Whose Historical Jesus?

14. Recent Concerns: The Scholar as Engage

14. Recent Concerns: The Scholar as Engage Leif E. Vaage 1. Subjectivity and the Subject of the Historical Jesus The following observations are not, in any sense, a neutral review of the preceding essays. One reason is my own inevitable interest in the endurance of those views I find appealing. More importantly, I see no merit in aspiring to the perspective of some "transcendent eyeball" (the term is Ralph Waldo Emerson's), if only because it seems to me that one of the postures still befuddling contemporary efforts to discuss the historical Jesus is precisely the patina of "disinterestedness" or methodologically-engineered inner distance from the governing concerns of a particular relationship—whatever it might be—to the indicated object of inquiry. I see no future, therefore, for a conversation about the historical Jesus mired in debates over "criteria of authenticity" or the search for canons of universal, viz., independent, judgment; although let me hasten to remark that I do believe that the conversation can be markedly improved through increased attention to better procedures of shared inquiry and evaluation. First, the question of bias or (in the language of Hans Georg Gadamer) prejudice: I agree with Sean Freyne in the conclusion to his paper that if "we are all prepared to say at the outset what is at stake for [each of] us in our search for Jesus—ideologically, academically, personally—then there is some possibility that we can reach an approximation to the truth of things, at least for now"; and with Jane Schaberg, when she writes that feminist scholarship "challenges us as critics [of early Christian literature about Jesus and of modern historical-Jesus research] to become more conscious of, and to state openly in our work, who we are, what and for whom we work, where our allegiances and commitments and limitations lie, what our experience has been," again especially regarding the figure of Jesus; and also with Grant LeMarquand, in his contention that "'bias' may in fact have a positive role. Our angle of vision heightens our awareness of certain realities. A bias may alert an historian to possibilities of reconstructing the past which others without a similar prejudice may not have noticed." Of interest here is not the old-fashioned epistemological problem of "perspective"—the struggle of so many blind people to describe the elephant they are variously touching—or our inability in three (or four) dimensional space to see anything whole, and hence the need to do so always partially from a particular angle. What captivates, rather, is the social fact of situated discourses and their specific subjects. The oft-touted "subjectivity" of historicalJesus research is simply a function of the fact that, unlike certain other forms of New Testament scholarship, the link here is still patent between who the 182 Whose Historical Jesus? particular scholar is, including the social grouping(s) to which she or he belongs, and the preferred form(s) into which the Jesus data have been made to fit. Thus, the more honest and precise we can be about exactly what makes "the historical Jesus" worth discussing and what we hope to gain from our "Jesus," the better chance there is that our conversation about the historical Jesus will produce not just scholarly smoke but intellectual fire and human warmth. This sort of clarification is necessary, in my opinion, even if one wishes to contend that the purpose of historical-Jesus research is merely "knowledge for knowledge's sake" (a conviction with its own social location). Do the authors of the preceding essays indicate clearly why they think that their subject is worth pursuing? Overall, not as much as I believe is required in order to be helpful; although, again, I find the conclusion to Freyne's paper exceptional in this regard. At the same time, Freyne's apparent assumption is that the basis for research into Jesus' life is, even now as it was in the beginning, the enduring desire to make certain christological claims. The levity of Mack's opening remarks has the virtue of frankness (7rappr|Oia; Mack may not have imagined these statements as more than a couple of "throw-away" comments, but their levity is not without comparative import). The same remarks also implicitly make clear the degree to which debates about the historical Jesus often function as academic junk bonds, suggesting real growth in knowledge but serving mainly as a chance for scholars to engage in intellectual competition with each other. However important and...