A word about the “Metalanguage” article

In the Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, in its first volume (How to Study the Historical Jesus), and at the end of Part One of the volume (Contemporary Methodological Approaches), there is an article that at first was titled “A Metalanguage for the Historical Jesus Methods”. The article became a bit more avantgarde than I had planned. So I added the subtitle “An Experiment”.

The article seeks to further exact communication between scholars as they address issues of high complexity; to ensure that all are on the same page, speak the same language, so to say. To this end, the article outlines a metalevel way to deal with the numerous and very diverse methodological approaches to the historical Jesus that exist.

Additionally, and also consequently, the metalanguage introduced in the article provides a most comprehensive way to observe and take into account all possible factors that can affect the process when a scholar makes an assessment of Jesus as a figure of history.

Unfortunately, anything that accomplishes such things cannot be altogether simple. Click, at your leisure, the following pages which present the initiating phrases of the language:

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