Some inauthentic passages in the Early Buddhist Texts

How marvellous! Thank you Bhante & Ajahn!

There are some other suttas I might have ordinarily asked about, but instead I wanted to put forward what seems a very obvious one: MN117. There are a whole bunch of instances on this forum where the very likely abhidhammic influence in that sutta has been mentioned and I likewise recall watching a talk in which Bhikkhu Bodhi suggested that this sutta is important for understanding the development of the Pali Canon and how abhidhamma crept into the suttas.

The reason I wanted to ask about it though, is because in many ways folk seem to find the sutta useful (gnlaera’s post here serves as a little indicator towards the point, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to find more corroborative evidence). That’s absolutely no reason at all not to mark it out as inauthentic if it is most likely inauthentic, however, it does lead me to wonder about the kinds of approaches that might be advocated towards those suttas that can be confidently identified as inauthentic.

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