I like Anthony Le Donne’s little book - Historical Jesus: What Can We Know and How Can We Know It?[i]
- though I think the title and the
subtitle are reversed. This 150 page
book is a primer in the postmodern philosophy of history and in memory theories
in the context of the historical Jesus. This is not a “life of Christ.” It is, instead, an introductory guide into
how to think about the life of Christ from a postmodernist historian point of
view.
And I know that I’ve already set some folk’s teeth on
edge. It’s that much used but
rarely defined word “postmodern.” And Le
Donne doesn’t define it much more than as a reaction to the “modern” approach.[ii] Postmodernism is difficult (if not impossible
to define) because there is no unified and codified standard of postmodern
thought, there is no rule book, no agreed upon goal. But whatever it may be there a couple of related
ideas that can be considered foundational – multiple voices and multiple points
of view. And with those multiple voices and views comes doubt about or
rejection of objective reality and absolute truth.
And this makes many Christians nervous. [iii]
But Le Donne, as much as he emphasizes the need to recognize these multiple and
overlapping and even contradictory perceptions, does not reject the idea that
absolute truth (in a historical context) exists. It is, however, inaccessible to us – except through
the distorted and refracted lenses of the memories of those who wrote about the
life and teachings of Jesus.
Previous attempts to find the “historical Jesus” have, like
Judas in the rock-opera Jesus Christ
Superstar, attempted to “strip away
the myth from the man…” [iv] But Le Donne argues that it is not the
historian’s goal to strip away the myth and the interpretation in order to get
back to the bare bones of history. “The
historian cannot separate the facts from the interpretations, nor should he/she
try.”[v]
Instead the goal is to “account plausibly for the multiple memories represented
by those who interpreted past events.”[vi]
The past is gone and will never be repeated. All that
remains are our memories – but our memories are shaped by our perceptions and
our perceptions are shaped by our culture, our ideas, our thoughts etc… The
French philosopher Voltaire is quoted in Le Donne’s book as saying, “There is
no history, only fictions of varying degrees of plausibility.”[vii]
Perhaps Voltaire was overly cynical, but
history – the sequential events that happened in the past – is inaccessible to
us (without the use of a time machine…) All that we have and all that we can
have are the stories we remember and that we tell about the past.
And all stories are interpretations – shaped by narrative
constraints, ideologies and beliefs.
As a primer for students of the postmodern philosophy of
history, this book is great. But as a
book about the historical Jesus, it’s rather lean. I think I would have appreciated a more in
depth application of this methodology to the study of the historical
Jesus. The few examples Le Donne has
included are striking. Even if I’m not
sure that I like or agree with his all of his conclusions, I wanted more.
It’s a surprisingly light book (both in weight and in tone)
for such a complex and nuanced topic, but Le Donne uses examples from pop
culture and scholarly tomes with equal dexterity to make his points. It’s neither dull nor condescending. I recommend it to you if you’re not afraid
to have your perceptions challenged.
[i] Le
Donne, Anthony Historical Jesus: What Can We Know and How Can We Know It?
William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, Grand
Rapids MI, 2011
[ii] Page
6
[iii]
In point of fact: the publication of Historical Jesus led to the firing
of Le Donne from Lincoln Christian University in April 2012, because donors were
upset by the content of the book…
[iv] Jesus Christ Superstar, Andrew Lloyd
Webber, Tim Rice
[v] Page
80
[vi] Page
77
[vii] Page
72
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