Responding to F. Gerald Downing in JSNT—Chris Keith

The forthcoming issue of Journal for the Study of the New Testament will feature a critical response to my "The Narratives of the Gospels and the Historical Jesus: Current Debates, Prior Debates, and the Goal of Historical Jesus Research" (JSNT 38.4: 426-55) from F. Gerald Downing, entitled "Feasible Researches in Historical Jesus Tradition: A Critical Response to Chris Keith."  I accepted an editorial invitation to respond, and that piece will follow Downing's article ("Yes and No: A Critical Response to F. Gerald Downing").

I am not surprised to have received a critical response to my earlier article.  Historical Jesus studies is always a hotly debated subfield within New Testament studies, and right now there is much movement in the discussion with new proposals, defenses of the established, etc., etc.  I made much effort in my response to Downing not simply to say, "He has misunderstood me here," because we all know that those are particularly boring responses.  I'm relatively sure that I failed, though, because I do think that he misunderstood much of what I was arguing, and some of that may have been my fault for not being clear enough.  I tried, therefore, to clarify.  Nevertheless, there are simply some fundamental disagreements between us, and that's fine.

I'll give a short preview of one such disagreement from my response because it concerns an issue that, for me, is at the core of my critique of some prior Jesus research:

"According to Downing, 'A claim to "authenticity" is a claim to certainty'.  No, it is not."

I will share the links to both articles when they're available.  I'm told this issue will be out in September.