Oral gospel traditions
Oral gospel traditions is the hypothetical first stage in the formation of the written
Critical methods: source and form criticism
Biblical scholars use a variety of critical methodologies known as biblical criticism. They apply source criticism to identify the written sources beneath the canonical gospels. Scholars generally understood that these written sources must have had a prehistory as oral tellings, but the very nature of oral transmission seemed to rule out the possibility of recovering them. In the early 20th century, the German scholar Hermann Gunkel demonstrated a new critical method, form criticism, which he believed could discover traces of oral tradition in written texts. Gunkel specialized in Old Testament studies, but other scholars soon adopted and adapted his methods to the study of the New Testament.[3]
The essence of form criticism is the identification of the Sitz im Leben, "situation in life", which gave rise to a particular written passage. When form critics discuss oral traditions about Jesus, they theorize about the particular social situation in which different accounts of Jesus were told.[4][5] For New Testament scholars, this focus remains the Second Temple period. First-century Palestine was predominantly an oral society.[6]
A modern consensus exists that Jesus must be understood as a Jew in a Jewish environment.
The accuracy of the oral gospel tradition was insured by the community designating certain learned individuals to bear the main responsibility for retaining the gospel message of Jesus. The prominence of teachers in the earliest communities such as the Jerusalem Church is best explained by the communities' reliance on them as repositories of oral tradition.[10] One of the most striking features to emerge from recent study is the "amazing consistency" of the history of the tradition "which gave birth to the NT".[11][12]
A review of Richard Bauckham's book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony states "The common wisdom in the academy is that stories and sayings of Jesus circulated for decades, undergoing countless retellings and embellishments before being finally set down in writing."[13]
You are probably familiar with the old birthday party game "
telephone." A group of kids sits in a circle, the first tells a brief story to the one sitting next to her, who tells it to the next, and to the next, and so on, until it comes back full circle to the one who started it. Invariably, the story has changed so much in the process of retelling that everyone gets a good laugh. Imagine this same activity taking place, not in a solitary living room with ten kids on one afternoon, but over the expanse of the Roman Empire (some 2,500 miles across), with thousands of participants—from different backgrounds, with different concerns, and in different contexts—some of whom have to translate the stories into different languages.— Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament. A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.[14]
Oral traditions and the formation of the gospels
Modern scholars have concluded that the
- The first stage was oral, and included various stories about Jesus such as healing the sick, or debating with opponents, as well as parables and teachings.
- In the second stage, the oral traditions began to be written down in collections (collections of miracles, collections of sayings, etc.), while the oral traditions continued to circulate
- In the third stage, early Christians began combining the written collections and oral traditions into what might be called "proto-gospels" – hence Luke's reference to the existence of "many" earlier narratives about Jesus
- In the fourth stage, the authors of our four Gospels drew on these proto-gospels, collections, and still-circulating oral traditions to produce the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.[1]
Mark, Matthew and Luke are known as the
Oral transmission may also be seen as a different approach to understanding the Synoptic Gospels in New Testament scholarship. Current theories attempt to link the three synoptic gospels together through a common textual tradition. However, many problems arise when linking these three texts together (see the
Elite agency
While there is a broad consensus on this view of the process of development from oral tradition to written gospels, an alternative thesis proposed by historian Robyn Faith Walsh in her book The Origins of Early Christian Literature, builds on scholarship from historian of religion Jonathan Z. Smith. She proposes viewing gospel authors as individual elite cultural producers in the classical vein, writing for an elite audience instead of early Christian communities, with agency in the composition of their text rather than primarily transmitters of tradition.[19][20]
Notes
- ^ a b Burkett 2002, p. 124.
- ^ Dunn 2013, pp. 3–5.
- ^ Muilenburg 1969, pp. 1–18.
- ^ Casey 2010, pp. 141–143.
- ^ Ehrman 2012, p. 84.
- ^ Dunn 2013, pp. 290–291.
- ^ Van Voorst 2000, p. 5.
- ^ Ehrman 2012, pp. 13, 86, 276.
- ^ Dunn 2013, pp. 19, 55.
- ^ Dunn 2013, pp. 55, 223, 279–280, 309.
- ^ Ehrman 2012, p. 117.
- ^ Dunn 2013, pp. 359–360 – "One of the most striking features to emerge from this study is the amazing consistency of the history of the NT tradition, the tradition which gave birth to the NT."
- ISBN 978-1-931018-46-3.
- ^ Ehrman, Bart D. (1997). The New Testament. A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Oxford University Press. p. 44.
- ^ Telford 2011, pp. 13–29.
- ^ Scholz 2009, pp. 166–188.
- ^ Dunn 2003, pp. 192–205.
- ^ Dunn 2003, pp. 238–252.
- ISBN 978-1108835305.
- ^ Crook, Zeba (2021). "Compte Rendus: The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture". Studies in Religion. 51 (2) – via SageJournals.
Bibliography
- Burkett, Delbert (2002). An introduction to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00720-7.
- ISBN 978-0-567-64517-3.
- ISBN 978-0-8028-3931-2.
- Dunn, James D. G. (2013). The Oral Gospel Tradition. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-8028-6782-7.
- ISBN 978-0-06-220460-8.
- JSTOR 3262829.
- Scholz, Daniel J. (2009). Jesus in the Gospels and Acts. St Mary's Press. ISBN 978-0-88489-955-6.
- Telford, William R. (2011). "Mark's Portrait of Jesus". In Burkett, Delbert (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to Jesus. Wiley–Blackwell. pp. 13–29. ISBN 978-1-4051-9362-7.
- ISBN 978-0-8028-4368-5.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-0-567-04090-9.
- Aune, David E. (2010). "Form Criticism". In Aune, David E. (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to The New Testament. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-1894-4.
- ISBN 978-0-567-08296-1.
- Dunn, James D. G. (2003a). "The History of the Tradition: New Testament". In Dunn, James D. G.; Rogerson, John William (eds.). Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. pp. 950–71. ISBN 978-0-8028-3711-0.
- ISBN 978-0-19-518249-1.
- Hammann, Konrad (2012). Rudolf Bultmann – Eine Biographie. ISBN 978-3-16-152013-6.
- Kelber, Werner H. (1983). The oral and the written Gospel: the hermeneutics of speaking and writing in the synoptic tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-21097-5.
- ISBN 978-0-567-04090-9.