The saying, therefore, belongs to the positive sayings about the Baptist and as such would have to be rejected, on Bultmann's grounds, as having a
Sitz zm Leben in anti-Jewish polemic in the early Church, (As indeed it is by E. Jüngel, the only
recent contributor to the discussion to deny the authenticity of the saying, who argues that Matthew has set John on the side of Jesus «aus antijüdischer Polemik» [Paulus und Jesus (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1964), p. 191].