NT Pod 69 asks "What is the criterion of dissimilarity in Historical Jesus research?" It is sixteen minutes long.
NT Pod 69: What is the Criterion of Dissimilarity? (mp3)
Feel free to leave your feedback below or on Twitter or on our Facebook page.
Thanks to Ram2000, "Me and You", for the opening theme, released under a Creative Commons agreement.
Mark, I'm not sure you have been entirely fair to this "criterion." It is only one small way of trying to make a measurement of authenticity. If Jesus can be entirely explained by his Jewish or post-Easter context, then we wouldn't have a way to measure the probability of authenticity. But to the extent that he cannot be explained by those contexts, then we do have measure--however slight and weak it may be. But it is only a measure of probability, never of certainty. We are asking how probable is it that this saying came from Jesus himself? Now to the extent that this method is motivated by theological concern, I agree, it subjects the method to bias. But it doesn't make the tool invalid or useful as one way to try to get at authentic Jesus material.
ReplyDelete