The quest for the historical Jesus in postmodern perspective: A hypothetical argument*

by Moiss Mayordomo and Peter Ben Smit [Baudolino:] And I said to myself, [] on the basis of these notes I would compose the Gesta Baudolini. So in the course of my journeys I carried with me the story of my life. But in the escape [] I lost these pages. It was like losing life itself. [Niketas Choniates, Byzantine historian:] You will tell me what you remember. I receive scraps of events, fragments of actions, and I extract a story from them, woven by a design of Providence. In saving my life you have given me what little future remains to me and I will repay you by giving you back the past you have lost [Baudolino:] But maybe my story has no meaning. [Niketas:] There are no stories without meaning. And I am one of those men who can find it even when others fail to see it. Afterwards the story becomes the book of the living, like a blaring trumpet that raises from the tomb those who have been dust for centuries Still it takes time, you have to consider the events, arrange them in order, find the connections, even the least visible ones.1

I. Introduction: Building a hypothesis in a war zone

Way back in the 1970s when post-structuralism first appeared on the academic stage many critical voices warned against what they considered a repeated and often extremely subtle denial of, a hedonist withdrawal from or the randomization of history.2 In spite of these early attacks, post-structuralism has not only survived (often under the broader umbrella of postmodernism) but also established itself in the field of historical studies.3 The postmodern
* We would like to thank Sam van Leer for correcting our English, Julia Mller-Clemm for graphical help and Ulrike Sals for some critical comments. All remaining mistakes are our own responsibility. 1 Umberto Eco, Baudolino (New York: Harcourt, 2002), 11f. 2 In that order: Frank Lentricchia, After the New Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), xiii; Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 150; Perry Anderson, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism (London: Verso, 1983), 48. For an early assessment cf. Derek Attridge, Geoff Bennington and Robert Young (eds.), Post-structuralism and the Question of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 3 The following theoretical contributions arguably belong to the vastly heterogeneous field of postmodern historiography: Frank R. Ankersmit, Narrative Logic: A Semantic Analysis of the Historians Language (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1983); History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Historical Representation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); Sublime Historical Experience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005); F.R. Ankersmit and Hans Kellner (eds.), A New Philosophy of History (London: Reaktion Books, 1995); Robert F. Berkhofer, Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995); Roger Chartier, On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language and Practices (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Elizabeth D. Ermarth, Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representational Time (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992); Hans-Jrgen Goertz, Unsichere Geschichte: Zur Theorie historischer Referentialitt (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2001); Keith Jenkins, On What is History?: From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (London: Routledge, 1995); Refiguring History: New Thoughts on an Old Discipline (London: Routledge, 2003); Patrick Joyce, The Return of History: Postmodernism and the Politics of Academic History in Britain, Past & Present 158 (1998): 207-235; Hans Kellner, Language and Historical Representation: Getting the Story Crooked (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989); Dominick LaCapra, History and Criticism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); Allan Megill (ed.), Rethinking Objectivity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994); Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History (London: Routledge, 1997); The New History (Harlow: Longman, 2003); Philipp Sarasin, Geschichtswissenschaft und Diskursanalyse (stw 1639; Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2003); Joan W. Scott (ed.), Feminism and History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Beverley C. Southgate, History: What and Why? Ancient, modern and postmodern Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1996); Postmodernism in History: Fear or Freedom? (London: Routledge, 2003); Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in nineteenth-century Europe (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,

2 challenge, though, has sparked a debate often marked by semi-religious zeal.4 Critics wonder if history might be on the way to becoming an endangered species, they fear that their profession has been shaken right down to its scientific and cultural foundations, they diagnose Clio under cultural shock and it is even suggested that literary critics and social theorists are doing nothing less than murdering our past.5 The dramatic dimension of this conflict has reached its (preliminary?) climax in a (in)famous and much cited statement from one of the leading British historians:
[I]n battling against people who would subject historical studies to the dictates of literary critics we historians are, in a way, fighting for our lives. Certainly, we are fighting for the lives of innocent young people beset by devilish tempters who claim to offer higher forms of thought and deeper truths and insights the intellectual equivalent of crack, in fact. Any acceptance of these theories even the most gentle or modest bow in their direction can prove fatal. [] Ad fontes remains the necessary war cry.6

So far the reports from the war zone.7 Although postmodern thinking has exerted some influence on exegesis and theology, it has not been integrated in any substantial way into mainstream historically-oriented biblical exegesis. 8 We would, thus, like to raise the question as to how historical Jesus research relates to the epistemological problems at stake in this ongoing debate. Since discussions on postmodernism have often been marred by prejudices and suspicion on both sides, we would like to lay open our own stance in this regard:9 As far as the daily use of postmodern
1973); Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Idem, 1978); The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Idem, 1987). Two important journals debating theory issues are History and Theory (Blackwell) and Rethinking History (Routledge). Some useful introductions and anthologies include Callum G. Brown, Postmodernism for Historians (Harlow: Longman, 2004); Christoph Conrad and Martina Kessel (eds.), Geschichte schreiben in der Postmoderne: Beitrge zur aktuellen Diskussion (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994); Herta Nagl-Docekal (ed.), Der Sinn des Historischen: Geschichtsphilosophische Debatten (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1996); Keith Jenkins (ed.), The Postmodern History Reader (London: Routledge, 1997); Kevin Passmore, Poststructuralism and History, in: Stefan Berger, et al. (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice (London: Arnold, 2003), 118-140; Willie Thompson, Postmodernism and History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004). 4 Mainly due to this controversy a number of historians resigned from the 1884-founded American Historical Association and formed The Historical Society with the aim of reorienting the historical profession toward an accessible, integrated history free from fragmentation, over-specialization, and political proscription (cf. http://www.bu.edu/historic/index.html and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Elisabeth LaschQuinn [eds.], Reconstructing History: The Emergence of a New Historical Society [New York: Routledge, 1999]). For an instructive entry into the British debate cf. Lawrence Stones short critical note History and PostModernism (Past & Present 131 [1991], 217f) and the following interchange between Patrick Joyce and Catriona Kelly on the one hand (133 [1991], 204-213) and L. Stone and Gabrielle M. Spiegel on the other (135 [1992], 189-208). For further examples cf. http://www.history.ac.uk/projects/discourse/index.html (May, 2005). 5 In that order: Stone, History and Post-Modernism, 218; Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York: Norton & Company, 1994), 1; Ute Daniel, Clio unter Kulturschock: Zu den aktuellen Debatten der Geschichtswissenschaft, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 48 (1997): 195-218.259-279; Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering our Past (New York: Free Press, 21997). 6 Geoffrey R. Elton, Return to Essentials: Some Reflections on the Present State of Historical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 41.52. 7 Other defenders of traditional historical study include John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (London: Longman, 1984); Lawrence Stone, The Past and the Present Revisited (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987); Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994); Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (London: Granta Books, 1997); Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1997); Arthur Marwick, The New Nature of History: Knowledge, Evidence, Language (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001). 8 Cf. the overview in part III. 9 Both authors are male, educated at European universities, concentrating on New Testament studies, currently employed at the University of Berne, Switzerland. In spite of these similarities, it should be noted, that both have significantly different ecclesial and social backgrounds: the one Mennonite and Reformed, the other an ordained Old-Catholic priest, the one married with children, from a Spanish-emigrant cultural background,

3 epistemology is concerned we may call ourselves interested outsiders. We neither think that postmodernism in all its multifaceted guises can be simply dismissed as fashionable nonsense10 nor that the tremendous scholarly efforts made under the banner of modernism are worthless. To state it positively, we think that the questions raised by postmodernism can enrich our critical agenda.11 We would, therefore, wish to develop an experimental argument based on postmodern historiography as its basic hypothesis,12 outlining the questions at stake and probing the depths of their consequences. The question, thus, is not a normative one but a hypothetical one: Assuming the epistemological legitimacy of postmodern historiography, what would historical Jesus research look like?13

II. Mapping the field of postmodern historiography

A. Postmodernism: Entering a hall of mirrors
The conventional organization of knowledge assigns definitions a place of honour at the beginning of every critical inquiry. However, when it comes to defining a term like postmodernism we enter a linguistic hall of mirrors. The term itself has been assimilated to so many different contexts inside and outside academia that it resists any attempt to circumscribe it.14 As a consequence of its having a nudging commitment to doubleness, or duplicity,15 definitions of it can only end in self-contradiction. Nevertheless, some common features can be singled out:
[I]ndeterminacy and immanence; ubiquitous simulacra, pseudo-events; a conscious lack of mastery, lightness and evanescence everywhere; a new temporality, or rather intemporality, a polychronic sense of history; a patchwork or ludic, transgressive or deconstructive approach to knowledge and authority; an ironic, parodic, reflexive, fantastic awareness of the moment; a linguistic turn, semiotic imperative in culture; and in society generally the violence of local desires diffused into a terminology of seduction and force.16

the other unmarried and Dutch. But then again this sort of autobiographical data discloses as much as it covers, guides as much as it misguides. 10 As suggested in Alan D. Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals Abuse of Science (New York: Picador, 1998). 11 In any case, a philosophical argument for or against one of these positions would go far beyond our competence. 12 The best model for a hypothetical argument remains Platos Menon, where the dialogue partners take as a starting point the assumption that they actually know what virtue is, though it cannot be known with certainty. 13 An undertaking not dissimilar to the contribution of David J. Clines, The Postmodern Adventure in Biblical Studies, in: Jo!e Kra"ovec (ed.), The Interpretation of the Bible (JSOTSup 289; Sheffield: Academic Press, 1998), 1603-1616. 14 Victor E. Taylor and Charles E. Winquist (eds.), Postmodernism: Critical Concepts (4 vols.; London: Routledge, 1998) offer the most comprehensive inventory of foundational and critical studies. Both have also edited a useful Encyclopedia of Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 2001). The terms history up from 1880 (!) is traced in Michael Khler, Postmodernismus: Ein begriffsgeschichtlicher berblick, Amerikastudien 22 (1977): 8-18 and Wolfgang Welsch, Postmoderne: Genealogie und Bedeutung eines umstrittenen Begriffs, in Postmoderne oder Der Kampf um die Zukunft (ed. Peter Kemper; Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1988), 9-36. Besides its early use in arts and literature it was within the field of social analysis that the endemic use of the term started its career, especially through Jean-Franois Lyotards highly influential analysis of the developments within post-industrialised societies in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986; French: 1979). 15 Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1989), 1. 16 Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture (Ohio: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1987), xvi.

4 More than marking a threshold from one epoch called modernism to an epoch, which, purportedly, has moved beyond it,17 the prefix post expresses a more intricate relationship of aversion and addiction towards a form of modernity, which to a great extent is a product of postmodern boundary-marking. It is the modernism of Cartesian stable subjectivity and not the modernism of Freuds psychoanalysis, of Hegels determinist philosophy of history and not of Einsteins theory of relativity, of interpretive positivism and not of Joycean fragmentation of meaning. However, for the sake of the argument we may assume that modernism is (not: was)18
marked by belief in the unity of experience, the predominance of universals, and a determinate sense of referentiality. [] In the most basic terms, modernism represents the residual belief in the (self-evident) supremacy of logic and scientific rationalism that assumes reality as a whole can be rendered and comprehended, that ideas and concepts are determinate, and that human beings share a level of universal experience with one another that is transcultural and transhistorical.

Modernism is, further, characterised by an optimistic attitude towards the possibilities of progress in understanding, control and growth, and by its firm belief in absolute truth and objective knowledge. This picture of modernism is pivotal for the postmodern stress on the uncertainty of knowledge, the fragility of reality, the self-referentiality of language and the deconstruction of oppositions. Lyotards now classic description of postmodernism as incredulity towards metanarratives [mtarcits]19 and Jacques Derridas concept of deconstruction20 remain central points of reference. Obviously any form of historiography aiming at reconstructing the past simply wie es eigentlich gewesen,21 cannot remain unaffected by postmodernism. Typical facets of modern historiography have come under critical cross fire, like the pursuit of objectivity, the precise representability of the past, the basic disctinction between fact and fiction, the possibility of verifying historical truth on the basis of the available evidence or of explaining the course of past events by means of laws of causality22 and the idea of history being in itself meaningful and intentional. Postmodern critique, though, does not start at zero, but incorporates and duplicates many modern critical voices from the fields of Marxist studies, feminism, post-colonialism, psychology of perception and philosophical constructivism.23
concerning the adequacy of the term as an epoch label are expressed by Birgit Aschmann, Moderne versus Postmoderne: Gedanken zur Debatte ber vergangene, gegenwrtige und knftige Forschungsanstze, in Historische Debatten und Kontroversen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (ed. Jrgen Elvert and Susanne Krauss; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner 2002), 256-275; Dieter Langewiesche, Postmoderne als Ende der Moderne? berlegungen eines Historikers in einem interdisziplinren Gesprch, in Gestaltungskraft des Politischen (ed. Wolfram Pyta and Ludwig Richter; FS Eberhard Kolb; Historische Forschungen 63; Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1998), 331-347. 18 The following quotation from David Clippinger, Modernism, in Encyclopedia of Postmodernism, ed. Taylor and Winquist, 251 is, significantly, formulated in the past tense. 19 Lyotard, Postmodern condition, xxiv. 20 Cf. Of Grammatology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976; French: 1967) and Writing and Difference (London: Routledge and Kegan, 1978; French: 1967). 21 Leopold von Ranke, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Vlker von 1494-1514 (Smtliche Werke 33/34; Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1885), 7. When read in context, though, it becomes clear that Rankes famous dictum was directed against the moralizing tone of enlightenment historiography: Man hat der Historie das Amt, die Vergangenheit zu richten, die Mitwelt zum Nutzen zuknftiger Jahre zu belehren, beigemessen: so hoher Aemter unterwindet sich gegenwrtiger Versuch nicht: er will blos zeigen, wie es eigentlich gewesen. 22 Cf. its classical expression in Carl Gustav Hempel, The Function of General Laws in History, Journal of Philosophy 39 (1942): 35-48 = Aspects of Scientific Explanation and other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (New York: Free Press, 1965), 231-243. Clayton Roberts, The Logic of Historical Explanation (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996) offers a neo-positivist version. 23 Cf. especially Southgate, History: What and Why? , 58-107. For a brief account of postmodern affinities in the first half of the 20th century cf. Ernst Breisach, On the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and its Aftermath (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 33-51. Of course, the most important early
17 Doubts

5 Probably the most important impetus came from linguistics, especially from what has been labelled linguistic turn.24 In the wake of the (re)discovery of Saussurian linguistics the evaluation of language changed from being simply a neutral and ingenuous instrument humans use to refer to the reality (simple referential view) to forming the cultural matrix which actually constitutes reality (constructivist view). Every language-orientated science has to face the fact that the very language it uses determines in very substantial ways how critics relate, interpret and interact with their objects in the outside world. The arbitrariness of signs, the distinction between synchronic and diachronic and the production of meaning by a relation of difference to other signs have raised important questions concerning the relation between written history and the past which it pretends to comprehend.25 The problematic relation between language and world affects the classical understanding of truth as correspondence and blurs the basic differences between fact and fiction, historical source and literature.26 Once the products of historians as well as their sources are regarded as linguistic signs an endless interplay starts between the texts historians use, the texts historians produce and the historical reality which they (re)construct.27

B. Some general positions a brief sketch

Postmodern historians (cf. n. 3) approach problems which modern historians have avoided or left unresolved,28 like:
Can empiricism legitimately constitute history as a separate epistemology? What is the character of historical evidence and what function does it perform? What is the role of the historian, his/her use of social theory, and the construction of explanatory frameworks in historical understanding? How insignificant to historical explanation is its narrative form?29

Postmodern historiography is not only postmodern for raising such critical questions but also for its absence of schools of thought, textbooks and clear-cut methodological instructions.30 It is even disputable what credentials are required for admission into the postmodern club.31 Some main lines within postmodern historiography are nevertheless palpable:
critic of the historicist paradigm was Friedrich Nietzsche. He uncovered the connection between objectivity claims and the interests of the middle-classes in his Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie fr das Leben (English: On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980]). 24 The term has been popularised by Richard Rorty (ed.), The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). 25 Passmore, Poststructuralism and History, 120f. 26 Fred W. Burnett, Historiography, in Handbook of Postmodern Biblical Interpretation (ed. A.K.M. Adam; St. Louis: Chalica, 2000), 108: The blurring of the line between history and fiction [] is perhaps the main upshot of the linguistic turn in historical studies. 27 For further discussion cf. Elizabeth Ann Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004); Sarasin, Geschichtswissenschaft und Diskursanalyse, 11-31. 28 Aschmann, Moderne versus Postmoderne, 259 sums up succinctly: In der Geschichtswissenschaft [] befindet man sich offenbar tatschlich inmitten einer schweren epistemologischen Krise, die man [] nur deshalb den Postmodernen anlastet, weil man die Herausforderungen der Moderne, ihre Ambivalenzen und Infragestellungen zu lange nicht recht wahrgenommen hat. 29 Munslow, Deconstructing History, 3. 30 However, Allan Megill, Grand Narrative and the Discipline of History, in New Philosophy of History , ed. Ankersmit and Kellner, 151-173 formulates four prescriptive postulates: The Multiplicity Postulate: Never assume that there is a single authorized historical method or subject matter. [] The Hybridization Postulate: Always establish residences outside the discipline. [] The Fictionality Postulate: Always confront, in an explicit way, the fictionality implicit in all works of history. [] The Theory Postulate: Always theorize (pp. 168-173). 31 For instance, the openly anti-methodical New Historicism, associated with the work of Stephen Greenblatt, has been left out of consideration here for two reasons: First, Greenblatt is not a historian trying to

6 1. History without fixed meaning: The question whether there is fixed meaning and rationality inherent to history (governed, for instance, by its teleological orientation) is answered negatively. Within a postmodern paradigm the existence of hidden historical laws clearly cannot claim the status of an epistemological a priori.32 If there are no binding principles, no hidden structures, no grounding chains of causality, then the mere possibility of finding a specifically historical explanation is called into question. To give an explanation means to account for something as following on from something else by causality, logic or common sense. However, a de-centered history cannot provide causal explanations. What historians can do is to tell a story, encrypting their explanations within the plot of that story. In a precise sense this is an explanation of the past but it is not a historical one, rather more generally, a narrative one.33 2. History without object History as text: If the past is the main object of history, then historical research is ironically characterised by the absence of its object.34 Without a seizable object, though, there is no possibility to validate a historical proposition given as an objective description of what really happened by simply recalling the past.35 Of course, historians are aware of the fact that the only access they have to the past is through an appeal to evidence, so-called source material, which again has to be discovered, edited, prepared, preserved, described, catalogued, indexed, selected, weighed, interpreted, related to other evidence and integrated into a meaningful narrative. One of the few things that we should be able to say with a fair amount of certainty is that historians write texts (mainly, if not exclusively narratives) on the basis of other texts (or artefacts) which they judge relevant to the enterprise of (re)constructing a partial aspect of the past. Postmodern historiography leaves objectivity claims behind, not simply because the historian cannot be objective but because history has no object or, one should better say, no object beyond texts.36 3. History as hermeneutics: If the proper object of history is not the past in itself but the historical interpretation of textual evidence then the hermeneutical question cannot be evaded. Of course, the hermeneutical field offers a wide range of positions from one single meaning validated by appeal to the intentio auctoris to the immateriality of the text and its being re-written in every act of reading.37 The point, though, is that historians, just as literary
discover the rhetorical status of history but a literary critic trying to relate literature to history in typical postmodern ways. Then, this field of studies has been already ploughed from the perspective of Biblical criticism in a special number of Biblical Interpretation 5/4 (1997): 289-481 (ed. Stephen D. Moore) with two articles on the Historical Jesus. 32 Cf. Agnes Heller, A Philosophy of History in Fragments (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 1-35; M.C. Lemon, The Discipline of History and the History of Thought (London: Routledge, 1995), 135-144. 33 Lemon, Discipline of History, 144. 34 Cf. Tony Bennett, Outside Literature (London: Routledge, 1990), 49-51. Goertz, Unsichere Geschichte, 7: Die Geschichtswissenschaft hat keinen Gegenstand, der ihre Existenz rechtfertigt, sie hat nur Probleme bzw. ein Problem. Sie mu damit fertig werden, da die Vergangenheit tot ist, die Gegenwart ihr entgleitet und die Zukunft noch nicht begonnen hat. 35 From a Popperian perspective on the principles of critical research, this would render historical utterances utterly unscientific. 36 Klaus Weimar, Der Text, den (Literar-)Historiker schreiben, in Geschichte als Literatur: Formen und Grenzen der Reprsentation von Vergangenheit (ed. Hartmut Eggert, Ulrich Profitlich and Klaus R. Scherpe; Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990), 29-39 brings it to the point: Historiker erforschen nicht Geschichte, sie lesen Texte ber Vergangenes; Historiker schreiben nicht Geschichte, vielmehr schreiben sie Texte ber Geschichte. [] Texte stehen am Anfang ihrer Arbeit, Texte stehen auch am Ende, und die Arbeit der Historiker bestnde demnach darin, aus den Texten am Anfang die Texte am Ende zu machen. Das Sicherste, das man ber Historiographie sagen kann, ist, da sie Neuvertextung ist. (p. 29) [H]istoriographische Texte haben keinen vorgegebenen Gegenstand, den sie beschreiben knnen, weder die Geschichte, noch auch nur Ereignisse; sie beschreiben vielmehr in einem ganz genauen und wrtlichen Sinne die Abwesenheit sie fllen die Abwesenheit mit Schrift. (p. 36) 37 Cf. for discussion on these issues Moiss Mayordomo, Den Anfang hren: Leserorientierte Evangelienexegese am Beispiel von Matthus 1-2 (FRLANT 180; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 11-195, 366-392.

7 critics, have to subject their own hermeneutical premisses to scrutiny.38 Especially after Bultmanns critique of the idea of exegesis without presuppositions39 and Gadamers following hermeneutical reappraisal of prejudice and Wirkungsgeschichte,40 they should be critical of their own contextual (dis)position41 and, in consequence, question the possibility of reaching complete congruence between a text used as historical evidence and its interpretation.42 Even first-hand autobiographical evidence is not free of interpretation.43 The ideal, thus, of a decontextualised historian runs up against the insurmountable problem that with a formulation of Moxter ein solcher Chronist kann die Geschichte nur um den Preis erfassen, da er selbst keine hat.44 4. History in plural forms, also in classical vesture: The plurality of perspectives is one of the most important concerns of postmodern historical writing. It seems impossible to deduce from it an imperative to desist from all approaches hitherto used. One can share the idea that all history-making moves within the limits of textuality and nevertherless write history in ways very similar to the well-known projects of modernism. All methodological approaches can continue just as before, but with the proviso that none of them can continue to think that they gain direct access to, or ground their textuality in, a reality appropriated plain.45 Postmodernism is not about replacing but about expanding, which again opens up possibilities for exploring alternative forms of historiography, especially in the field of narrativity.46 5. History as referential language: The thorny question of whether language constructs or represents reality is becoming more and more of an exasperating burden to the theoretical debate.47 The problems the answer to this question poses may be by-passed, however, by focusing on the way language is actually approached. The basic rules of the language game suggest that we can appropriate an utterance in any meaningful way only by relating it to something. Even postmodernists refer to the theories and works of others; and they do it in such ways that we as readers cannot avoid the impression of dealing with entities outside of the present text. Historiography, thus, should not express its fear of the so-called linguistic

38 Hans Robert Jauss once stated that no text has ever been written in order to be interpreted philologically by philologians or historically by historians (sthetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik [stw 955; Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1982], 688). We wonder, though, how historians who search for a determinate meaning of the past cope with the contradiction that they only can reach this goal by reading the textual evidence against its (supposed) intention. 39 Rudolf Bultmann, Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible, in New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Theological Writings (ed. Schubert M. Ogden; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 145-153 (German: 1957). 40 Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 21989). 41 Michael Stanford, An Introduction to the Philosophy of History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 53: The historian not only writes about the constant flow of events; she also writes from within the flow. 42 Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (stw 757; Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1979 = 42000), 204: Eine Geschichte ist nie identisch mit der Quelle, die von dieser Geschichte zeugt. 43 Sarasin, Geschichtswissenschaft und Diskursanalyse, 57. 44 Michael Moxter, Erzhlung und Ereignis. ber den Spielraum historischer Reprsentation, in Der historische Jesus: Tendenzen und Perspektiven der gegenwrtigen Forschung (ed. Jens Schrter and Ralph Brucker; BZNW 114; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), 67-88:74. 45 Jenkins, What is History?, 32. 46 In spite of the impression that the few books and articles that have supposedly [] followed the linguistic or rhetorical turns look more like the old history (Berkhofer, Great Story, 25) there are creative examples of postmodern historical writing: Simon Schama, Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) (New York: Vintage, 1992); Patrick Joyce, Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in nineteenth-century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Robin Bisha, Reconstructing the Voice of a Noblewoman of the Time of Peter the Great: Daria Mikhailovna Menshikova, Rethinking History 2 (1998): 51-63. 47 The main positions in the so-called realism-debate are sketeched in Marcus Willaschek (ed.), Realismus (UTB 2143; Paderborn: Ferdinand Schningh, 2000).

8 turn by invoking the perils of becoming a mere language-game as long as reference is part of the game. In conclusion, this leads to a much more complex view of the historiographical work which can be graphically illustrated:48

C. Hayden Whites Metahistory

One of the main impulses for postmodern historiography stems from the analysis of social discourse and power by Michel Foucault (1926-1984).49 Presently the most widely discussed exponent of postmodern historiography is Hayden White50 a thinker who has been given the
Berkhofer, Beyond the Great Story, 29f.38f.65; also in The challenges of poetics to (normal) historical practice, Poetics Today 9 (1988): 435-452 = Jenkins, Postmodern history reader, 139-155. Lines moving in both directions indicate reciprocal influence, dashed lines signal an indeterminate relation. 49 Cf. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random House, 1970; French: 1966); Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1977; French: 1975); Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (ed. D.F. Bouchard; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977; French: 1971), 139-164. 50 Whites three main works are: Metahistory (1973), Tropics of Discourse (1978) and The Content of the Form (1987). For the ongoing debate cf. Hans Kellner, Whites Linguistic Humanism, History and Theory, Beiheft 19 (1980): 1-29; Wulf Kansteiner, Hayden Whites Critique of the Writing of History, History and Theory 32/3 (1993): 273-295; Jenkins, What is History, 134-179.
48 Cf

9 dubious credit of being responsible for the most damaging undertaking ever performed by a historian on his profession.51 His main concern is to show that history is basically a narrative discourse, both found and invented.52 An early foray into postmodern theory is Whites essay titled The Burden of History, in which following Nietzsche, Burckhardt, Schopenhauer and European existentialists he calls into question the notion that history is guided by rationally deducible laws and, thus, can be interpreted in one meaningful way.53 The writing of history is a way of imposing upon the chaos of the world a momentary form.54 This concept of history-without-meaning is one of Whites fundamental axioms.55 His own history of historiography leads him to the conclusion that it was not until the 19th and early 20th century that liberal as well as conservative historians tried to make the past amenable to their corresponding ideologies by driving a wedge between history and rhetoric:
[F]or both the Left and the Right this same aesthetics of the beautiful presides over the process in which historical studies are constituted as an autonomous scholarly discipline. It takes little reflection to perceive that aestheticism is endemic to what is regarded as a proper attitude towards objects of historical study in a certain tradition, deriving from Leopold von Ranke and his epigones []. For this tradition, whatever confusion is displayed by the historical record is only a surface phenomenon: a product of lacunae in the documentary sources, of mistakes in ordering the archives, or of previous inattention or scholarly errors.56

Based on this notion of history as chaos White develops his main thesis that historical study can only articulate itself in the form of a narrative discourse which both finds its content and imagines or invents it.57 He does not negate the existence of historical facts as given but these facts can only be made significant by weaving them into a picture of the past which again presupposes a notion of totality.58 The problem, though, is that the complete past context cannot simply be recovered like a treasure from the ocean depths. The historian does not imagine facts, but has to imagine all the missing bits of those contexts which make facts meaningful for us. On the other hand, by telling a story historians tend to believe that they are actually retelling the life stories of individuals or groups from the past. But there are good reasons to doubt that people in the past simply lived stories which can be reproduced in
51 Phyllis Grosskurth in a review of Whites Metahistory in Canadian Historical Review 56 (1975): 193 as quoted in Richard T. Vann, The Reception of Hayden White, History and Theory 37 (1998): 143-161:146. 52 The narrativity of history has been the object of many studies before and after White: Cf. (in chronological order) Arthur C. Danto, Analytical Philosophy of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965) revised as: Narration and Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); Roland Barthes, The Discourse of History, Comparative Criticism 3 (1981): 7-20 (translated by Stephen Bann; French: 1967); also translated by Peter Wexler in Structuralism: A Reader (ed. Michael Lane; London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), 145-155; Lawrence Stone, The Revival of Narrative, Past & Present 85 (1979): 3-24 = The Past and the Present (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 77-96; Ankersmit, Narrative Logic (1983); Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (3 vols; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984-1988; French: 1983-1985), esp. 1:91-295 (History and Narrative), 3:99-240 (Poetics of Narrative: History, Fiction, Time); Peter Burke, History of Events and the Revival of Narrative, in New Perspectives on Historical Writing (ed. P. Burke; University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 22001), 283-300. 53 History and Theory 5/2 (1966): 111-134; reprinted in Tropics of Discourse, 27-50. 54 Tropics of Discourse, 44. 55 Cf. Content of the Form, 72: [M]odern ideologies [] impute a meaning to history that renders its manifest confusion comprehensible to either reason, understanding, or aesthetic sensibility. To the extent that they succeed in doing so, these ideologies deprive history of the kind of meaninglessness that alone can goad living human beings to make their lives different for themselves and their children, which ist to say, to endow their lives with a meaning for which they alone are fully responsible. Curiously White uses the chaotic openeness of the past as an impulse for taking reposibility for our present choices. 56 Content of the Form , 70. 57 Tropics of Discourse, 82; Metahistory, 2. 58 Despite claims to the contrary no historian connected to postmodernism, surely not Hayden White, argues that past or present are not endowed with a material existence. What has been called textualism is not an essence of the past but our basic condition for approaching and constructing the past (cf. Jenkins, What is History, 29-33).

10 later times. The dilemma is that historians cannot avoid narrative form, but precisely in narrating history, they also fictionalise it.59 White tries to describe the narrative grammar, the so-called metahistory, which forms the basis of history.60 He distinguishes between the following levels of conceptualization in the historical work: (1) chronicle; (2) story; (3) mode of emplotment (4) mode of argument; and (5) mode of ideological implication.61 Chronicle and story form the primitive elements of every historical account. Whereas the former arranges events and people without plotinterconnections, the latter is marked by inaugurations, processes and end points according to a hierarchy of significance.62 Historians cannot remain in the state of a simple chronicler and have, thus, to translate the raw primitive material into a story by deciding what to include, by arranging and interconnecting events, thus, assigning relevance or irrelevance to each element within an imagined plot structure.
(1) A b c d e n (2) a B c d e n (3) a b C d e n

(and so on)

As events have no unambiguous inherent story the operations which transform a chronicle into a story are partly instructed by the subjectivity of the historian.63 There are no critical methods capable of controlling this transformation from chronicle to narrative.64 The most basic operation in the writing of history, emplotment, is an implicit form of explanation guided by culturally sanctioned types of narration.65 Following literary critic Northrop Frye, White distinguishes four archetypal modes of emplotment:
romance satire comedy tragedy drama of self-identification, stressing the triumph of good over evil (e.g. victory of democracy over fascism) opposite of romance, human beings as captives in the world rather than masters, decay and death are the end of everything, suffering leads not to redemption (e.g. the Holocaust) at least temporally human beings can triumph over their situations and celebrate this, although things can go wrong there is a harmony between the natural and the social human beings learn through resignation to work within the limitations of the world

Two other means of explanation are through argument and ideology: In order to grasp the historical field historians use four modes of argument: (1) the precise description of a reduced set of objects by classifying them according to their uniqueness, variety and color (formism), (2) the setting of broader contexts by analyzing trends and eras (contextualism), (3) the Hegelian-like synthesis of the whole field (organicism) and (4) the mechanistic reduction on universal causal laws (mechanism). Historians are furthermore lead to argue on the basis of the ideologies they hold, which may be conservative (history moves naturally for the better), liberal (progression as the result of law, government

for a similar view F.R. Ankersmit, Reply to Professor Zagorin, History and Theory 29 (1990): 275-296; Hans Kellner, Narrativity in History: Post-Structuralism and Since, History and Theory, Beiheft 26 (1987): 1-29. 60 The following refers mainly to the introductory chapter The Poetics of History in Metahistory, 1-42. 61 Metahistory, 5. 62 In its simplest form a chronicle would record: The Queen dies. The King dies. Whereas a story would read: The queen died and then the King died. 63 Cf. his article The Historical Text as Literary Artifact, in Tropics of Discourse, 81-100. 64 The notion that history has no method, no controllable modes of explanation, is one of the main threads in Paul Veynes stimulating Writing History: Essay on Epistemology (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press; 1984; French: 1971). 65 The importance of emplotment is also emphasised by Berkhofer, Great Story, 106-137.

59 Cf.

11 and market), radical (revolution as means to bring about the better future) or anarchist (only destruction will lead to a new community).66 Since history does not have its own, unique technical vocabulary (like physics or mathematics) historians can only use the normal figurative language of ordinary educated speech according to the rhetorical tropes natural for every form of communication.67 Again White finds four basic types:
Trope metaphor Explanation one phenomenon is compared or contrasted to another in the manner of analogy or simile reduction of the whole to the part (e.g., sail for ship) extension of a part in order to symbolise the quality of the whole (e.g. he is all heart) literal meaning makes no sense, examples are paradox (oxymoron) or manifestly absurd (catachresis) Argument formist Relation representational Example working classes as saviours of humanity individual acts as general resistance to colonialism class struggle is to be found in every human act working classes as saviours (?) of humanity

metonymy

mechanist

reductionist

synecdoche

organicist

integrative

irony

comedy / tragedy

negational

All in all, the writing of history as the narrativisation of a primitive chronicle is conditioned by a whole set of factors:
mode of emplotment romance comedy tragedy satire mode of argument formist organicist mechanistic contextualist mode of ideology anarchist conservative radical liberal poetic structure (tropes) metaphor metonymy synecdoche irony

Whites positions lead to a number of conclusions which can be considered as typical for postmodern historiography: (1) Since the past carries no meaning in itself it is not possible to approach it from an ideologically neutral point of view which by-passes the task of interpretation. (2) Historiography has always a hidden agenda, an interest vis--vis the present as its practitioners perceive it. (3) Those who claim to be doing proper history as opposed to ideological history displace their ideologies into the narrative where they anyhow remain visible. (4) Consequently, [o]ne must face the fact that when it comes to apprehending the historical record, there are no grounds to be found in the historical record itself for preferring one way of construing its meaning over another.68 (5) The best historians can do is to tell different stories from different perspectives.69

66 White builds upon Karl Mannheims classic Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968; German: 1929). 67 Metahistory, 34: [Tropes] are especially useful for understanding the operations by which the contents of experience which resist description in unambiguous prose representations can be prefiguratively grasped and prepared for conscious apprehension. 68 The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-Sublimation, Critical Inquiry 9 (1982): 113-137 = Content of the Form , 58-82:75. 69 Whites textual relativism has been recently criticised in the light of the problems surrounding the historical representation of the Holocaust and the scandal of its denial (!); cf. Saul Friedlander (ed.), Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the Final solution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). Cf. also Dominick LaCapra (ed.), Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1994), the special number Representing the Holocaust of History and Theory 33/2 (1994) with the response by Berel Lang, Is It Possible to Misrepresent the Holocaust? History and Theory 34/1 (1995): 84-89 (= Jenkins, Postmodern History Reader, 426-433) and Passmore, Poststructuralism and History, 134-136.

12

III. The Postmodern in Historical Jesus Studies

In what follows we aim to offer a representative, rather than an exhaustive overview of recent historical Jesus research focusing on its attitude towards postmodern epistemological considerations. It can well be read as an illustration of Schrters thesis that in the more recent discussion the hermeneutical question about the appropriation of the past has [] largely receded into the background.70 Postmodern epistemological and historiographical questions have not been ignored in biblical studies or theology generally speaking.71 Our focus will be on the way these questions have (or have not) been integrated into the discussion of the historical Jesus, which is, to a certain extent, a rather particular field in biblical studies, as here the question of historical truth has arguably been regarded as more central than elsewhere.72 The following overview covers works ranging from those that more or less ignore the postmodern agenda to those where there is self-conscious application of postmodern hermeneutical insights to historical Jesus research. 1. No interaction with postmodern theories: Many (recent) influential works on the historical Jesus, written well within the postmodern era remain, surprisingly, without the respective historiographical considerations. They rather use modern and enlightened epistemology with more or less theoretical foundation. Certainly without otherwise discrediting their achievements, this may be said about the contributions of Sanders,73 Flusser,74 Becker,75 Crossan,76 Ldemann,77 and
Jens Schrter, Jesus und die Anfnge der Christologie: Methodologische und exegetische Studien zu den Ursprngen des christlichen Glaubens (BThS 47; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2001), 13: Die hermeneutische Frage nach der Aneignung der Vergangenheit ist in der neueren Diskussion dagegen weitgehend in den Hintergrund getreten. (trans. pbs). Cf. furtheron Schrter, Jesus, 14-36; Die Frage nach dem historischen Jesus und der Charakter historischer Erkenntnis, in The Sayings Source Q and the Historical Jesus (ed. Andreas Lindemann; BEThL 158; Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 207-254; Von der Historizitt der Evangelien: Ein Beitrag zur gegenwrtigen Diskussion um den historischen Jesus, in Der historische Jesus, ed. Schrter and Brucker, 163-212; berlegungen zum Verhltnis von Historiographie und Hermeneutik in der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft, in Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Exegesis (ed. Petr Pokorny and Jan Roskovec; WUNT 153; Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 191-203; Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft jenseits des Historismus: Neuere Entwicklungen in der Geschichtstheorie und ihre Bedeutung fr die Exegese urchristlicher Schriften, ThLZ 128 (2003):855-866; Konstruktion von Geschichte und die Anfnge des Christentums: Reflexionen zur christlichen Geschichtsdeutung aus neutestamentlicher Perspektive, in Konstruktion von Wirklichkeit: Beitrge aus geschichtstheoretischer, philosophischer und theologischer Perspektive (ed. Jens Schrter and Antje Eddelbttel; TBT 127; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 201-219. 71 Since they have provoked similar reactions to those sketched above for the field of historical criticism no broad survey of them is required here. Cf. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and further contributions of authors such as A.K.M. Adam, George Aichele, David J.A. Clines, Stephen D. Moore (from the exegetical guild), John D. Caputo, Don Cupitt, Brian D. Ingraffia, Mark C. Taylor, David Tracy, Graham Ward, Edith Wyschogrod (from the field of systematic theology). The Bible and Culture Collective, The Postmodern Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) outlines different postmodern hermeutical models and the ways they have been (or could be) applied to biblical studies. A.K.M. Adam (ed.), Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible: A Reader (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000) gives a representative overview. Reflections on postmodern historiography from exegetes (besides Schrter) are found in Burnett, Historiography, 106-112; Eckart Reinmuth, Neutestamentliche Historik: Probleme und Perspektiven (ThLZ Forum 8; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2003), 40-47. 72 Cf. the statements of the influential Jesus scholars Ldemann, Crossan and Funk, for whom the enlightened conception of truth in terms of historical truth, has become part of a creed precisely, what they seek to avoid. All three authors bear the marks of this quest for the (historical) truth about Jesus in their biographies: they all moved from a confessional setting to a (non-confessional) academic context. Cf. Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 1-14, for Ldemann, cf. wwwuser.gwdg.de/~gluedem/ger/index.htm (May 2005), and for Crossan, cf. www.westarinstitute.org/Periodicals/4R_Articles/Crossan_bio/crossan_bio.html (May 2005). 73 Ed P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin Press, 1993). 74 David Flusser, Jesus (in collaboration with R. Steven Notley; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 21998).
70

13 Funk.78 Similarly some recent studies in the methodology of historical Jesus research remain silent about postmodern challenges.79 2. Contributions which seem to move towards postmodern positions, but, in the end, turn back towards classical historiographical axioms: Meier in his brief discussion of the problem of constructing reasonably correct pictures of people from the past, does not explicitly address issues of postmodern historiography. 80 However, he clearly distinguishes between the real (now lost) Jesus and the historical one, 81
75 Jrgen Becker, Jesus von Nazaret (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996), cf. for his methodology: 1-20. 76 John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San

Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), xxvii-xxxiv, in spite of his remark, that methodology in Jesus research at the end of this century is about where methodology in archaeological research was at the end of the last (xxviii). His undertaking, however, is not exempt from his own suspicion that historical Jesus research is a very safe place to do theology and call it history, to do autobiography and call it biography (xxviii). Later on Crossan acknowledged his neglect of epistemological considerations, to which N. T. Wright, Taking the Text with Her Pleasure. A Post-Post-Modernist Response to J. Dominic Crossan The Historical Jesus, Theology 96 (1993): 303-310, and Susan Lochrie Graham and Stephen D. Moore, The Quest for the New Historicist Jesus, BibInt 5 (1997): 438-464, pointed. In his reaction (Our Own Faces in Deep Wells: A Future for Historical Jesus Research, in God, the Gift and the Postmodern [ed. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scalon; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999], 282-310) he notes that when I wrote The Historical Jesus in 1991 I did not think it necessary to defend the validity of that enterprsie. I considered historical Jesus research an established part of the scholarly landscape. I concentrated there on the how of methods and the what of the results (283). However, in this later essay he proposes a theory of various types of gospels, which interact with one another, without taking into consideration postmodern historiographical thought. Crossan emphasises the importance of history for what he terms Catholic Christianity, as opposed to Gnostic Christianity. Similarly Piet A. Geyser, Historicity and Theology, and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, HTS 55 (1999): 827-844, takes into account postmodern concerns, but finally does not move beyond the statement, that Christian theology cannot do without both the historical Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ (844). 77 Gerd Ldemann, Fakten und Fantasien in der neuen Jesus-Literatur und im Neuen Testament, in Jesus von Nazareth und das Christentum: Braucht die pluralistische Gesellschaft ein neues Jesusbild? (ed. Sigurd Daecke and Peter R. Sahm; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2000), 130-152 makes a clear distinction between facts and fantasies and postulates: Aber hinter eine Einsicht kommen wir nicht mehr zurck: Wer ihm [= Jesus] nherkommen will, mu kritisch mit den Quellen umgehen, Vorsicht vor bereilten Schlssen walten lassen und sich seiner Voraussetzungen mit dem Ziel grtmglicher Objektivitt bewut werden. (131) His objective and critical approach brings as a result: Von den biblischen Erzhlungen ber Jesus sind nach meiner Einschtzung nur ca. 15 Prozent echt. Alles andere ist Gemeindedogmatik (149). After making his case that christianity cannot be based on the historical Jesus he closes with a flaming plead for the blessings of rationality and enlightenment: So bleibt nur der Blick nach vorn, wo allein Aufklrung dem berall pulsierenden Leben auf dieser Erde eine bleibende Statt bereiten kann. Denn die in der Vernunft gegrndete Aufklrung samt ihrer Kritik an Offenbarungsansprchen und Erkenntnisprivilegien jeglicher Art bleibt ein fester Bestandteil der modernen Welt. Allein Aufklrung ermglicht einen konstruktiven Dialog zwischen den Angehrigen verschiedener Nationalitten und Kulturen, und sie allein drfte in der Lage sein, in dem kommenden Jahrtausend Frieden zwischen den Menschen unterschiedlichster Ideologien und Religionen anzubahnen. (152) This is clearly an oath on modernism! 78 Funk, Honest. 79 Cf. a.o. Christopher Tuckett, Sources and Methods, in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (ed. Markus Bockmuehl; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 121-137; James Carleton Paget, Quests for the Historical Jesus, in ibid , 138-155; Ben Witherington III, The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1995), esp. 233-248; Stanley E. Porter, The Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research: Previous Discussion and New Proposals (JSNTSup 191; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000); Gerd Theien and Dagmar Winter, Die Kriterienfrage in der Jesusforschung: Vom Differenzkriterium zum Plausibilittskriterium (NTOA 34; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997); Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans (eds.), Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the Current Research (NTTS 29; Leiden: Brill, 1994). Cf. in the latter volume esp. Marcus J. Borg, Reflections on a Discipline: A North American Perspective, (9-31) and William R. Telford, Major Trends and Interpretative Issues in the Study of Jesus, (33-74, merely mentioning philosophical questions on pp. 61-62). In Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans (ed.), Authenticating the Words of Jesus (NTTS 28:1; Leiden: Brill, 1999) Evans, Chilton, Malina, Holmn, and Porter with Brook ODonnell offer methodological considerations. Cf. also the contributions to the sister volume: Authenticating the Activities of Jesus (NTTS 28:2; Leiden: Brill, 1999). 80 John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 1:21-31. 81 Meier, Marginal 1:21-26.

14 which is of significance for the way he perceives his own undertaking, though without integrating it explicitly into the discourse we are interested in here. Similarly Theien and Merz offer a brief hermeneutical reflection, using the term historical imagination, but still concluding, in the best of classical historiographical traditions, that scholarly discussions of the life of Jesus are relativ willkrfreie, an Quellen korrigierbare und in ihren Voraussetzungen durchschaubare Gebilde.82 The importance of imagination is, with this statement, blotted out again. Allison includes, in good postmodern fashion, an unscientific postscript into the methodological section of his study on the historical Jesus, thereby blurring scholarly with unscientific writing. He dwells for a long time on the (problems of) historical-critical methodology and includes in discussion with the Jesus Seminar considerations about the important role of personal convictions and personality in research, but at the end he concludes that our goal should [] be to emulate the judge, whose hard business it is to look for the truth.83 3. Scholars who do not subscribe explicitly to postmodern historiographical concerns, but come on the basis of very similar assumptions to conclusions which differ little from postmodern ones:84 Johnson, in his manifesto against the work of the Jesus Seminar, has drawn attention to the limits of historical research in a twofold way: firstly, with respect to the available sources, and, secondly, on an epistemological level, suggesting that there is much less to know than the Jesus Seminar claims. Without engaging with postmodern historiographical theories Johnson makes nevertheless a quite postmodern point.85 Dunn offers an extensive epistemological discussion, analysing the postmodern condition before outlining his own historiographical stance:86
[T]he model of historical study as a dialogue between present and past, is the one which has always appealed to me, not least because it recognizes that the historian not only asks the questions, but, in genuine engagement with the subject matter, often finds him/herself put in question.87

Without explicitly using a postmodern epistemology Dunn has taken on board quite a few typically postmodern concerns, of which his emphasis on Jesus remembered is one of the most significant.88 In spite of the size of his work, he presents it as a modest proposal, acknowledging its relativity.89
Gerd Theien and Annette Merz, Der historische Jesus (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 32001), 31. This impression is confirmed by their co-authored introductory essay Der umstrittene historische Jesus. Oder: Wie historisch ist der historsiche Jesus in Gerd Theien, Jesus als historische Gestalt: Beitrge zur Jesusforschung (ed. Annette Merz; FRLANT 202; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 3-32, esp. 7-12, where various criteria are discussed without touching upon the larger epistemological picture. 83 Dale C. Allison, Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 77, after extensive methodological considerations (1-77). 84 One reason is perhaps that these contributions also apply the questions asked by the enlightenment to historical research once more. 85 Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 81-104. 86 James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Christianity in the Making 1; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 92-97. His position is strongly influenced by Lonergans critical realism. 87 Dunn, Jesus, 111. See for the whole of his considerations 99-136. 88 For the historiographical importance of memory cf. i.a. Frank R. Ankersmit, Die postmoderne Privatisierung der Vergangenheit, in Der Sinn des Historischen, ed. Nagl-Docekal, 201-234; Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedchtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identitt in frhen Hochkulturen (Mnchen: Beck, 2 1997); Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004; French: 2000). 89 Bengt Holmberg, Questions of Method in James Dunns Jesus Remembered , JSNT 26 (2004): 445-457, argues that Dunns concern to remain at the level of memory does not go far enough: the historian has indeed to reconstruct the real Jesus. Samuel Byrskog, A New Perspective on the Jesus Tradition. Reflections on James D. G. Dunns Jesus Remembered, JSNT 26 (2004): 459-471, questions Dunns concept of memory. Cf.
82

15 There is [] no such thing as mere history.90 Even if this statement is taken from the work of an author who is not particularly willing to allow postmodern historiography to enter his own methodological considerations,91 it is precisely Wright, whose whole enterprise sails under the flag of one fundamental postmodern insight, amply illustrated not only in the preceding quotation, but especially in the following:
The underlying argument of this book is that the split [between history and theology] is not warranted: that rigorous history (i.e. open-ended investigation of actual events in first-century Palestine) and rigorous theology (i.e. open-ended investigation of what the word god, and hence the adjective divine, might actually refer to) belong together, and never more so than in discussion of Jesus. If this means that we end up needing a new metaphysic, so be it.92

This statement succinctly formulates one consequence of letting postmodern epistemological considerations enter the field of historical Jesus research: acknowledging that both christology and historical research are legitimate ways of imagining Jesus, i.e. of telling a story about a past (lost!) person. Furthermore Rau, in a critical discussion of the preoccupation of historical Jesus research with criteriology rather than historiography, takes up one important point, which has already been made by Schweitzer in his radical contextualisation and deconstruction of (much of the) 19th century quest for the historical Jesus: the heuristic value of the interpreters subjectivity and the necessity of fantasy, when attempting to imagine a person from the past.93 Rau does not so much present this as a postmodern insight, although this emphasis on the positive value of subjectivity and imagination and thus contextuality fits well into postmodern thinking. This position comes very close to that of Evans, who argues that scholars are (but) an interpretative community (tribe), that has a right and a duty to put forward its views into the conversation, but one which has no right to disparage and consider illegitimate other communities of interpretation, particularly religious ones.94 4. Contributions addressing postmodern epistemology directly in view of historical Jesus research. Schrter95 has offered a strong and well argued plea for considering postmodern historiographical concerns. To begin with, the epistemological problem should (again) be regarded as a theological problem, more precisely: the quest should be redefined as a vergegenwrtigende Erinnerung an Jesus im Sinne der Orientierung und Identittsbildung in der Gegenwart.96 Furthermore, it belongs to the task of theology to outline the significance of Jesus through images of him (Jesusdarstellungen),97 a.o. with Rsen, recognizing their

Dunns reply On History, Memory and Eyewitnesses: In Response to Bengt Holmberg and Samuel Byrskog, JSNT 26 (2004): 473-487, where he acknowledges that his emphasis on memory and recollection has much to do with history as a creative undertaking (cf. e.g. 475). 90 Cf. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God 2; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 5-6. 91 Cf. e.g. Wright, Taking and Victory, 3-124. 92 Wright, Victory, 8. 93 Cf. Eckhard Rau, Jesus Freund von Zllnern und Sndern. Eine methodenkritische Untersuchung (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2000), 74-75; cf. also Leif E. Vaage, Recent Concerns: The Scholar as Engag, in Whose Historical Jesus? (ed. William E. Arnal and Michael Desjardins; Studies in Christianity and Judaism 7; Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997), 181-187. 94 Cf. C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ & The Jesus of Faith. The Incarnational Narrative as History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 346, basing himself on: Jon D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993). 95 Schrter, Frage (cf. literature cited in n. 70). 96 Schrter, Frage, 252. 97 Cf. Schrter, Frage, 253.

16 fundamentally narrative character.98 Still, this scholarly project can distinguish between possible and impossible (or no longer possible) images of Jesus, while at the same time safeguarding a plurality of these images,99 all in the context of an overarching process of existential orientation.100 A similar proposal has been put forward by Marsh in his new historicist critique of the Third Quest and its self-perception.101 By contextualising it he uncovers hidden agenda(s),102 including its key christological one.103 At the same time, having de-privileged this western historical approach, he champions the inclusion of other voices into the debate, i.e. voices with different agendas.104 In this context reference should also be made to two further contributions: Arnal stresses the fundamental ideological character of historical Jesus research qua historical research.105 Kelber notes that the privileging of historical truth over narratives implies the denial of plurality and is thus, in view of the history of earliest Christianity, all too reductionistic.106 In the final considerations of his recent contribution Knight includes historical images of Jesus into the existential and interreligious debate about his significance107 agreeing thereby with Marshs conclusion concerning the inevitability of christology. A similar direction is taken by Watson108 and by Borg in his effort to bring personal relationship to Jesus109 and scholarly research together by showing how christology, faith and the quest for the historical Jesus can merge. 110 A different form of interacting with postmodern (historiographical) theory is offered by Bauckham, who pits his own understanding of the Jesus story as an open, non-suppressing meta-narrative against Lyotards conception of meta-narratives and their postmodern end, on the basis of Jesus loving self-identification with all, which reached its furthest point in his death.111 In other words the Jesus story can withstand (Lyotards) postmodern critique, as it is a different kind of meta-narrative.
98 Cf. Jrn Rsen, Anmerkungen zum Thema Christologie und Narration, in Gegenwart des Absoluten. Philosophisch-theologische Diskurse zur Christologie (ed. Klaus-Michael Kodalle; Gterloh: Gerd Mohn, 1984), 90-96. 99 Cf. Schrter, Frage, 253. Unfortunately it remains relatively unclear how precisely this should work. 100 Schrter, Frage, 253-254. 101 Clive Marsh, Quests for the Historical Jessu in New Historicist Perspective, BibInt 5 (1997): 403-437. 102 Partially basing itself on the insights of Dieter Georgis fundamental contribution Leben-Jesu-Theologie / Leben-Jesu-Forschung, TRE 20 (1990), 566-575 and idem, The Interest in Life of Jesus Theology as a Paradigm for the Social History of Biblical Criticism, HTR 85 (1992): 51-83. A similar undertaking is: Joel Willitts, Presuppositions and Procedures in the Study of the Historical Jesus: Or, Why I Decided Not to be a Historical Jesus Scholar, JSHJ 3 (2005), 61-108, arguing (e.g. 108) that, in view of the fact that both the Gospels, as well as the output of Historical Jesus research are historical narratives, there is no good reason to replace the Gospels with these newer narratives. 103 Cf. Marsh, Quests, 430-433. 104 Cf. Marsh, Quests, 428. 105 William E. Arnal, Making and Re-Making the Jesus-Sign: Contemporary Markings on the Body of Christ, in Whose Historical Jesus?, ed. Arnal and Desjardins, 308-319:317. 106 Cf. Werner H. Kelber Der historsiche Jesus. Bedenken zur gegenwrtigen Diskussion aus der Perspektive mittelalterlicher, moderner und postmoderner Hermeneutik, in Der historische Jesus, ed. Schrter and Brucker, 15-66:60. 107 Cf. Jonathan Knight, Jesus: An Historical and Theological Investigation (London: Continuum, 2004), 244-245. 108 Cf. Francis Watson, The Quest for the Real Jesus, in Companion, ed. Bockmuehl, 156-169. 109 Not to be understood in pietistic terms only: it is all about relating personally to the object of ones interest, which has, in the case of Jesus, but certainly in many other cases, to do with ones own passion and worldview. 110 Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & the Heart of Contemporary Faith (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), esp. 119-137, under the heading Images of Jesus and Images of the Christian Life. 111 Richard Bauckham, The Future of Jesus Christ, in Companion, ed. Bockmuehl, 265-280:279.

17 5. Finally, two contributions should be mentioned, since they present themselves as postmodern approaches. By taking them as examples, other accounts of the historical Jesus may be regarded as postmodern too. One, quite unique contribution to the discussion is that of William Hamilton,112 who, while undertaking a search for a post-historical Jesus, has, in fact, achieved a kind of postmodern construction (or: narrative, or: pastiche) of Jesus. By treating artistic and historical representations of Jesus as peers he moves beyond viewing artistic voices merely as props on the stage of a texts history of reception.113 A quite different example of an attempt to integrate most (referentiality remains significant) implications of postmodern historiographical theory is the work of Schssler Fiorenza, especially Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation.114 She reads the quest for the historical Jesus consciously in terms of the exercise of and struggle for influence and power, in this context raising the voice of a liberationist, feminist biblical scholar. One of the results of this enterprise which aims at unmasking the innocence of historical research, is the dissolution of the fundamental difference between historical Jesus scholarship and christology. Of course, many ideology-critical Jesus books, such as those by Segundo,115 Sobrino116 and other liberation theologians could be added here, but Schssler Fiorenzas contribution is probably the most recent and most striking.

IV. Imagining a Postmodern Historical Jesus

In view of the considerations offered above, we venture to formulate some postmodern perspectives for further explorations in the study of the historical Jesus: 1. Jesus as object of history absent, fragmented, multilayered: Postmodern historiography clearly destabilises the notion that Jesus as the object of history can be approached by a simple combination of facts, sources and historical reconstruction. The implicit belief in the historians ability to rewind the linear process of history by reading back from the sources to the real Jesus (aided, of course, by a set of unambiguous criteria of authenticity) is highly suspect as the possible fruit of navet and/or wishful thinking. Even within a classical historiographical paradigm the approach to Jesus faces insurmountable problems. The whole history that has led from the original events through a labyrinthine process of memory, tradition, translation, narrativization, transmission, circulation, selection and canonization to our direct source material in form of eclectic critical editions has moved through many critical stages where the past breaks, transforms, changes into a new mode and
112 William Hamilton, A Quest for the Post-Historical Jesus (New York: Continuum, 1990). 113 More recently Hamiltons work has gained companions in the form of other books especially

on Jesus and film, which share his concern for imagination and narratives. Cf. e.g. Richard Walsh, Reading the Gospels in the Dark: Portrayals of Jesus in film (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003), Georg Langenhorst, Jesus ging nach Hollywood: Die Wiederentdeckung Jesu in Literatur und Film der Gegenwart (Dsseldorf: Patmos, 1998). The discussion around Mel Gibsons Passion, as documented in e.g. Kathleen E. Corley and Robert L. Webb (ed.), The passion of the Christ: The Film, the Gospels and the Claims of History (London: Continuum, 2004), is certainly a christological one. 114 Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza, Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation (New York: Continuum, 2000), esp. 1-29, cf. also her earlier Jesus: Miriams Child, Sophias Prophet. Critical Issues in Feminist Christology (London: SCM, 1994), 3-31, again consciously merging christology and research into the historical Jesus. 115 Cf. Juan Luis Segundo, Jesus of Nazareth Yesterday and Today. Volume II: The Historical Jesus of the Synoptics (trans. J. Drury; Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1985), consciously approaching the historical Jesus with a liberation theological agenda (cf. esp. 3-41). 116 Cf. Jon Sobrino, Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological View (trans. P. Burns and F. McDonagh; Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1993), esp. 36-63, emphasizing (63), that he sees a mutual relationship of doing theology by writing history and writing history by doing theology.

18 reappears wrapped with layers of fictionality. Whereas a modern approach would perceive this state of affairs negatively as an impasse for the historical profession or positively as a challenge with which every serious historian should undertake all possible efforts to cope, postmodern historiography would not regard this as a deficient situation at all. The complexities inherent in the whole Jesus tradition are a heuristical playground for the postmodern combinatorics in its longing for disruptions, voices and traces. 2. Jesus with and without background: One of the few methodological innovations of the so-called third quest may be the special status that the socio-historical context in which Jesus lived has gained.117 The emphasis which is put on historical embedding is a coin with two sides: It serves to secure the Jewishness of Jesus marking out a common neutral territory for Christian and Jewish Jesus studies to co-operate. However, once a context is delimited every aspect of Jesus teaching which cannot be accounted for within this reconstructed frame becomes an outstanding attribute of his uniqueness, a sign of Jesus implicit christology and a historical explanation for the place of Jesus as the point of origin of worldwide Christianity.118 Postmodern historiography invites us to rethink the lines of demarcation between individual and context, agency and structure. Arguments which rest on a neat construction of foreground and background, individual genius and social structure, the extraordinary and the ordinary presuppose a linear development within a coherent whole on the basis of rational laws, which alone would allow us to point out analogies and influences as well as breaks and peculiarities. If the past were chaotic and unpredictable there could be no analogies on which to decide what is especially remarkable about a person.119 A further problem lies in the sheer possibility of arriving at a total picture of the historical background of Jesus. In view of the scarcity of sources Hayden Whites position that the historical past is informed both by a selection of given evidence and by an act of imagination seems to hit the mark. Thus, the context which historians use as their stage for Jesus is not only influenced by imagined pictures of an abstract entity called first century Judaism but, once it is dislocated from the realm of historical laws, it says virtually nothing about what Jesus could have been able to say and do. 3. Historical Jesus as Jesus-Story: Having gone that far, the study of the historical Jesus can no longer control the boundaries between history and literature, science and art. If we follow Hayden Whites assertion that history always blends the given and the invented, fact and fiction, then the difference between the gospels and the products of modern historical Jesus research has to be reconsidered: We may perceive a quantitative difference (with respect to the amount of data being considered) or a formal difference (with respect to the rhetorical modes of presentation). But it would be difficult to point out a qualitative difference concerning the notion of being more or less near to the historical Jesus as he really was. Once the borders are open a whole set of corollaries follow: a) Jesus historians could lose the basis for an important ideology-critical strategy which is in use since the days of the father of modern Jesus research, Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), namely to use the historical Jesus as the critical cornerstone against all totalitarian claims of politics, church and theology, and, finally, also as the external Archimedean point over against the theological constructs of the canonical gospels.
modern lifes of Jesus include sections on context. There is, though, an inherent problem in every social-historic approach which centers on a single person: By assigning to Jesus the role of object of investigation and to first century Judaism the role of shedding light on the figure of Jesus, historians are building from the outset a stage for a single performer. 118 The possibility to trace a line between the remarkable and the normal on the basis of historical analogies looks like a historicist replica of the christological understanding of Jesus as God and man. 119 Although we should be so fair to recognise that it is very difficult for historians to dispense with the idea of an ingenious individual and even more so for theologians regarding the figure of Jesus.
117 Most

19 b) The presentation of a history of Jesus could open up to a plurality of genres, especially to those which include narrative forms.120 In what may be called a search for the post-historical Jesus121 we may take into consideration other sources of historical imagination as well, at least as equally legitimate ways of imagining Jesus. This would include film, literature, other visual arts, sermons, etc. Whether all proposals should be regarded as equally valid, is a question which cannot be answered on the basis of historical reasoning but belong rather to the field of ethical considerations.122 c) As a further consequence and in line with the considerations of i.a. Wright, Schrter and Marsh, the opposition of theological christological proposals and reconstructions of the historical Jesus should be given up as artificial, i.e.: as a by-product of the privileging of the historical narrative over all others.123 The quest for the historical Jesus is first and foremost a christological undertaking.124 d) One final consequence may be to drop the term historical Jesus altogether and move toward the radical questioning of the origin-myth of Christianity. It should be stressed, however, that relating to the (lost) past by means of historical research has not necessarily to be questioned. Within a society, or community of interpretation, which still considers itself a child of the enlightenment such that it chooses to use the norm of historicity to decide over the value of a certain account of the historical Jesus, the concerns will probably not change the narrative and (in the broadest sense of the word) intertextual praxis of historical research. What is being questioned, though, is its self-perception as far as it claims universal validity. 4. Rethinking the rhetorical and political discourse of Jesus studies: If we apply Foucaultian sensibilities about the operations of power to the current Life-of-Jesus-research we may start anew from the recognition of the inescapable operations of power in the creation of historical discourse, in short by an understanding of the politics of academic history.125 The fascination with history and with the figure of Jesus is so prominent in the Western mind that whoever can control the production of meaning within this field of study holds a position of power.126 Ignoring the institutional, ideological, cultural and political implications of current historical Jesus studies is a luxury which after Marxist, feminist,
Theiens The Shadow of the Galilean: The Quest of the Historical Jesus in Narrative Form (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1987) has, significantly, been labelled a cross between a novel and a work of scholarship (Stephen Neill and Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 21988], 396). Theien himself brings up the problems of a scholar writing literature in his fictive correspondance with a skeptical colleague (e.g. pp. 1-2). What looks like a soliloquy is a form of revoking the creative character of his book. From a postmodern perspective this would be a perfectly fitting form of doing history without any need for implicit apologies! 121 With Hamilton, Quest. 122 Cf. in this respect Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), esp. 17-81, presenting an emancipatory, liberationist ethic of interpretation. Daniel Patte, Ethics of Biblical Interpretation: A Reevaluation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995). More generally Richard A. Cohen, Ethics, Exegesis and Philosophy: Interpretation after Levinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 123 In view of the emancipation of biblical studies from systems of theological and political closure in the 18th and 19th centuries this option for the historical was a necessary strategy. 124 Cf. Ulrich H.J. Krtner, Historischer Jesus geschichtlicher Christus: Zum Ansatz einer rezeptionssthetischen Christologie, in: Klaas Huizing, Ulrich H.J. Krtner and Paul Mller Lesen und Leben: Drei Essays zur Grundlegung einer Lesetheologie (Bielefeld: Luther-Verl., 1997), 99-135: Der geschichtliche Jesus der Evangelien [] ist der erzhlte Jesus (104). Reinmuth, Neutestamentliche Historik, 59-63 speaks consequently of Jesus-Christus-Geschichte. 125 Joyce, Return of History, 210. 126 By emphasizing right from the outset the paramount importance and great complexity of their object of study many Jesus-historians establish themselves as one of the few able to control this field of knowledge. It would be interesting to analyze some of the classics of historical Jesus research from a Foucaultian or Whitean angle.
120 Gerd

20 liberationist (cf. Schssler Fiorenza) and a fortiori postmodern challenges historians cannot afford any longer. 5. Imagination as mediation Imaginations contextuality: In a way, postmodern historiographical theory invites us to take seriously Albert Schweitzers seminal work once more. This not so much in terms of his own portrayal of Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher but rather in his strong argument against (most) 19th century images of and narratives about the historical Jesus, dismantling them as the artefacts of a highly bourgeois (brgerlich) society, whose view of history, and of the historical Jesus, functioned mainly to cement its own identity.127 Schweitzers argument in this respect could profitably be (re)conceptualised in terms of now more generally accepted hermeneutical insights. In fact, his analysis of the 19th centurys quest for the historical Jesus recognises its fruits largely as a broadly selflegitimizing narrative, i.e. of a societys discourse at large, thus radically contextualising it and refusing to acknowledge its authority, rather replacing it with his own image of (the historical) Jesus. The insights of Schweitzer and others imply that any enquiry into the shape and significance of the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth should be presented with due humility, restriction, and an awareness of the fact that it is inscribed in the scholars personal and his or her contexts general vocabulary. Every construction reveals as much as it hides about Jesus, allowing thus to relate ones image to the discourse one is part of, with all the unavoidable limitations this brings with itself. This would not mean to discourage research into the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth, but rather to acknowledge fundamentally its contextuality and to learn to live with it, while even appreciating it, as these insights open new horizons of (scholarly) interaction. 6. The interpreters freedom and responsibility: Ethical considerations. A question which is raised in the wider field of historiography as well, and will be of concern in the field of historical Jesus studies as well, is that of the ethics of interpretation. The privileged historical point of reference to evaluate proposals having been lost, nothing has yet replaced it. This question cannot be definitively answered here, though it forces oneself upon the researcher, who can no longer hide behind a generally acknowledged, objective method and methodology, but will have to account for his or her account of the historical Jesus. The person of the interpreter comes to the fore, and with this person, also his or her responsibility.

V. Afterword
At this point we can pause our simulation. The strategy of assuming a positive hypothesis concerning postmodern historiography has proven to be hermeneutically rewarding since it allows us to realise more clearly what sort of questions are raised, what avenues are opened and what common operations are questioned in short: what can be gained and what can be lost. Any decision concerning the undertaking of a postmodern historical Jesus can, thus, be taken on the basis of a proper examination of the issues at stake. For some this will reinforce their conviction that ignoring postmodern historiography entails no disadvantage for their own research. For others this may open up a legitimate possibility for struggling, decentering, displacing, dismantling and delegitimazing current metanarratives128. Still for others, operating in the tradition of Foucault and White, this may lead to respect for the contingency, fragility and sublimity of history and to an ethos of looking at objects with patience, selfcriticism and a deep awareness for the intricacies of the discourses in which we are inscribed.
127 Cf. for an explicit attempt in this direction Georgi, Leben-Jesu-Theologie. 128 All these concepts appear on just two pages in Victor Taylors General commentary

to Postmodernism,

ed. Taylor and Winquist, 1: xi-xii.