The Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research: Previous Discussion and New Proposals

Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Pp. 304, Cloth, £53.50 / $107.00, ISBN 184127089X. Richard Vinson Averett College Danville, VA 24541 Stanley Porter briefly describes the development of five criteria for authenticity—dissimilarity, coherence, multiple attestation, least distinctiveness, and Aramaic background—critiques the ways they are formulated and used, and then suggests three new criteria. He first objects to the notion that there is a “third quest” for the Historical Jesus and to the whole “first quest, no quest, new quest, third quest” scenario. The first quest, he finds, was not as uncritical or romanticized as it is often purported to be; there was no lack of scholarship on Jesus during the “no quest” period; and Porter sees a basic continuity of method throughout the twentieth century, linking no quest/new quest/third quest into one “multi-faceted quest of the historical Jesus, with various modifications and adjustments in approach” (p. 56). In the second chapter, Porter traces the rise of the five criteria, and some of the criticisms lodged against them. He argues that the criterion of dissimilarity can only be used to prove something is historical, can only deal with content and not wording, and requires “exhaustive detailed knowledge of both Judaism and the early Church” (p. 74). He argues that multiple attestation tells us about common motifs but not absolute wording and speaks only to the independence of documents and not to their reliability (p. 86). Porter notes that coherence is very subjective, and that it actually argues in the opposite direction from dissimilarity, producing a sort of paradox of methods that many interpreters do not address (pp. 81-82). His most trenchant critique is of attempted retroversions into Aramaic, which he demonstrates is a very chancy procedure. [Full Review]