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Writer's picturejmgiardi

Rethinking the Criterion of Dissimilarity

Commenting on the Bible verse "But of that day and hour [of the Apocalypse] knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father," (Matthew 24:36) C. S. Lewis wrote, "Unless the reporter were perfectly honest he would never have recorded the confession of ignorance at all; he could have had no motive for doing so except a desire to tell the whole truth" (The World's Last Night, Boston: Mariner-Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, p. 98). Lewis is applying a conventional Bible scholar tool known as the criterion of dissimilarity to the Bible verse. According to the criterion, if a saying would have been offensive to the early church, then no one would have had a reason to make the saying up. Certainly, if we take the verse out of context and on its own merits, it could be offensive to Christians who believed that the Son (Jesus) was aware of his Father's (God's) plans. The verse, however, closely follows another verse that has been even more threatening to Christianity. Lewis referred to it as "the most embarrassing verse in the Bible" (The World's Last Night p. 98). The verse: "this generation shall not pass till all these things be done." In Stubborn Credulity, I explained why the verse is problematic:


[Norman] Geisler … insists that "there is no reason to assume that Jesus made the obviously false assertion that the world would come to an end within the lifetime of his contemporaries" (The Big Book of Christian Apologetics p. 463). Preceding this comment, Geisler explains away Matthew 24:34 ("Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled"). Presumably, Jesus is saying that before all his immediate hearers die the end of the world will come. Certainly the Son of Man didn't come "in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" prior to the third century (Matthew 24:30). Geisler, of course, knows this history and tries to reinterpret "generation"―it can mean "race" like the Jewish race.


Unlike John R. Rice (see below) and Norman Geisler, Lewis heeded the words of Albert Schweitzer who taught, "There is no justification for twisting this [Matthew 16:28] about or explaining it away. It simply means that Jesus promises the fulfilment of all Messianic hopes before the end of the existing generation" (The Quest of the Historical Jesus p. 20). What Lewis did was summed up well by S. T. Joshi: "Lewis tries to dodge this issue by first quoting another verse that is not quite so explicit on the matter [Matthew 24:34], then by quoting Jesus' subsequent comment: 'But of that day and hour knoweth no man…'" (God's Defenders, Amherst: Prometheus, 2003, p. 119). I speculated elsewhere that an inconvenient story "could have been concocted to cover up an even more inconvenient fact." Here, it appears that a saying was concocted in order to change the subject. If Lewis, in the twentieth century, could find Matthew 24:36 to be amenable, then it's plausible that Christians in the first century could have found the saying to be useful, at least in the "In Case of Emergency Break Glass" sense. If a saying that should pass the criterion of dissimilarity test in fact doesn't, then one can wonder if any pass the test. My doubts about the criterion of dissimilarity caused me to recall the words of the radical Bible scholar Robert M. Price, who is outside the mainstream on several issues. When it comes to the criterion of dissimilarity, I find his views to be difficult to dismiss. In perhaps his best known book, he wrote,


"[T]he early Christians passed down nothing they did not find usable. Indeed, the material was passed down via the usage. This means that every individual saying or anecdote represents some aspect of the early Christian movement. None is simply an objective datum. Every single one thus fails, and must fail, the criterion of dissimilarity. Even a saying that offended later orthodoxy … must have been amenable to some rival faction or at some earlier, less sophisticated stage―or we would not have it." (The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, Amherst: Prometheus, 2003, p. 17 & 18)

Lewis evidently found Matthew 24:36 amenable. He wrote, "The facts, then, are these: that Jesus professed himself (in some sense) ignorant, and within a moment showed that he really was so" (The World's Last Night p. 98). Never mind that he showed that he was ignorant a moment before professing himself ignorant of the details. As Joshi observed, "In any case, even if we assume that Jesus was uncertain of the 'day and hour' of his second coming, that uncertainty seems to apply, in context, within the 'this generation' remark two verses earlier; Jesus is still maintaining here that he will return within the lifetime of those who hear him, but that the exact date of that return is unclear. So it is not the case that Jesus is merely 'ignorant'; he is still mistaken, in that he clearly did not return within 'this generation'" (God's Defenders p. 120). We'll ignore the apologists who even try to explain away verses like Matthew 16:28 (John R. Rice, The King of the Jews, 1955, p. 251 & 252). Presumably, that wasn't a "live option" for Christians in the first century. We'll also ignore the people who think that "generation" meant "race". I've already explained in Stubborn Credulity why those people are probably wrong (See the chapter "Well Lied!"). If we want to honestly assess what could or could not have been made up, we need to acknowledge that the first century Christian had to admit that his Messiah was probably "a failed apocalyptic prophet" (Taner Edis, The Ghost in the Universe p. 167). That person, as opposed to the twentieth century American Christian (who can get away with almost anything if it's in defense of the faith), would have had to "grasp at straws". Under extraordinary conditions, it’s conceivable that an embarrassing fact could still be usable, and despite what I may have insinuated elsewhere, “usable” does not imply “made up”.

Lest anyone misunderstand, I consider the criterion of dissimilarity to be a way to confirm sayings, not to reject them. Because the criterion is a tool for verification, I fear that apologists have an incentive to overuse it. How clever then is Robert Price to point out that “embarrassing” doesn’t imply “not usable”. We don’t have to accept all of his conclusions in order to accept that sayings that we find embarrassing today must have been usable to the early church. “Usable” doesn’t mean “made up,” but if one wanted to maintain that the anecdotes and sayings in the Gospels are legendary, one would have to say that none are verified. I don’t have a strong opinion on whether all the Gospels are legendary. I am, however, more skeptical now when someone argues that something in the Gospels passes the criterion of dissimilarity test. Scrutiny is warranted here: even a mainstream Bible scholar, Bart Ehrman, recanted after teaching that an anecdote was verified by the criterion of embarassment. He wrote, "Christian apologists often argue that no one would make up the story of the discovery of the empty tomb precisely because according to these stories, it was women who found the tomb.... I used to hold this view as well, and so I see its force. But now that I've gone more deeply into the matter, I see its real flaw. It suffers, in short, from a poverty of imagination" (How Jesus Became God, HarperOne, 2014, p.166). Ehrman still believes that the criterion of dissimilarity is useful (Ibid, 96 & 97). That being said, the list of sayings and anecdotes that are genuinely dissimilar appears to be shrinking. Revision and caution are appropriate.




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