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 whether certain actions or sayings by Jesus in the New Testament are from the Historical Jesus. Simply put, if a tradition about Jesus does not fit the linguistic, cultural, historical, and social environment of Jewish Aramaic-speaking 1st-century Palestine, it is probably not authentic. The linguistic and the environmental criteria are treated separately by some scholars, but taken together by others.

The criterion emerged as separate but interrelated criteria: the 'criterion of Semitic language phenomena' (first introduced in 1925 by C. F. Burney), followed by and linked to the 'criterion of Palestinian environment' by scholars such as Joachim Jeremias (1947), in the period between the so-called 'first' and 'second' quest for the historical Jesus (1906–1953).