Norman Perrin's Sayings

The sayings approach also relies too heavily on the criteria of Historical Jesus research. Norman Perrin used the criteria of dissimilarity, coherence and multiple attestations to identify to discover the authenticity of Jesus’ sayings. However, the problem with this is that all of these criteria have flaws so it makes proving authenticity troublesome. For example, Morna Hooker explained that the criterion of dissimilarity is flawed simply because Jesus was a Jew who influenced the new religion Christianity. In other words, a saying containing an element of either Judaism or Christianity was not a good enough reason to invalidate it. When you take the limitations of the criteria into account, it becomes difficult to truly trust the authenticity
E.P. Sanders states that the most assured facts from Jesus’ life points towards a Jewish eschatology as the framework of his ministry. Thus they create points where a particular aspect of Jesus’ ministry can be studied. This eschatology includes the line from John the Baptist (Jesus’ predecessor) to the apostles and the leaders of the early church is believed to have been the framework of Jesus’ ministry. Without these facts it would be difficult to understand this ministry. An example of this is the temple incident in Jerusalem (Mark 11:15-19, Matt 21:12-17, Luke 19:45-48; John 2:13-16). Jesus’ behavior in the temple shows that he believed that God was going to come and destroy the temple and build a new one afterwards. This event raises the question of the ‘Kingdom of God’ and the future eschatology alluded to. With this event, Historical Jesus scholars can now go back to any sayings that hint towards this future
When you rely on a saying, you can come to a conclusion different from the conclusion you expect from Jesus’ actions. For instance, when Jesus exclaimed that if he ‘cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you’ (Matt 12:28; Luke 11:20), scholars such as Dodd and Bultmann came to the consensus that Jesus believed in a realized eschatology and that the kingdom of God had already arrived. This saying has been deemed authentic since it displays ‘that feeling of eschatological power’ that was synonymous with the activities of Jesus. However, without considering some of the events of Jesus’ life like the aforementioned temple incident, one would miss how Jesus showed traits of an apocalyptic prophet. Although Matt 12:28 and the temple incident suggest two different theories about Jesus’ eschatology, E.P. Sanders has shown that the latter is more trustworthy as it is supported by context and indisputable