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The criterion of multiple attestation, also called the criterion of independent attestation or the cross-section method, is a tool used by
Biblical scholars Biblical studies is the academic application of a set of diverse disciplines to the study of the Bible (the Old Testament and New Testament).''Introduction to Biblical Studies, Second Edition'' by Steve Moyise (Oct 27, 2004) pages 11–12 Fo ...
to help determine whether certain actions or sayings by Jesus in the New Testament are from the Historical Jesus. Simply put, the more independent witnesses that report an event or saying, the better. This criterion was first developed by F. C. Burkitt in 1906, at the end of the first
quest for the historical Jesus The quest for the historical Jesus consists of academic efforts to determine what words and actions, if any, may be attributed to Jesus, and to use the findings to provide portraits of the historical Jesus.. Since the 18th century, three scholarl ...
.


Description

The gospels are not always independent of each other. Matthew and Luke, for example, are likely dependent on Mark. The ''criterion of multiple attestation'' focuses on the sayings or deeds of Jesus that are attested to in more than one independent literary source such as
Mark Mark may refer to: Currency * Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina * East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic * Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927 * Finn ...
,
Paul Paul may refer to: * Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name) * Paul (surname), a list of people People Christianity *Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chr ...
, Q, M, L, John, Josephus, or
Thomas Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the A ...
.John P. Meier,
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume IV: Law and Love
', Yale University Press, 2009.
The force of this criterion is increased if a given motif or theme is also found in different literary forms such as parables, dispute stories, miracle stories, prophecy, and/or aphorism. Potentially reliable sources that scholars have considered to be independent of one another for the purposes of this criterion include: *
Paul Paul may refer to: * Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name) * Paul (surname), a list of people People Christianity *Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chr ...
's 7 undisputed epistles * Q source * Gospel of Mark *
M source M source, which is sometimes referred to as M document, or simply M, comes from the M in "Matthean material". It is a hypothetical textual source for the Gospel of Matthew. M Source is defined as that 'special material' of the Gospel of Matthew t ...
(special Matthean tradition) *
L source In textual criticism of the New Testament, the L source is a hypothetical oral or textual tradition which the author of Luke–Acts may have used when composing the Gospel of Luke. Composition The question of how to explain the similarities ...
(special Lukan tradition) * Gospel of John * Josephus * (Coptic) Gospel of Thomas (disputed by some) * Gospel of Peter (possibly; its independence from the canonical Gospels is debated) * Tacitus


Examples of its use

For example, the " Kingdom of God" ''motif'' appears in "Mark, Q, special Matthean tradition, special Lucan tradition, and John, with echoes in Paul, despite the fact that 'Kingdom of God' is not Paul's preferred way of speaking."John P. Meier, ''A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus'', Doubleday, 1991. v. 1, pp 174–175, 317 It also appears in an array of literary genres. The ''words'' attributed to Jesus on the bread and wine during the Last Supper (found in
Mark 14 Mark 14 is the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It contains the plot to kill Jesus, his anointing by a woman, the Last Supper, predictions of his betrayal, and Peter the Apostle's three deni ...
:22–25 and
1 Corinthians 11 1 Corinthians 11 is the eleventh chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It was authored by Paul the Apostle and Sosthenes in Ephesus. In this chapter, Paul writes on the conduct of Christians w ...
:23–26 (Paul), compare to John 6:51–58) and his prohibition on divorce (found in
Mark 10 Mark 10 is the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It presents further teachings of Jesus as his journey progresses towards Jerusalem. Text The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter ...
:11–12, Luke 16:18 (attributed to Q), and
1 Corinthians 7 1 Corinthians 7 is the seventh chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is authored by Paul the Apostle and Sosthenes in Ephesus. In this chapter, Paul replies to certain questions raised by t ...
:10–11 (Paul)) are examples of sayings that are multiply attested.Gerd Theissen, & Dagmar Winter.
The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria
', Westminster John Knox Press, 2002.
However, the Lord's Prayer, although found in both Matthew and Luke, evidently derives from their common source Q, and therefore cannot pass the criterion. Perhaps the most widely independently attested ''event'' is the
crucifixion of Jesus The crucifixion and death of Jesus occurred in 1st-century Judea, most likely in AD 30 or AD 33. It is described in the four canonical gospels, referred to in the New Testament epistles, attested to by other ancient sources, and consider ...
during the governorship of Pontius Pilate (and the emperorship of Tiberius), namely by Paul (the only one not to mention Pilate), all four canonical Gospels, the Gospel of Peter (its independence from the canonical Gospels is debated), Josephus, and even Tacitus. Another example of an event that is multiply attested is Jesus's meeting with John the Baptist (found in Mark, Q, and John).Bart D. Ehrman, '' Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium,'' Oxford, 1999. pp 90–91. However, John does not explicitly mention the
baptism of Jesus The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist is a major event in the life of Jesus which is described in the three synoptic Gospels of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark and Luke). It is considered to have taken place at Al-Maghtas (also called Bethan ...
(merely having the Baptist saying he 'witnessed the spirit descending on
esus Esus, Hesus, or Aisus was a Brittonic and Gaulish god known from two monumental statues and a line in Lucan's '' Bellum civile''. Name T. F. O'Rahilly derives the theonym ''Esus'', as well as ''Aoibheall'', ''Éibhleann'', ''Aoife'', and ...
like a dove', John 1:32) that is attested in Mark, although Theissen (2002) claimed that the Gospel of the Hebrews 2 did corroborate the baptism. The episode of
Jesus and the rich young man Jesus and the rich young man (also called Jesus and the rich ruler) is an episode in the life of Jesus recounted in the Gospel of Matthew , the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament. It deals with eternal life and the ...
is found in all three Synoptic Gospels, but is evidently dependent on Mark, and not mentioned outside the Synoptics, and therefore does not pass the criterion.


Limitations

This criterion cannot be used for sources that are not independent. For example, a saying that occurs in all three
Synoptic Gospels The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in a similar sequence and in similar or sometimes identical wording. They stand in contrast to John, whose con ...
may only represent one source. Under the two-source hypothesis, both the authors of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke used the Gospel of Mark in their writings; therefore, triple-tradition material represents only a single source, Mark. The same problem exists under the four-source hypothesis, unless Q can be demonstrated to attest the same tradition independently from Mark. (The
Augustinian hypothesis The Augustinian hypothesis (sometimes referred to as the Augustinian Proposal) is a solution to the synoptic problem, which concerns the origin of the Gospels of the New Testament. The hypothesis holds that Matthew was written first, by Matth ...
posits that Mark and Luke used Matthew, so once again triple-tradition material would have originated in a single source). Another limitation is that some sayings or deeds attributed to Jesus could have originated in the first Christian communities early enough in the tradition to be attested to by a number of independent sources, thus not representing the historical Jesus. Finally, there are some sayings or deeds of Jesus that only appear in one form or source that scholars still consider historically probable. Multiple attestation has a certain kind of objectivity. Given the ''independence'' of the sources, satisfaction of the criterion makes it harder to maintain that it was an invention of early Christians. Multiple attestation is not always a requisite for historicity, nor is it enough to determine accuracy by itself. However useful, it is typically one of a number of criteria that have been developed by scholars to assess whether a tradition is likely to be historical; the widely-recognized criteria were distinguished by Stanley E. Porter as dissimilarity, coherence, multiple attestation, least distinctiveness and Aramaic linguistic background. Porter suggests three new criteria in the search for the words of the historical Jesus (Porter 2000), which have not yet found broad acceptance: a criterion of Greek language, of Greek textual variance and of "discourse features" at variance with the text's usual style. Of the criterion of multiple attestations, Porter makes the point, which has been expressed before, that multiple attestations identify common motifs rather than absolute wording, and speak only to the independence of documents and not their reliability.Porter (2000), p. 86.


See also

*
Criterion of contextual credibility The criterion of contextual credibility, also variously called the criterion of Semitisms and Palestinian background or the criterion of Semitic language phenomena and Palestinian environment, is a tool used by Biblical scholars to help determine w ...
*
Criterion of dissimilarity The criterion of dissimilarity (often used as a shorthand for criterion of double dissimilarity;''The Historical Jesus and the Final Judgment Sayings in Q'' (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament) by Brian Han Gregg (30 June 2006) ...
*
Criterion of embarrassment The criterion of embarrassment is a type of historical analysis in which a historical account is deemed likely to be true under the inference that that the author would have no reason to invent a historical account which might embarrass them. Cer ...
* Independent sources *
Josephus on Jesus The extant manuscripts of the book ''Antiquities of the Jews'', written by the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus around AD 93–94, contain two references to Jesus of Nazareth and one reference to John the Baptist. The first a ...
* Mutawatir, an analogous concept in Islam


References


Literature

* {{cite book, last=Porter, first=Stanley E., author-link=Stanley E. Porter, year=2004, title=The Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research , publisher=T&T Clark International , location=New York, isbn=978-0-56704-360-3 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=igHUAwAAQBAJ Historiography Quest for the historical Jesus Biblical criticism