Criteria to Establish Historicity

A Brief Description of Criteria to Establish Historicity

What follows is a brief synopsis of the criteria and methods used to corroborate the likely validity of historical texts. It focuses primarily on the New Testament, and can be applied to Brown’s and Meier’s assessment of the historicity of the miracles (Unit II-F), as well as Wright’s, Brown’s, and Jeremiahs’ assessments of the historicity of Jesus’ Eucharist, Passion, and statements about Himself and His mission (Units II-G,L,&M). We will begin with the four most commonly used criteria of historicity:

1. Multiple attestation,

2. Discontinuity,

3. Coherence, and

4. Sufficient and Necessary Explanation

The Criterion of Multiple Attestation. Multiple attestation refers to the principle that the more often a story or saying appears in independent traditions, the more probable its historicity. Note that the converse statement cannot be deduced from the former (“the less often a story or saying appears in independent traditions, the less probable its historicity”). This falls prey to the logical fallacy of negating the antecedent.^[5]

Appearance in a multiplicity of independent traditions strongly suggests that those traditions go back to a common source, which would presumably be either the early Palestinian community and/or Jesus Himself. However, an absence of multiple attestation does not necessitate non-historicity, because sometimes the author(s) of particular traditions may not have heard about a particular story/saying or may have chosen to ignore it (for theological or apologetical reasons).

Prior to the discoveries of form and redaction criticism, it was commonly thought that each Gospel represented a separate tradition, and therefore multiple attestation consisted merely in repetition in the four Gospels. However, since the time of literary criticism (leading to form and redaction criticism), this simplistic view could no longer be sustained. These methods showed that Mark was very likely the first Gospel, and that Matthew and Luke relied very heavily upon it. Furthermore, it was also shown that Matthew and Luke shared a common source, namely, Q (referring to “Quelle,” meaning “source” in German), which was an early collection of Jesus’ sayings translated into Greek. Luke and Matthew had their own special sources which are not found in either Mark or Q. We know that these sources are not mere inventions of the Evangelists because many of them have the characteristics of an oral tradition developed prior to any literary tradition, and many of them do not follow the literary propensities of the Evangelists (e.g., some of Luke’s sources write in a far less sophisticated and stylized way than Luke himself – and the fact that Luke does not correct them indicates that he is being respectful of his sources). The Johannine source has long been recognized to be independent of the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Thus, contemporary biblical criticism has been able to identify five independent traditions for the four Gospels, namely, Mark, Q, M (Matthew special), L (Luke special), and J (the independent Johannine tradition). We may now retranslate our principle to read, “the more often a story appears in the five independent Gospel traditions, the more probable its historicity.” Thus, if a story appears in all five traditions, it is very probable that it originated with a very early common Palestinian oral tradition and/or Jesus’ ministry itself. If it appears in three or four independent traditions, it is still quite probable. It must also be remembered that if a story appears in only one or two traditions, it does not necessitate non-historicity.^[6]

The Criterion of Discontinuity. There are two major applications of discontinuity: (1) any saying or action of Jesus which is discontinuous with the attitudes, theology, or sayings of second-Temple Judaism^[7] show signs of historicity because Jesus had sufficient authority to break with that tradition; (2) any saying or action attributed to Jesus which may be viewed as undeveloped (because the early Church’s theology had developed in light of His resurrection and gift of the Spirit) also shows signs of historicity, because there is no reason why the early Church would have preserved an undeveloped theology except in deference to Jesus’ having uttered it.^[8] This may also be extended to actions or sayings which the early Church would have found embarrassing, apologetically unappealing, disrespectful to Jesus, or disrespectful to the apostles. This criterion works particularly well in combination with multiple attestation, because multiple attestation can help to identify high probability of an origin in the early Palestinian Church or the historical Jesus; so when there is both multiple attestation and discontinuity from early Judaism and/or the early Church, it is difficult to find another source besides Jesus having sufficient authority to explain their placement within the Gospels.

Note that the converse is once again fallacious. Just because a story or saying is continuous with early second-Temple Judaism and the theology of the early Church does not mean that it is non-historical (to conclude otherwise would again be the fallacy of negating the antecedent).

We may now explore the two kinds of discontinuity in greater detail, starting with discontinuity from second-Temple Judaism. Latourelle catalogues a series of examples from Jeremias’ comprehensive study of this criterion which entails discontinuity of form and/or content from second-Temple Judaism. With respect to discontinuity of form (i.e., where a multi-attested form of a saying differs from second-Temple Judaism and so points to an origin in Jesus), scholars can identify when the form of a saying attributed to Jesus in the Gospels is discontinuous with a form of that same saying in second-Temple Judaism. For example, the way in which multiple sources attribute the use of antithetical parallelism and “amen” to Jesus is discontinuous with second-Temple Judaism’s use of these forms, and so Jeremias concludes that this way of speaking probably had its origin in Jesus.^[9]

The same holds true for discontinuity of content, particularly attitudes, from second-Temple Judaism.^[10] The New Testament clearly attributes the address “Abba” to Jesus, which conveys such a deep intimacy with the Father that it is exceedingly rare in second-Temple Judaism. So also, this holds true for Jesus’ attitude toward the Sabbath and the Law, which is completely discontinuous with second-Temple Judaism.

The criterion of discontinuity may also be applied to the early Church. As noted above, it becomes relevant with respect to actions or sayings in the Gospels that the early Church would have found embarrassing, apologetically unappealing, disrespectful to Jesus, or disrespectful to the apostles. Dozens of examples can be found for this, including Jesus’ baptism (Mk 1:9-11 – which counts Him among sinners); the command not to preach to the Samaritans and the Gentiles (Mt 10:5 – which is incommensurate with the early Church’s mission to the Samaritans and the Gentiles); and all of the passages which show the apostles’ obtuseness, faults, and desertion (which is highly embarrassing to the leaders of the post-resurrection Church).^[11] We have already seen this above with respect to Jesus being accused of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons. Why on earth would the Church have ever brought this accusation to the attention of converts and prospective converts unless the accusation were true and needed to be redressed? We also saw this with respect to Matthew’s reference to the soldiers being told to say that Jesus’ body was stolen (as an explanation of the empty tomb).^[12] This is also important in our historical assessment of the miracles of Jesus, given below.

The criterion of discontinuity also applies to New Testament sayings superceded by the theology of the post-resurrectional Church. This can be seen, for example, in the New Testament use of “Son of Man.” In light of the resurrection and gift of the Spirit, the early Church had progressed beyond this title to that of “the Son of God” and “the Lord,” which make Jesus’ divinity quite clear. In contrast to this, the title “Son of Man,”(see Unit II-G) only implies Jesus’ divinity by associating him with the divine Judge, the initiator of the parousia, and possessing the glory of God (see Daniel 7:13-14). Why would the early Church have used a far less theologically expressive title for Jesus than the ones that it had already used to express the divinity they recognized in the resurrection and gift of the Spirit? The matter becomes even more curious when we see the number of times that these titles are used. The more current and theologically expressive titles are used rather infrequently in the gospels, while the title “Son of Man” is placed on the lips of Jesus (comparatively) a very large number of times (80 times).^[13] There appears to be but one logical explanation – “Son of Man” was the title Jesus used to refer to Himself.

This leads to another question – why would the Evangelists have inserted the titles “Son of God” and “the Lord” into narratives of the ministry of Jesus, if those titles only came to light after the resurrection and gift of the Spirit? The direct answer is that they used the Gospels as a means of teaching the full truth about the identity and reality of Jesus. And so they gave post-resurrectional theological interpretation to the mission and actions of Jesus and His ministry. This intermingling of history and interpretation is not unusual in the ancient world, and should not be considered a cavalier attitude toward history on the part of the Evangelists. As will be seen below, the Evangelists were very concerned with history; yet they felt free to express the full significance of these events. These post-resurrection themes can be readily identified and distinguished from Jesus’ ordinary modes of expression and attitudes.

We should not infer from this that Jesus did not make reference to His divinity. As will be seen in Unit II-G, He did – but in an indirect way. For example, He spoke about bringing the kingdom of God (with its eternal significance) to the world in His own person; He claimed to vanquish evil by His own authority; His mission was precisely the one reserved for Yahweh alone; He referred to Himself as the “Son of Man” (with its eschatological significance within second-Temple Judaism’s interpretation of Daniel 7:13-14); and He implied, in three distinct ways, that He is the exclusive Son of the Father. These indirect references to His divinity were consistent with His desire to avoid self-aggrandizement and to induce His disciples to recognize His divine Sonship through His actions and in their hearts.

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.

Latourelle gives several other examples that have been verified by extensive analytical and historical studies:

…the example of the Beatitudes, originally the proclamation of the Good Tidings about the arrival of the messianic Kingdom (analyzed by Dupont), the example of the Pater Noster, originally and essentially a prayer for the restoration of the Kingdom (analyzed by H. Schurmann, J. Alonso Diaz, R. Brown, J. Jeremias), the example of the miracles, intimately connected with the subject of the Kingdom of God and to that of conversion, the example of the triple temptation (analyzed by Dupont and Jeremias).^[17]

Another example which is more germane to our purpose of examining the historicity of Jesus’ miracles occurs when Jesus makes a remarkable proclamation after curing a dumb demoniac in the Gospel of Luke (11:20): “But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” The proclamation of the immediate presence of the kingdom is very typical of the preaching of Jesus (verified by the criteria of multiple attestation and discontinuity). When this is combined with the fact that Jesus typically linked His exorcisms to the vanquishing of evil by His own authority, it is not a far stretch to conclude that He really did link “the vanquishing of evil by His own authority” to “the bringing of the kingdom in His own person” (which enjoys multiple attestation). This would seem to indicate that the historical Jesus performed exorcisms for the express purpose of demonstrating that the kingdom of God had arrived in His own person.

It should be noted here that Jesus does not say “in my own person.” This is typical of Jesus’ desire not to aggrandize Himself, and to make the listener infer it from His actions through the “right disposition” of the listener’s heart. Thus, Jesus uses His exorcisms to demonstrate first that the kingdom of God is here, now. The listener may then ask, “Well, how did that happen?” and hopefully infer (unless, through the wrong disposition of heart, he is willing to say that the kingdom of God is being brought by the devil) that it must be by the power of God in Jesus.

The Criterion of Sufficient and Necessary Explanation. Latourelle describes this criterion as follows:

If, before a considerable collection of facts or of data, which require a coherent and sufficient explanation, there is offered an explanation which clarifies and brings together in harmony all these elements (which, otherwise, would remain enigmas), we may conclude that we are in the presence of an authentic datum (fact, deed, attitude, word of Jesus).^[18]

We will see a very extended example of this criterion throughout Unit II-D, in N.T. Wright’s pursuit of a sufficient and necessary explanation for the five Christian mutations of second-Temple Judaism’s view of resurrection. John P. Meier uses it to establish the historicity of miracles in general.

The above four historical criteria are very effective in establishing the historicity of all four kinds of miracles in general because multiple attestation can be applied to multiple instances, and the criteria of discontinuity and coherence can be applied to pervasive themes. However, it is slightly more difficult to apply historical criteria to single stories or narratives (as Meier does) because multiple attestation may not be available (i.e., a particular story may have only one source in Mark, Q, M, L, or J). Moreover, instances of discontinuity (from either second-Temple Judaism or embarrassment to the Church) may become less relevant in the standardization of the form of the story. Allow me to explain.

Form criticism is a method^[19] which classifies units of scripture by literary pattern (e.g., parables or exhortations, or, with respect to Jesus’ miracles, exorcism stories, healing stories, stories about raising from the dead, or nature miracle stories). It seeks to identify its various layers of oral transmission. It begins with a formulaic presentation given in the New Testament which has consistent identifiable features. It then works its way back through the various strands of oral transmission to a very primitive form of the story which was witnessed and probably well-known in the town or district in which it occurred. Thus, form criticism assumes that as an account is orally transmitted from the time of its historical core, it takes on accretions which correspond to the teaching needs of its transmitters in the early Church. Finally, it takes on a standard form with particular identifiable elements, which is then fashioned into a written account, which again may take on further accretions from one of the Evangelists or their literary sources. This last set of accretions are termed “redactions,” which reflect the favorite themes of Evangelists or teaching concerns within their audiences and churches (e.g., Matthew’s Jewish audience or Luke’s Gentile audience). The attempt to identify these redactions is appropriately called “redaction criticism.”

The job of the exegete is first to peel back the layer of redactions and then peel back the layers of the oral tradition to reveal the primitive core story which would have been witnessed and popularly known within a particular district. If the exegete is fortunate, there may be some clues to this, such as Semitisms which reveal an early Aramaic narrative (which, in turn, reveals an early Palestinian origin). There may be other clues which the above-mentioned historical criteria can reveal. For example, the criterion of discontinuity (e.g., an incident which is embarrassing to the apostles or early Church, or would seem to undermine the reputation of Jesus) may be present, which very probably indicates an early origin, because it can hardly be thought that such incidents would be added to the oral tradition or to the written tradition. Why would any of the Evangelists add an incident which undermines Jesus’ reputation to a story which originally did not have it?

Now let us return to our problem of historical criteria (such as discontinuity or coherence) becoming less relevant with the standardization of the form of a story (as detected by form criticism). This can be explained through an example taken from Jesus’ exorcisms. The criterion of discontinuity can verify the historicity of Jesus’ exorcisms by His own authority – in general, because this is a clean break from second-Temple Judaism where exorcisms would have been worked through the authority (power) of God. This unique approach to exorcism by Jesus enjoys considerable multiple attestation which shows that it was very probably common practice for the historical Jesus. Good as this may be for establishing the historicity of Jesus’ exorcisms by His own authority – in general; it tends to make the criterion much less effective for establishing the historicity of particular narratives, because once a particular characteristic becomes part of the standard form of a story, the historian can no longer tell whether it was included in the tradition behind the Gospel story because it really occurred or because it was part of the standard form. This means that ascertaining the historicity of a particular story must take a more circumlocutious path then ascertaining the historicity of Jesus’ exorcisms, healings, or raisings from the dead in general.

How might historians approach this more difficult task? It may be done in two steps. First, they take a standard miracle story (say, an exorcism story), and then peel back the redactions (the Evangelists’ favorite themes and teaching concerns) that may have been added by the Evangelists. Secondly, they attempt to move from the standard form of the story through the various layers of oral tradition to get to the primitive core story. Without going through the enormous nuance of this second step (which John P. Meier does extensively), I will give a brief explanation of five techniques for identifying historicity after literary redactions have been removed.

Technique #1 - Identification of nonstandard parts of a story. Stories which have several parts not falling within the standard form of, say, exorcism stories, reveal a very complex and lively development within oral tradition which probably have a primitive origin. This is not to say that stories which fall strictly within the standard form are not historical (recall the fallacy of negating the antecedent given above). However, the absence of nonstandard elements makes their development more difficult to trace, and therefore makes them less historically verifiable. Thus, we may generalize by saying that longer, detailed stories which include multiple elements falling outside of the standard form are more historically verifiable than ones that strictly follow the standard form.

Technique #2 - Unusual facts in material falling outside the standard form. In some narratives with extensive materials falling outside the standard form, there are unusual or unique facts that would not have ordinarily been included in a miracle story and serve no redactional purpose (i.e., they are not the favorite theme of an Evangelist, and do not serve a catechetical need or teaching need that might have added to the story). These unusual or unique facts would seem to require some personal connection of witnesses to the actual occurrence – for example, four friends of a paralyzed man going up to the roof of a building in which Jesus is preaching, carving a hole in the roof and lowering the paralyzed man down (Mark 2:1-12 parr.). This long detail does not seem as if it would have been added by any re-crafter of an oral tradition or by any literary redactor because it serves no apologetical, catechetical, or teaching purpose. Since it also requires the personal connection of a witness to remember it, there is some likelihood that it goes back to an historical occurrence.

Technique #3 - Historical details that are irrelevant to the standard form. These would include names of people and/or names of towns, for example, the town of Nain which is quite small and would have absolutely no pedagogical or catechetical purpose for the authors of traditions or the Evangelists. Why include it? Because it was probably attached to the original story. Again, names like Lazarus or Mary Magdalene have no pedagogical or catechetical purpose, and would seem to be relevant only if they were part of an original story.

Technique #4 - Semitisms. When Aramaic words (such as “talitha koum”) appear in a Gospel text, we assume that their authors did not gratuitously introduce them into stories which were already translated into Greek. Rather, they represent an earlier stage of the tradition going back to its Palestinian origins. The same holds true for Semitic forms of speech which can be detected underneath Greek translations. Semitic substrata are revealed by very awkward Greek phrases which become quite coherent when translated into Aramaic. Joachim Jeremias was particularly adept at identifying these Semitisms.

Technique #5 - Instances of discontinuity which occur in material falling outside the standard form. When discontinuity occurs within the standard form (e.g., Jesus exorcising demons by His own authority, which makes a clean break from second-Temple Judaism but falls within the standard form of every exorcism story), it may well be historically true, but it can’t be used as evidence of historicity of a particular story because it falls within the standard form. However, if discontinuity occurs in material falling outside the standard form, then historians do have evidence of historicity, because they can be reasonably sure that the Evangelists did not include this simply because it was part of the standard form. It was therefore probably part of a primitive core tradition which was retained throughout the tradition’s development precisely because it was historical. Historians can be reasonably sure that these discontinuous elements were not added at a later period in the development of the tradition because it makes no sense to introduce elements which break from Judaism or embarrass the Church into a narrative that was more apologetically appealing in its original form.

For example, Mark’s story of Jesus’ exorcism of a demoniac boy includes a part about the apostles being unable to cast out the demon. This is not part of the standard form of exorcism stories, and it presents an embarrassment to the apostles (which is not relevant to Mark’s teaching or catechetical purpose, and so is unlikely to be a Marcan redaction); therefore historians may reasonably conclude that it was not gratuitously added to the exorcism story, and very likely goes back to a primitive tradition grounded in history.

The above five techniques are used in Unit II-F (on Jesus’ miracles) and Unit II-G (on Jesus’ self-revelation). The criterion of sufficient and necessary reason will be used in Unit II-D with respect to Jesus’ resurrection. These techniques can be used in other New Testament contexts, and can be applied to other non-biblical historical texts.