mentions specifically is a good and fair one. Most historians proper of early Christianity do not use dissimilarity to get rid of the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus. If anything, they use dissimilarity to AFFIRM them. Not all do, though. The folks she is criticising have it backwards IMO. 2- Now for where she goes overboard: Dissimilarity IS an important tool for historians, especially reconstructing the life of Jesus, who wrote nothing about himself. Since we are at the mercy of much later theologically motivated tracts about the life of Jesus, dissimilarity is crucial but limited. Here's how: The criterion of dissimilarity as a historians' tool seeks to identify true sayings of Jesus and facts about Jesus based on their dissimilarity with the views of the biographer. For example, the datum about Jesus being from Nazareth is certainly true since it cuts against the grain of prophecies about Jerusalem that were applied to Jesus in the time of the writings about him. If an author were to have made anything up, it would have been Jesus being born and raised in Jerusalem. An example of a true saying would have been when Jesus talks about the imminent coming of the Son of Man in the third person, as if it refers to someone other than himself (later Christians of course believed that Jesus WAS the Son of Man-had they made up the saying it would have been Jesus clearly talking about himself). The limitations of this criterion involve the fact that it can only deal with what is *dissimilar* about the traditions. It can't, for example tell you whether a saying that would have fit the context of 75AD goes all the way back to Jesus. Such a tradition/saying might in fact go back, but obviously dissimilarity is of no help to determine that. In these cases you hope that the traditions are attested in other independent witnesses, or have contextual historical credibility that ties the tradition to reality. Bart Ehrman's NT textbook has a couple of nice sections that deal with the criteria historians use for dealing with such difficult ancient material. Hope that helps. |
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05-10-2007, 06:16 PM | #3 | |
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05-10-2007, 06:32 PM | #4 |
Charon
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What? You think the rest of us are too stupid to understand the question?
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05-10-2007, 06:36 PM | #5 |
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05-10-2007, 06:40 PM | #6 | |
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05-10-2007, 07:19 PM | #7 | |
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I read, in my own amateur way, a fair amount of biblical studies stuff including most of Ehrman's popular stuff and his textbook, a lot of reading from commentaries like the Word Biblical Commentary, Oxford Bible Commentary, New Jerome Bible Commentary, Anchor Bible Dictionary, Harper-Collins Bible Commentary, etc. I even read Metzger's, The Canon of the New Testament. However, the only books of I have read that specifically address the historical Jesus at length are Ehrman's textbook and Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium. |
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05-10-2007, 08:03 PM | #8 | |
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05-10-2007, 08:53 PM | #9 | |
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