What role does (or should) textual criticism have for study of the historical Jesus? I ask this for three reasons:
(1) Very few text critics write on the historical Jesus. The exceptions being perhaps B.F. Westcott in his book
An Introduction to the Study of the Gospels and Bart Ehrman in his book
Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. (Our co-blogger Peter Head has also written an article for
Journal of the Study for the Historical Jesus, but it had nothing to do with textual criticism).
(2) Many books on the historical Jesus have as part of their introduction a discussion on the nature of the oral tradition beneath the Gospels and the theological creativity of the Evangelists in shaping the traditions within the Gospels; but very little attention is given to the nature of the textual tradition that transmits the Gospels to modern readers. One might argue that there was a reliable stream of oral tradition from Jesus to the Evangelists (e.g. Gerhardsson, Riesner, Hengel, Bauckham, et. al.) and that the Gospels, though clearly theological biographies, have not so theologized the tradition to make all history irrecoverble. But all that is of little consolation if we do not have a reliable textual tradition to work with. We cannot automatically assume that UBS4 or NA27 takes us back to the historical Jesus even if there was a reliable oral tradition and even if the Evangelists and their sources were not too creative in shaping the tradition. Some like Bultmann eschewed the quest for the historical Jesus for theological reasons (it is tantamount to seeking "Christ according to the flesh") but one of Bultmann's students, Helmut Koester, has seen the quest as impossible partly due to the nature of the Gospels. Koester himself writes:
"[T]he text of the Synoptic Gospels was very unstable during the first and second centuries. With respect to Mark, one can be fairly certain that only its revised text has achieved canonical status, while the original text (attested only by Matthew and Luke) has not survived. With respect to Matthew and Luke, there is no guarantee that the archetypes of the manuscript tradition are identical with the original text of each Gospel. The harmonizations of these two Gospels demonstrate that their text was not sacrosanct and that alterations could be expected ... New Testament textual critics have been deluded by the hypothesis that the archetypes of the textual tradition which were fixed ca. 200 CE ... are (almost) identical with the autographs. This cannot be confirmed by any external evidence. On the contrary, whatever evidence there is indicates that not only minor, but also substantial revisions of the original texts have occurred during the first hundred years of the transmission" ("The Text of the Synoptic Gospels in the Second Century," in W.L. Petersen, ed., Gospel Traditions in the Second Century, p. 37)
In other words, one needs to establish that the textual tradition is just as stable as the oral tradition in order for the quest to be possible!
(3) Most historical Jesus book say very little about textual criticism and when discussion does occur it is usually confined to comments on well-known variants link the pericope de adultera and are usually dependent upon Metzger's textual commentary when they do make comments.
What I propose then is that textual criticism can contribute to historical Jesus studies in the following ways:
First, a prolegomena to study of the historical Jesus requires some statement on both the nature of the oral tradition and the nature of textual tradition. For this reason I find it odd that Bart Ehrman argues for the
orthodox corruption of Scripture while at the same time writing books about the historical
Jesus,
Paul, Peter, and Mary Magdalene. He cannot have it both ways.
Second, researchers could make greater use of the
agrapha found in textual variants as part of their source material. To my knowledge only
Joachim Jeremias and
Marvin Meyer have made significant use of this material. The agrapha are conveniently listed at
Text Excavation as:
Third, textual criticism can also be used to inform certain discussions in the life of the historical Jesus. The one that comes to my mind is where did Jesus exorcise the Demoniac in the vicinity of the Decapolis, was it Gedara, Gergesa, or Gerasa (see Mk. 5.1 and par.)?
Any other possible contributions of textual criticism to the study of the historical Jesus?
Historical Jesus studies and textual criticism are two subjects that one does not regularly think of together. But recently I was looking over my copy of Anthony Le Donne’s little book Historical Jesus: What Can We Know and How Can We Know It? (2011) and came across a section which does bring them together. The context is Le Donne’s discussion about the problem of arriving at historical certainty or objectivity (think Lessing’s “ugly ditch”). He writes: