A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol 2: Mentor, Message and Miracle. - book reviews

In an earlier issue of this journal (April 24, 1992), I reviewed the first volume of Father Meier's (now projected three-volume) work on the historical Jesus, together with J.D. Crossan's, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. My review was fundamentally positive concerning the approach Meier had taken. Now we meet the author a little further down what he calls a "long and dusty road."

The path toward the historical Jesus indeed appears lengthy. The first volume used some 500 pages to bring the reader through prolegomena and childhood. The present volume uses some 1,000 pages of text (about 400 of which consist of notes) to deal with three aspects of Jesus' ministry that Meier designates as Mentor (John the Baptist), Message (the future and inbreaking kingdom of God), and Miracle. Given the pace and bulk to this point, the reader may be forgiven for failing to share Meier's optimism that everything else can be done in one more volume.

Meier is aware that the size of the project may overwhelm its intelligibility, and provides transition essays at the beginning and end of this volume: one recapitulates the contents of the first volume, while the other summarizes the argument of the present volume and suggests what will follow in the third. He is also helpful to the reader in many small ways: while not brilliant, his prose is clear and serviceable for a long journey; his tone is calm and fair; his frequent small recapitulations and summaries help the reader maintain a sense of direction.

The book follows with unusual consistency the clear method described in the first volume. Meier considers the four canonical Gospels to be the most reliable sources for the historical Jesus. But since their narrative order is one shaped by the respective evangelists, the historian is reduced to locating what elements in the Gospels can claim a source in Jesus, or as Meier puts it, "possible signals of material going back to Jesus," and what broad patterns in Jesus' ministry these might suggest. The Gospel materials are assessed according to the criteria of historicity: multiple attestation, discontinuity, coherence, embarrassment, and so forth.

In sum, Meier's quest is for those pieces of the Gospel that can, by strict canons of scientific inquiry, be verified with a high degree of probability. His approach is consistently to locate the pieces which best satisfy all the criteria - and thereby are most probable - and then to argue outward to other pieces and patterns which, while incapable of standing alone, cohere with the pattern or piece established as more probable.

Thus, it is probable in the highest degree that John was a significant religious figure in first-century Palestine in his own right, that he exercised a ministry of baptism, and that his message had an eschatological character. It is also highly probable that Jesus was baptized by John. The connections between these points, however, and their possible significance, become much more difficult to establish.

Likewise, Meier can state convincingly that Jesus proclaimed the rule of God; with considerable probability he can claim that this proclamation had a future dimension; and with somewhat less probability, he can suggest that it also involved a present realization. Finally, Meier demonstrates that the element of miracle working is so pervasive in every strand of tradition that it must be said to be a historically reliable part of the Gospels. When it comes to determining the historicity of certain kinds of miracles or specific reports of miracles, however, the level of probability drops off sharply. The quest of the historical Jesus is here, in short, the quest of the "historically verifiable Jesus."

There is much to praise in the book in addition to Meier's clarity of exposition and consistency in method. His erudition is remarkable. There is little that has been said touching on the gospel traditions that Meier does not mention, deliberate, and adjudicate. As an author whose work entered the conversation tangentially at one point, I can attest to his evenhandedness and fairness even at points of disagreement.

Two substantive points of emphasis deserve special attention. First, Meier's attention to the eschatological dimension of both John and Jesus provides a helpful antidote to scholars who have tended to eliminate the eschatological from Jesus' ministry in favor of a (only slightly Jewish) Cynic philosopher. Second, his 500 pages devoted to the tradition of Jesus as miracle-worker is a useful counterbalance to scholars who find these traditions embarrassing and reduce Jesus to a collection of his sayings. In particular, Meier's setting up of the discussion and his sorting through the various issues, attaching themselves to the picture of Jesus as wonderworker is impressive.

Some aspects of the book are less praiseworthy. It seems clear that the concern to consider every option and discuss every opinion - while laudatory in the abstract - increasingly weighs down Meier's work with a load of lore disproportionate to its yield in insight. The discussions of individual passages are dense enough. But the reader is also required to work through secondary discussions of subsidiary issues without end. Not all of these are necessary. Not all of them are helpful. I understand and applaud Meier's concern for balance and a fair exposition of the evidence. I am not convinced, however, that a prudential pruning of the scholarly by-plays might not improve both the accessibility of the book and the clarity of its very argument.

The problem becomes most acute, perhaps, in the discussion of the individual miracle accounts. The yield is mostly negative. Meier makes a case for the historical probability of three exorcisms, three healings of the blind, and two healings of the paralyzed. Working through the author's reasons why other candidates were not given the same rating, the reader is inadvertently exposed to the kinds of circularity in argument that unavoidably attend such discussions.

Concerning Meier's overall approach, at least so far as we have seen it in these first two volumes, two sets of questions appear to be appropriate. One set of questions concerns the difficulty of remaining within his self-defined framework; the other concerns the strength of the claims made by the project as such. I pose them not because Meier's book is an unworthy intellectual effort but precisely because it is so careful, so consistent, and so methodologically self-conscious.

Meier explicitly acknowledges the fragility of historical reconstruction. As a good historian, he also recognizes that degrees of probability rather than certainty characterize the game. He also recognizes that his chosen method can yield only pieces and patterns. Yet pieces and patterns do not really constitute history. The need for narrative and the need for meaning press even this careful scholar to draw what appear to this reader as false inferences, in a tendency that might be called "creeping certainty."

Reasonably enough, Meier prefers to work from more probable pieces to less probable ones. He chooses the strongest case in a class on which to base a claim: a piece, for example, that meets all the criteria in an obvious fashion. In the light of that piece, he considers other pieces in the same class, pieces that on their own do not meet the criteria as fully. The principle of coherence, however, is heavily invoked to connect the bare bones and provide some sense of flesh. That principle can be stated roughly as: "If by the rigorous application of all the criteria, we show that it is highly probable that Jesus did or said X, then it makes sense that those elements agreeing with X are also probable." In strict terms, such an inference is illegitimate. An element that on its own evidence is merely possible does not become probable because it agrees with something that has been shown to be probable. It simply remains possible.

And even if we did show the high probability that Jesus did two different things, we are not thereby allowed to understand these things in the light of each other, as though they were mutually interpretive. The reason is clear: we are lacking the knowledge of all the other things said and done that provide the only real context for the interpretation of specific deeds or sayings. Thus, it is historically possible that Jesus' exorcisms and his proclamation of the kingdom of God are connected, but we cannot infer that connection, or state it as probable, simply from determining the probability that Jesus did both things.

Above all, the method espoused by Meier does not allow us to move from the bald statement, "Jesus probably said this thing," to inferences concerning what Jesus might have thought or felt or chosen in saying that thing. But, in fact, Meier does make such inferences: "Why, then, does Jesus choose this unusual phrase ... [it] indicates that he takes with utter seriousness the observation made above: the kingdom of God is simply a more abstract way of speaking of God as king." The method does not allow us to say "Jesus took with utter seriousness." On the next page, Meier states, "Nourished as he was on the Scriptures of Israel, Jesus was quite aware that God as creator had always been king...." But it is impossible for his method to reach "Jesus was aware." A final example: "We begin to see why Jesus was not interested in and did not issue pronouncements about concrete social and political reforms, either for the world in general or for Israel in particular...." There are two problems with each of these statements: they imply access to Jesus' internal consciousness that Meier's method could never provide; and they assume information drawn from the Gospel narratives but not yet in any way established by Meier's strict criteria of historicity.

We see, therefore, that the synthetic picture of Jesus that Meier begins to advance in this volume, and sketches with considerable confidence in his final essay, owes more than a little to a process of false inference, and to the contribution made by the Gospel narratives and interpretations that the method began by explicitly eschewing.

A final set of questions concerns the yield of all this impressive effort that Meier has pursued with such diligence, intelligence, and integrity. I note with some bemusement that the advance readers' copy I am using for this review trumpets the volume as "John Meier's quest for the real Jesus." This is a claim that Meier himself has repeatedly and explicitly rejected! He knows that his method will not yield "the real Jesus."

The harder question is whether it can yield anything more than "the historically verifiable Jesus." I think probably not. This method enables the examiner to reach elements that probably went back to Jesus. That is, they are the "most certainly historical" elements of the Gospel. But "most certain" in historiography means simply "most probable."

As I have suggested, even if we are able to determine pieces of the gospel tradition that most probably go back to Jesus, we are not thereby allowed to make inferences from a collection of facts to the sequence, frequency, proportion, relative importance, and above all, meaning of these facts. It should be observed further that what can be verified historically (that which is "most probable" in historical terms) is not at all necessarily what is most central or pivotal to Jesus' ministry, any more than we can deduce from what is unique to a person what is essential to that person.

Things that can be determined by historical methods, furthermore, are rendered neither more nor less real by such determination than those things that cannot be determined by historical methods. All that is affected is the quality of our knowledge of those things. Nor is our knowledge made greater or better or even more certain. It has simply become more "historical" in character.

What is most important about any human character - and this holds as true for Meier and me and Socrates as it does for Jesus - is precisely what eludes the methods of critical historiography, namely the meaning of that character. One can show that Jesus exorcized demons, spoke in parables, and spoke of God's rule, but from this evidence one cannot say why he so acted, or what it signified to him. The problem here is not the lack of data but the intrinsic inaccessibility of meaning, which must derive from the interpretation of the facts rather than the facts themselves.

I think Father Meier's achievement is this: against all the crazy theories that pretend to be critical yet are not, and press the pieces into any number of dubious shapes, he shows that several of the pieces that the Gospel narratives emphasize as important to the figure of Jesus have a very high degree of historical verifiability. Not a meager accomplishment. I suspect, however, that Meier hoped also to finish the quest for the historical Jesus by finally doing it right. And he may do so, precisely by revealing how, when it is done right, it does not get us where we wanted to go.

I suspect that when the dust settles - even on this long road - we shall find that the "historical Jesus" is just where he was all the time: in the fourfold testimony and interpretation of the Gospel narratives. For, if what is essential to a person is not the facts of when and where or the facts of what was said and done, but rather the meaning of those facts for those whose experience and memory of the person was also part of their historical reality, then there is no place else for us to look.

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