John P. Meier
John Paul Meier is a prominent Biblical scholar and
Catholic priest. He attended St. Joseph's Seminary and College (B.A., 1964),
Gregorian University (S.T.L, 1968), and the
Pontifical Biblical Institute (S.S.D., 1976).
His
magnum opus is the series
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. In it, he employs tools of
historical-critical research to delineate who
Jesus of Nazareth was and what he intended. He suggests that such research might admit agreement of
Catholic,
Protestant,
Jewish, and
agnostic scholars.
Volume 1 (1991) differentiates the
historical Jesus from the
Biblical Jesus. It analyzes sources, including the
New Testament, non-
canonical works,
Josephus, and other Jewish and
pagan works. For deciding what comes from Jesus as distinct from early Christian tradition it proposes these
primary criteria:
* 1. The
criterion of embarrassment: Why invent what would invite difficulty for the early church?
* 2. The
criterion of discontinuity: Why invent what cannot be derived from the Judaism of Jesus's time or the early church?
* 3. The
criterion of multiple attestation: Is it more plausible to deny words, sayings, or deeds attributed to Jesus in more than one independent literary source?
* 4. The
criterion of coherence: Given the claims to historicity from any of the above criteria, are different sayings or deeds evidently inconsistent?
* 5. The
criterion of rejection and execution: If Jesus's ministry came to a violent, public end, what of Jesus's words or deeds could have alienated people, especially powerful people? The criteria are to be used in tandem for mutual correction. Still, any claim is only to the probable, not the certain. The rest of Volume 1 discusses the origins of
Jesus, his background, and early years and provides a
chronology of his life.
Volume 2 (1994) examines Jesus's relationship to
John the Baptist, Jesus's message of the
Kingdom of God and its antecedents, and accounts of Jesus's
miracles in ancient and modern minds. Volume 3 (2001) places Jesus in the context of his followers, the crowds, and his competitors (including
Pharisees,
Sadducees,
Essenes,
Samaritans,
scribes, and
Zealots) in first-century
Palestine. A fourth and final volume of the series is in progress to address Jesus's teachings on the Law, his
parables and self reference, and
the Passion.
Meier is the author of six other books and more than 50 scholarly articles. He was editor of
The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, president of the Catholic Biblical Association, and a professor of New Testament at the
Catholic University of America. He is currently a professor in the Department of Theology at the
University of Notre Dame.
*John P. Meier, "Jesus," in Raymond E. Brown et al.
The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice-Hall, 1990, pp. 1316-28, ISBN 0136149340 (a concise prospectus for the series that followed)
*____,
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus,
Anchor Bible Reference Library, Doubleday, : v. 1,
The Roots of the Problem and the Person, 1991, ISBN 0385264259: v. 2,
Mentor, Message, and Miracles, 1994, ISBN 0385469926: v. 3,
Companions and Competitors, 2001, ISBN 0385469934
*
Bio on University of Notre Dame Department of Theology page*
1997 interview* John P. Meier, "
The Present State of the ‘Third Quest' for the Historical Jesus: Loss and Gain,"
Biblica 80, 1999, pp. 459-487
*
"Editorial Reviews" at Amazon.com for each clicked volume of "a marginal jew" Search
