The Criterion of Coherence

 (or Continuity, or Conformity). The criterion of coherence is used in two distinct ways. The more uncommon way was comprehensively elucidated by Béda Rigaux in 1958.^[14] He noted that the Evangelists’ accounts conform almost perfectly with the Palestinian and Jewish milieu of the period of Jesus, as confirmed by history, archeology, and literature of the time of Jesus. Latourelle summarizes several of Rigaux’s examples as follows:

[T]he evangelical description of the human environment (work, habitation, professions), of the linguistic and cultural environment (patterns of thought, Aramaic substratum), of the social, economic, political and juridical environment, of the religious environment especially (with its rivalries between Pharisees and Sadducees, its religious preoccupations concerning the clean and the unclean, the law and the Sabbath, demons and angels, the poor and the rich, the Kingdom of God and the end of time), the evangelical description of all this is remarkably faithful to the complex picture of Palestine at the time of Jesus.^[15]

This leads to the conclusion that the Gospel writers were exceedingly careful in conserving and portraying the ambiance surrounding Jesus’ ministry, even though second-Temple Judaism had progressed considerably between the time of Jesus’ ministry and the final redaction of the Gospels. This leads Rigaux and many others to the conclusion that the Gospel writers did care about historical accuracy and were careful to preserve the historical setting at the time of Jesus. If they cared that much about the cultural environment, would they have not done as much to preserve the circumstances surrounding the ministry of Jesus Himself? As we saw above, the miracle stories are remarkably restrained by comparison with the Gnostic gospels, and as we shall see, they also contain the same elements of Palestinian Judaism at the time of Jesus to which Rigaux refers. Interesting and corroborating as this might be, this use of the principle of coherence can only conclude to the general historicity of the Gospels. Its usefulness in confirming particular aspects of them is limited. However, the second use of the principle of coherence can confirm the historicity of particular aspects of the Gospels.

The second use is based on the criteria of multiple attestation and discontinuity, and proceeds in two steps.^[16] First, the criteria of multiple attestation and discontinuity are used to establish the historicity of central teachings of Jesus. The primary example of this is Jesus’ teaching about the immediate coming of the kingdom of God in His own person, which is completely discontinuous from second-Temple Judaism (which had a notion of a future kingdom at the time of the parousia, but nothing like a present kingdom, particularly one brought by a man!). It is also discontinuous with the teaching of the early Church whose theology had evolved beyond the “coming of the kingdom” to the divinity of Jesus. Once these core teachings of Jesus are established, we can proceed to the second step, namely, to show the historicity of actions or other teachings which are linked to (and dependent on) this core teaching. For example, Joachim Jeremias uses this technique to establish the validity of the parables of the kingdom which begin with “the kingdom of God is like…,” and imply the present reality of that kingdom. The parables would make little sense without presuming the present reality of the kingdom.