Methods and models in the quest for the historical Jesus: Historical criticism and/or social scientific criticism

Abstract

In this article a distinction is made between social scientific criticism and historiography. Historiography describes what is unrepeatable, specific and particular. Social scientific criticism is to some extent a phenomenological approach. On a high level of abstraction, it focuses on ideal types. The historiographical quest for Jesus is about the plausibility of a continuity or a discontinuity existing between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith. This approach has been broadened by the interdisciplinary application of the results of archaeological, sociohistorical, and cultural anthropological studies of the world of the historical Jesus. But it does not mean that historical-critical research as such is now dismissed. The aim of the article is to argue that social scientific criticism can complement a historical-critical analysis.