Mark Strauss does an excellent job describing and assessing the so-called “criteria of authenticity” used to evaluate the sayings of Jesus (Four Portraits, 359-62). I have expanded this list a bit using volume 1 of John Meier’s The Marginal Jew. The use of criteria for determining the authenticity of Jesus’ sayings are part of an inductive argument which can only lead to the likelihood that a given saying goes back to Jesus. If multiple criterion imply that a saying is authentic, that increases confidence in that saying.
- Dissimilarity (Discontinuity in Meier, 1: 171-174, also known as originality, or dual irreducibility). If a saying is unlike anything found in Judaism or the early church, then it is more likely to be correct. But there is a serious problem here: How can a historical Jesus be divorced from Judaism, the religion of the Hebrew Bible and the first century Palestine in…
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