The Criterion of Dissimilarity
The criterion of dissimilarity. Over the past couple of class periods, I have introduced my undergraduate students to the problems that confront critical scholars who try to reconstruct what Jesus really said and did. These problems are created by the nature of our materials especially the New Testament Gospels.  This is why I begin my course, which focuses on the historical approach to the New Testament, in something other than the chronological order of events or writings. Irony! But an irony with pretty compelling logic. If we began with a chronological order of writings, of course, we would begin the course with the writings of Paul, since these are the first surviving writings from any early Christian. Earlier by 15-30 years than the Gospels. But it doesn’t make sense to start with Paul (in my opinion) if you don’t know something about Jesus. And you can’t begin with Jesus unless you know something about our sources for Jesus, our Gospels. And so for a historical approach to the New Testament, we go out of chronological [...]