A Previously Overlooked Life of Jesus by Martha Louisa ‘Lily’ Watson (1885)

Abstract This article provides an overview and analysis of a previously overlooked nineteenth-century Life of Jesus by Martha Louisa ‘Lily’ Watson. It takes as its starting point metacriticism as a vital task of present scholarship on the historical Jesus of Nazareth – in particular, the contributions of women and other scholars on the margins. This study provides a biographical overview of Watson and analyses the sources, methods, and historical approach she takes in her portrayal of Jesus, while also paying attention to some of the pitfalls of her study. Ultimately, engagement with Watson’s work is generative for new avenues of inquiry in historical Jesus studies such as (a) the need for an assessment of the nineteenth-century Lives of Jesus often ignored by scholarship, (b) nineteenth-century conceptions of non-canonical material and its relevance for the historical Jesus, (c) the rationalization of demonic possession over the unquestioning acceptance of Jesus’ other miracles, (d) the prevalence of anti-Jewish portrayals of Jesus, (d) and the use of rabbinic sources to reconstruct Jesus’ Jewish context.