Negative Criteria for Authenticity
Negative Criteria for Authenticity
Along with the positive criteria mentioned above, several criteria have been proposed that would demonstrate the inauthenticity of the material being investigated.
1. The Criteria of Contradiction of Authentic Sayings
This assumes that, if the saying under investigation contradicts a saying that has been demonstrated as authentic, then it must be inauthentic. It also assumes that Jesus was consistent and did not contradict Himself. Thus, if we find two sayings of Jesus that conflict with each other and one has been demonstrated as authentic, the other one must be inauthentic. It requires, however, that we make sure we interpret the meaning of a saying that is a proverb, which teaches a general truth, according to the rules governing this literary form. If, for example, we do not recognize Jesus' use of hyperbole in the proverb “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged” (Matt 7:1), we might wrongly interpret this as contradicting “Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine” (Matt 7:6). Matthew, however, clearly did not think they contradicted each other, as the close proximity of the two sayings in his Gospel indicates. Similarly, Jesus' saying on hating father and mother (Luke 14:26), whose authenticity is demonstrated by the embarrassment it causes (cf. the parallel in Matt 10:37), should not be interpreted as standing in contradiction with Mark 7:9–10 (Jesus' condemnation of the Pharisees for dishonoring father and mother by their tradition) because it is an example of hyperbole. Jesus' frequent use of exaggerated language in His use of overstatement, hyperbole, proverbs, parables, and poetry29 should warn us against seeing contradictions in Jesus' teachings due to a misinterpretation of the genre Jesus was using.
2. The Criterion of Environmental Contradiction
There can be little doubt about the validity of this criterion. If a saying could not have been said by Jesus in the environment of first-century Palestinian Judaism, it cannot be authentic. A hypothetical example of this would be a saying such as “No man can ride two motorcycles.” Since motorcycles did not exist in Jesus' day, this cannot be authentic. On the other hand, the saying “It is impossible for a man to ride two horses (and) to stretch two bows” found in GT 47 is possible, but it does not satisfy any of the positive criteria mentioned above. An example sometimes given as fitting this criterion is Mark 10:12, which speaks of a woman divorcing her husband. In general a Jewish woman could not divorce her husband, but there were exceptions (Sirach 23:22–27). Furthermore, in Galilee in Jesus' day a most famous example of this involved Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee. John the Baptist's criticism of Herod's marrying Herodias, who had divorced Herod's brother, ultimately resulted in John's losing his life (Mark 6:17–29). Thus Mark 10:12 is not an example of such an environmental contradiction. While this criterion is essentially a tautology (i.e., a saying that Jesus could not teach in first-century Palestine, He did not teach!), its usefulness is limited, for it is extremely difficult to determine which sayings of Jesus in the Gospels He could not have said.
3. The Criterion of the Tendencies of the Developing Tradition
This criterion is based on the presupposition that the passing on of the oral traditions of Jesus' words and deeds proceeded according to certain “laws.” These laws can then be discovered and applied to the Gospel materials in order to strip away later accretions to the original traditions. These laws were derived by observing how the later Gospels (Matthew and Luke) used their Markan source and by observing the rules of how folktales, songs, and anecdotes were passed down orally. The optimism of discovering these “laws” and the application of them to the Gospel materials, however, was dealt a devastating blow by E. P. Sanders,30 who argued that such “laws” did not exist and that tendencies toward traditions becoming longer and more detailed (Mark 14:47, “ear” and “slave” with Luke 22:50, “right ear” and John 18:10, “right ear” and “Malchus”; Mark 9:17 and Matt 17:15, “son” with Luke 9:38, “only son”; Mark 3:1 and Matt 12:10, “withered hand” with Luke 6:6, “right hand was withered”) are paralleled by examples of traditions becoming shorter and less detailed (Mark 2:3, “four of them” with Matt 9:2, “some people [lit. ‘they’]” and Luke 5:18, “men”; Mark 5:22 and Luke 8:4, “Jairus, a leader of the synagogue” with Matt 9:18, “a leader of the synagogue”; Mark 6:39, “green grass” with Matt 14:19, “grass” [in Luke 9:14, “grass” is not mentioned]). How does one then apply a “law” that later traditions at times tend to become longer and more detailed and at times tend to become shorter and less detailed?31 It is furthermore uncertain as to the extent that tendencies observed in the passing down of written traditions can be transferred to the passing down of oral traditions. It should also be pointed out that the tendencies observed in the passing down of folk traditions often involve a period of centuries, whereas the period in which the Gospel traditions were passed down orally before the written Gospels appeared lasted only three to four decades while the eyewitnesses were still alive!