Chapter 132 of 404

The Criteria of “Dissimilarity” (Uniqueness) and Embarrassment

One criterion, that of dissimilarity, has particularly fallen on hard times. The criterion excludes the likelihood of Jesus having a high degree of continuity with his Jewish contemporaries and the likelihood of his disciples having a high degree of continuity with his teachings.²²² From what we know of ancient teachers and their schools, however, the reverse is far more likely. The criterion is therefore useful only in its positive role: what later Christians would not have invented is authentic tradition (this resembles what scholars currently call the criterion of embarrassment). This criterion of embarrassment can be useful.²²³

In recent years scholars in the discipline have thus seriously critiqued the negative use of this criterion and urged special caution regarding it.²²⁴ The rising dissatisfaction easily evident a decade ago²²⁵ is currently a relatively strong consensus against the feasibility of this particular form-critical approach, and not surprisingly so. Second Questers used the criterion to emphasize Jesus’ uniqueness (a status they believed theologically useful);²²⁶ most Third Questers set Jesus in his Jewish context, hence tend to emphasize a criterion of continuity.²²⁷

Finding a Jesus different from Judaism historically has anti-Semitic roots;²²⁸ a historian’s first focus should not be what is distinctive about Jesus, but what is characteristic of him.²²⁹ If one applied this criterion to Luther, accepting about him only what differed from both contemporary Catholicism and subsequent Lutheranism, one’s knowledge of Luther would prove meager indeed.²³⁰ The negative use of this criterion thus can produce only a “skewed . . . picture of Jesus,” one that wrongly isolates him from his known context.²³¹

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