The Scholar Who Is Changing NT Studies Forever...

That there is a stagnation in New Testament studies (particularly on the historical Jesus) is a given in our current decade. Consensus opinions have been long-cemented and aspects of the field that have been dropped as antiquated are yet to be replaced by more robust methodologies or perspectives. You are hard pressed to find new and exciting elements to biblical studies in the 2020s. But I have found that one scholar, though not exactly out of the blue, is changing things for the better to reorient the discipline: Chris Keith.

Keith burst onto the scene of NT studies in the late 2000s with his doctoral dissertation The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus (2008) which was completed under two legendary NT scholars Helen Bond and Larry Hurtado. Quickly getting revised and republished in the New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents series the following year. Keith immediately set his eyes upon historical Jesus and gospel studies, with a special emphasis on orality, memory, and cultures of writing in the ancient world. 

Following his dissertation, Keith quickly followed up with two works focusing on the literary and historical study of Jesus, Jesus Among Friends and Enemies and Jesus' Literacy (both 2011). In 2012, Keith edited a volume critiquing the famous "criteria of authenticity" that had been developed by the so-called "Third Quest" for the historical Jesus entitled Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (2012), signalling the present turn away from past confidence in our abilities to reconstruct the life of Jesus. His most celebrated work, Jesus Against the Scribal Elite (2014), continued the theme of looking at Jesus through his socio-political context and was followed up several years later by The Gospels and Manuscript (2020). He is set to edit a new volume slated for release later this year starring many famous names including Robyn Faith Walsh, Paula Fredrikson, and Mark Goodacre entitled The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus (2024).

One of Keith's major contributions to historical Jesus studies is, unambiguously, his position on the criteria for authenticity. Building off the work of Stanley Porter, Dale Allison, and Gerd Theissen, Keith has observed numerous instances where criteria are indebted to the faulty assumptions of form criticism: that a pure, unadulterated Jesus tradition lies somewhere in the interpretive morass of the New Testament and that all we need to do is find it. This sieving approach to the Jesus traditions in the NT assumes that scholars are even capable of prying authentic from inauthentic tradition, or that we are even able to distinguish the two at all. This approach results in removing the traditions that have been deemed to be part of the evangelist's later interpretive framework. Yet, as many scholars have pointed out even in decades past, late does not necessarily mean theological, nor does early necessarily mean historical. Many historians find this approach to be somewhat arrogant in our ability to discover the "real" Jesus behind the lenses of the evangelists. 

In rejecting the criteria and also recognising the problematic assumptions of the earlier form-critics, Keith promotes what he describes as the "social memory" approach to replace it. This is an approach that has been applied to the Old Testament for many decades now, but one that is just now coming into the fold for branches of New Testament studies as well. Instead of mining for historical probabilities and sifting material into what is or is not authentic, Keith proposes that cultural recollection by religious communities better suits the "quest" for the real Jesus over proposals that strictly involve history or myth. Social-scientific work on the nature of the early Christian communities presents the opportunity to look at how they reconstructed the past in light of their contemporary needs. Memory in the gospels is not simply a recollection or production of past events through hermeneutical lenses (though these are important elements), but an activity that is governed by social formation: we only have access to the remembered Jesus. We cannot pretend that we can neutralise the interpretive frameworks that led to the composition of the gospels: all memory is interpretation. An acceptance of this forces us to comport any reconstruction of the historical Jesus with was is possible through the mnemonic evidence.

Alongside historical Jesus studies, Keith has taken a keen interest in questions of literacy in the ancient world. Repeating the conclusions of classicists William Harris and Catherine Hezser that Jewish literacy in Roman Palestine was unexceptionally low, he approaches the question of whether Jesus was literate by first rejecting the simple dichotomy between literate and illiterate and incorporates elements of memory, orality, and scribal culture. In doing this, Keith observes how Jesus' audience in the Christian communities received his modes of teaching differently, with some opting to portray him as a literate member of the scribal elite, or an illiterate member of the impoverished seeking to overturn the established order. These contradictory pictures that permeated early Christian depictions of Christ are reminiscent of much historical Jesus studies over the last few decades where many scholars (particularly of the Third Quest variety) have fallen into Albert Schweitzer's old adage of reconstructing Jesus in their image. This reiterates Keith's point to evaporate the question of criteria and methodology.

So, given Keith's background as an important yet underappreciated voice in the current scholarly climate of Jesus studies, what should we expect from his upcoming volume that seeks to start a "fourth quest" for the Historical Jesus? As discussed above, a continued abandonment of the criteria for authenticity is to be anticipated as well as a heavier emphasis on the political and social contexts from which Jesus came from. Given the presence of Walsh as a contributor, I suspect more emphasis on the Greco-Roman influences on the New Testament will be foregrounded with perhaps even fresh proposals on mimetic models. I should also note the presence of Robert J. Myles as another contributor who is likely to provide an economic analysis of Jesus studies and whether we can ascertain the financial state of the world that Jesus came from, perhaps shedding more light on the nature of gospel origins.

We would do well to monitor Keith's trajectory as a scholar for the future of our discipline. While many apologists continue to uncritically apply the criteria for authenticity and remain stuck in outdated modes of scholarship, Keith is pioneering the way for new methodologies in Jesus studies and the New Testament as a whole.