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Can the alleged teachings of Jesus be accepted as authentic?
Three facts disprove, for the most part, their authenticity.
1. The most important teachings ascribed to him by the Synoptics were borrowed, either by him or his biographers, from other teachers and writers.
2. His teachings as presented by the Synoptics, and as presented by John, exclude each other. No critic can seriously contend that the discourses and sayings of Jesus recorded in the Synoptics and those given in the Fourth Gospel emanated from the same mind. They are wholly dissimilar, both in doctrine and phraseology. Dr. Westcott says: “It is impossible to pass from the Synoptic Gospels to that of St. John without feeling that the transition involves the passage from one world of thought to another. No familiarity with the general teaching of the Gospels, no wide conception of the character of the Savior, is sufficient to destroy the contrast which exists in form and spirit between the earlier and later narratives” (Introduction to Study of Gospels, p. 249).
3. The discourses attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel were evidently composed by the author of that Gospel. This is apparent to every careful reader.
The teachings ascribed to Jesus in John, then, are spurious; while those ascribed to him in Matthew, Mark and Luke are of doubtful authenticity. If any of the teachings of Jesus have been preserved they exist in the first three Gospels, but the unauthentic character of the Gospels themselves, renders it impossible to ascribe to him with certainty a single teaching.