What form of criticism do you agree or accept. All or do you have certain preferences?
If I can interject for a moment in a question not originally addressed to me....
I still retain a certain regard for the older criteria of authenticity: I particularly use the criterions of "embaressment", "multiple attestation" and "dissimilarity" when discussing constructions and deductions about the plausibility of attributing a certain scene or logia to the historical Jesus.
I think the criterion of embarrassment is notably useful in assessing both plausibility and probability, for example that the crucifixion and baptism of Jesus are likely historical events, as virtually all historical Jesus scholars affirm (save a few rogue mythicists like Carrier and Price).
The early church is exceedingly unlikely, in my opinion, to have contrived a narrative about Jesus undergoing baptism at the hands of John - for the remission of sins, no less - when the gospel accounts are at pains to portray him as the perfect man, the Son of God, who is not subject to anyone but God and is possessed of a unique authority (i.e. "the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath", "the Son of Man had authority on earth to forgive sins", "the Son of Man will come with the clouds of heaven" etc.).
The baptism by John implies that Jesus was once a disciple of the former. And the gospel accounts tred around that matter with great delicacy. The gospel writers literally trip over themselves to try and explain this away as being anything other than what it actually was, him submitting himself to John as a subordinate (a pupil) and having his sins washed away. That didn't fit the theological narrative - so each gospel makes the extraneous details more grand with each gospel (the holy spirit is descending, John initially refuses to baptism him and says I should be baptising you instead etc. etc.), until you get to the fourth re-telling where John is all: "Jesus is the One, I must decrease, he must increase!" (yeah, yeah).
Likewise, the criterion of multiple attestation is useful, for example in testifying to a generally non-violent Jesus as depicted in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the remembered oral traditions in the Pauline epistles etc. As Professor Brian Pounds puts it: "we lack any first century sources that unambiguously portray Jesus in a violent manner. There is no question that the overall portrayal of Jesus in the gospels is essentially non-violent. Nowhere does Jesus take up a weapon in order to kill, as rebels did. On the contrary, he advocates nonviolence, even in the face of imperial oppression...Moreover, they align with the non-violent representation of Jesus in all other material" (The Crucifiable Jesus (2019) p.147).
This kind of "consensus" leads me strongly to feel that the historical Jesus likely was not an advocate of armed violence in the pursuit of his Messianic or eschatological claims
With that being said, I do feel that the criteria of authenticity - whilst immeasurably useful - can only get us so far. I've noticed some blind spots in the scholarship.
One of them would be the multiple attestation in Mark and Paul that Jesus said something about wine/bread being his body/blood in a commemorative ritual before his death. The multiple attestation of this in two of our earliest sources would give this strong credentials as a saying and event in the life of the historical Jesus. Yet, it is often barely discussed and so elevated alongside the baptism, the temple incident and the crucifixion in historical Jesus studies.
Likewise, the criteria of authenticity - whilst rigorously scientific in methodology - has not led to any broad consensus beyond some of the key facts amongst scholars of different schools in their construing of the historical Jesus. Thus, we have the "marginal Jew" of Meier, the cynic-like subversive Galilean sage of Crossan, the social revolutionary of Horsley, the eschatological Jewish prophet and restorationist of E.P. Sanders, the man of the spirit of Geza Vermes, the Messianic claimant of NT Wright and so on.
Dale Allison, in my opinion, is on to something with his latest argument that the methodology of sifting through individual sayings to determine whether each is "historical" or "unhistorical," might not be as fruitful as looking for large patterns in the Gospels and other literature. Horsley appears to have adopted a substantially similar approach as well, along with James Crossley.
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