THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MARKAN ἀφίημι-chreia AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS

The theme of Jesus and the forgiveness of sin has always been a contentious one within historical Jesus research. This article gives a brief overview of the debate on the authenticity of various forgiveness logia in the Jesus tradition, as well as the different criteria that have been used in the past in an attempt to validate them. It focuses on two specific forgiveness logia in the Markan tradition (2:1-12, 3:20-35) in order to assess whether the manner in which they have been crafted as chreia can provide insight into how the ἀφίημι logia of Jesus have been preserved in the pre-Markan tradition