NOTES

1

THE FIRST FAITH

[1]. J. D. G. Dunn, Christianity in the Making, vol. 1, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

[2]. See, e.g., D. Brown, Discipleship and Imagination: Christian Tradition and Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 250–53, 270–72.

[3]. D. F. Strauss, The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History: A Critique of Schleiermacher’s “Life of Jesus,” Lives of Jesus Series (1865; ET: Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977); F. D. E. Schleiermacher, The Life of Jesus (1864; ET: Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975).

[4]. F. D. E. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (1821–22; 2nd ed., 1830; ET: Edinburgh: Clark, 1928), 12–18, 377–89; Schleiermacher, Life of Jesus, 88–104, 263–76.

[5]. Schleiermacher, Life of Jesus, 263.

[6]. Strauss, Christ of Faith, 4–5.

[7]. Ibid., 169.

[8]. E. Renan, The Life of Jesus (1863; ET: London: Trübner, 1864), 87–88.

[9]. A. Harnack, What Is Christianity? (1900; ET: London: Williams & Norgate, 1901; 3rd ed., 1904); the final quotation is W. R. Matthews’s summary in the 5th edition (London: Benn, 1958), x.

[10]. Harnack, What Is Christianity? (3rd ed., 1904), 147, 180–81.

[11]. W. Wrede, The Messianic Secret (1901; ET: Cambridge: Clarke, 1971).

[12]. N. Perrin, “The Wredestrasse Becomes the Hauptstrasse: Reflections on the Reprinting of the Dodd Festschrift,” Journal of Religion 46 (1966): 296–300; cited by N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPCK, 1996), 28.

[13]. N. Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (London: SCM, 1967), 39: “The nature of the synoptic tradition is such that the burden of proof will be upon the claim to authenticity” (italicized in the original).

[14]. So explicitly in the opening words of both M. Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel (1919; ET: London: Nicholson & Watson, 1934), v; and R. Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (1921; 1931; ET: Oxford: Blackwell, 1963), 4; see also below, ch. 2 n13.

[15]. R. Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (1926; 2nd ed., 1934; ET: London: Nicholson & Watson, 1935), 12: “What the sources offer us first of all is the message of the early Christian community, which for the most part the church freely attributed to Jesus.”

[16]. G. Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth (1956; ET: London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1960), 14, 21, 23.

[17]. For a good example, see H. C. Kee, Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark’s Gospel (London: SCM, 1977).

[18]. An early and influential example is D. Rhoads, “Narrative Criticism and the Gospel of Mark,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 50 (1982): 411–34.

[19]. From the poster distributed in connection with Funk’s lecture tour in 2000; the words are almost a quotation from R. W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 300.

[20]. See, e.g., the references to the Jesus Seminar in the author index of Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 959.

[21]. Funk, Honest to Jesus, 208, 212, 252.

[22]. G. Theissen, The Shadow of the Galilean: The Quest of the Historical Jesus in Narrative Form (London: SCM, 1987).

[23]. H. Schürmann, “Die vorösterlichen Anfänge der Logientradition: Versuch eines formgeschichtlichen Zugangs zum Leben Jesu,” in Der historische Jesus und der kerygmatische Christus, ed. H. Ristow and K. Matthiae (Berlin: Evangelische Verlag, 1961), 342–70.

[24]. This was one of the early conclusions regarding Q, which has remained largely beyond question for more than a century.

[25]. See particularly J. S. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), ch. 5; and the impressive argument of J. L. Reed, “The Sayings Source Q in Galilee,” in Archeology and the Galilean Jesus (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2000), 170–96.

[26]. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q, ch. 4.

[27]. Hence the importance of Q, in particular for the Jesus Seminar and for J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: Harper, 1991).

[28]. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 150–51.

[29]. E.g., J. M. Robinson, A New Quest of the Historical Jesus (London: SCM, 1959), 26; J. P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 1, The Roots of the Problem and the Person (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 21–26.

[30]. L. E. Keck, A Future for the Historical Jesus (Nashville: Abingdon, 1971), 20.

[31]. L. E. Keck, Who Is Jesus? History in Perfect Tense, Studies on Personalities of the New Testament (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), 20.

[32]. Reviewed briefly in Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 141–42.

[33]. See again and further in ibid., 161–71.

[34]. M. Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (1892; ET: Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964). L. T. Johnson, The Real Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), mounts the equivalent attack on the neoliberalism of the Jesus Seminar.

[35]. Most famously in R. Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology” (1941), in Kerygma and Myth, ed. H. W. Bartsch (ET: London: SPCK, 1957), 1–44.

2

BEHIND THE GOSPELS

[1]. William Caxton (ca. 1422–91) was the first English printer.

[2]. Recent estimates are of less than 10 percent literacy in the Roman Empire under the principate, falling to perhaps as low as 3 percent literacy in Roman Palestine; see below, 90n34.

[3]. Cf. Jesus’ reported challenge to Pharisees, “Have you not read?” (Mark 2:25; Matt. 12:5; 19:4) with his challenge to the disciples, “You have heard” (Matt. 5:21, 27, 33, 38, 43).

[4]. J. D. Crossan, The Birth of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 235, has little doubt that Jesus was illiterate. Luke 4:16–30 is usually regarded as a Lukan elaboration of the briefer tradition in Mark 6:1–6.

[5]. See further the brief treatment in my “Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition,” New Testament Studies 49 (2003): 139–75 (reprinted as an appendix to the present work), on which I draw extensively in parts of this chapter.

[6]. See, e.g., W. G. Kümmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems (ET: Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), 146–51; Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q, 295–309.

[7]. On Ur-Markus, see, e.g., W. G. Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament (ET: Nashville: Abingdon, 1975), 61–63; and on Proto-Luke, particularly, see V. Taylor, Behind the Third Gospel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1926).

[8]. B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (London: Macmillan, 1924), ch. 9 (quotations from 229).

[9]. W. Farmer, The Synoptic Problem (New York: Macmillan, 1964).

[10]. M. Goulder, Luke: A New Paradigm, 2 vols., JSNTSup 20 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), in his attempt to dispense with Q (particularly vol. 1, ch. 2).

[11]. M. Goodacre, The Case against Q (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2002), 56–59, 89–90 (despite 64–66, 188).

[12]. J. Wellhausen, Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1905), 43.

[13]. R. Bultmann (with K. Kundsin), Form Criticism (1934; ET: New York: Harper Torchbook, 1962), 1.

[14]. R. Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (1926; ET: New York: Scribners, 1935), 12–13.

[15]. Ibid.

[16]. See particularly C. M. Tuckett, Q and the History of Early Christianity (Edinburgh: Clark, 1996), ch. 1; Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q, 87–111.

[17]. E.g., U. Schnelle, The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings (ET: London: SCM, 1998), 187.

[18]. J. S. Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987).

[19]. Kloppenborg does not explicitly address the issue of whether Q1 was also a document, but he does assume it (Excavating Q, 159, 197, 200, 208–9); see also 154–59 on the genre of Q1.

[20]. W. Schmithals, “Vom Ursprung der synoptischen Tradition,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 94 (1997): 288–316, continues to argue that the Synoptic tradition was literary from the first. E. E. Ellis, Christ and the Future in New Testament History, NovTSup 97 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 13–14, also queries whether there was an initial oral stage of transmission.

[21]. See particularly A. Millard, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus, Biblical Seminar 69 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 223–29; also E. E. Ellis, The Making of the New Testament Documents (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 24, 32, 352.

[22]. B. W. Henaut, Oral Tradition and the Gospels: The Problem of Mark 4, JSNTSup 82 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1993).

[23]. In E. P. Sanders and M. Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (London: SCM, 1989), 141; ironically, in the same volume Sanders has demonstrated that there is an equal problem, too little recognized, of “imagining the literary period.”

[24]. The work of A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), has been seminal (here especially ch. 5).

[25]. I refer particularly to J. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), a revision of his earlier Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965); R. Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970); and I. Okpewho, African Oral Literature: Backgrounds, Character and Continuity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).

[26]. I owe the observation to Annekie Joubert, who refers to R. Bauman and C. L. Briggs, “Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life,” Annual Review of Anthropology 19 (1990): 59–88 (here 59–60).

[27]. E.g., Crossan seems to think of oral tradition principally in terms of individuals’ casual recollection (Birth of Christianity, 49–93).

[28]. S. Byrskog, Story as History—History as Story: The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History, WUNT 123 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000).

[29]. M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (ET: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

[30]. J. Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: Beck, 1992).

[31]. It is this emphasis on the impression made by the “impact” of Jesus’ teaching and actions that marks the chief difference between my own understanding of the oral tradition process and that of Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity (Lund: Gleerup, 1961, 1998), for whom the term “memorization” plays the equivalent role. I can illustrate the difference between the two key terms (impact and memorization) most simply from my own experience. (1) I recall as a five- to eight-year-old memorizing my “times-tables”; it is only because it was so thoroughly drummed into me at that stage that I still know at once that eight sevens make fifty-six. But I also remember a mirror in the school cloakroom, on which was inscribed the motto, “You get back what you give, so smile.” I didn’t memorize that motto, but I recall it almost as readily as 8 x 7 = 56. The reason? It made such an impact on me, even as a five- to eight-year-old. It was so sensible, gave such a positive attitude to life, that it impressed itself on me in a lasting way. (2) I began to learn Greek at the age of twelve. I still value the hard slog of memorizing the paradigms of irregular verbs, since most of them come immediately to mind to this day as a result. But one of the first pieces of Greek I met was the classic epigram Gnōmthi s’auton, “Know thyself.” It made such an immediate impact on me that it became part of my personal philosophy from that day on. It was not a matter of having to memorize it. It simply left an indelible impression on my mind. (3) As a teenager and young man I memorized quite a lot of the NT. As a student in an exam on Bible knowledge, I remember being asked to outline Philippians. No problem, since I had memorized the text (King James Version). Much of that has faded now, not least since I have only rarely used the KJV since then. But my familiarity with the text of the Bible extends far beyond anything I memorized. I can recall the substance of many passages and quote some texts verbatim, not because I memorized them, but because they made such an impact on me and because I have studied them and reflected on them since, sometimes at great length. I imagine that the oral Jesus tradition as we have it now is the result of a similar process. (4) In Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), I recall the impact made on me by Kenneth Bailey’s first recounting of two anecdotes from his own experience (208n185). See further below (on Bailey) and the fourth point under the heading “The Characteristic Features of Oral Tradition.”

[32]. K. E. Bailey, “Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels,” Asia Journal of Theology 5 (1991): 34–54; also “Middle Eastern Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels,” ExpTim 106 (1995): 363–67.

[33]. Bailey, “Informal,” 35–42; “Oral Tradition,” 364–65; and earlier in his Poet and Peasant: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 31–32.

[34]. See, e.g., Finnegan, Oral Literature, 2–7.

[35]. The point is well made by W. Dabourne, Purpose and Cause in Pauline Exegesis, SNTSMS 104 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), ch. 8. See further P. J. Achtemeier, “Omne verbum sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity,” Journal of Biblical Literature 109 (1990): 3–27.

[36]. See below, 95n48.

[37]. See further Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 181–84.

[38]. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, 37; similarly E. A. Havelock (The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986]) speaks of an oral “encyclopedia” of social habit and custom-law and convention (57–58).

[39]. As in 1 Cor. 11:2, 23; 15:1–3; Phil. 4:9; Col. 2:6–7; 1 Thess. 4:1; 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6.

[40]. Acts 13:1; Rom. 12:7; 1 Cor. 12:28–29; Gal. 6:6; Eph. 4:11; Heb. 5:12; James 3:1; Matt. 23:8; Didache 13.2; 15.1–2.

[41]. See further below, 96n52.

[42]. A. B. Lord, “The Gospels as Oral Traditional Literature,” in The Relationships among the Gospels, ed. W. O. Walker (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1978), 33–91, here 59.

[43]. See below, 97n55.

[44]. R. W. Funk and R. W. Hoover, eds., The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993); also R. W. Funk, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper/Polebridge, 1998).

[45]. A. Dundes, Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 18–19, insists “upon ‘multiple existence’ and ‘variation’ as the two most salient characteristics of folklore.”

[46]. Kelber, Oral, 33, 54; quoting E. A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 92, 147, 184, passim.

[47]. Funk, Acts of Jesus, 26.

[48]. See further Dunn, Jesus Remembered, ch. 8 and chs. 11–18; also “Altering the Default Setting,” 160–69 [= 106–19 of the appendix].

[49]. Cf. Funk, Acts of Jesus, 2: “The followers of Jesus no doubt began to repeat his witticisms and parables during his lifetime. They soon began to recount stories about him.”

[50]. Cf. C. K. Barrett, Jesus and the Gospel Tradition (London: SPCK, 1967), 10, 16: “The tradition originated rather in the impression made by a charismatic person than in sayings learnt by rote. . . . It was preserved because it could not be forgotten.”

[51]. Or should we be determined, come what may, to find a Jesus (reconstruct a “historical Jesus”) who neither stimulated nor excited?

3

THE CHARACTERISTIC JESUS

[1]. Heb. 8:13; Barnabas; Melito, Peri Pascha; see further S. G. Wilson, Related Strangers: Jews and Christians, 70–170 C.E. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995).

[2]. Ign. Magn. 10.1–3; Rom. 3.3; Phil. 6.1; Mart. Pol. 10.1.

[3]. S. Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 75. On the anti-Jewishness of nineteenth-century NT scholarship, see particularly 66–75, 106–7, 117–18, 123, 153–57, 190–93, 212–13, 227. See also H. Moxnes, “Jesus the Jew: Dilemmas of Interpretation,” in Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity: Essays in Honour of Heikki Räisänen, ed. I. Dunderberg et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 83–103, here 83–89, 93–94.

[4]. Heschel, Abraham Geiger, 9, 21.

[5]. Ibid., 156–57.

[6]. Ibid., 123.

[7]. Ibid., 3, 127.

[8]. W. Bousset, Jesus (ET: London: Williams & Norgate, 1906), 67–68.

[9]. R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1 (1948; ET: London: SCM; New York: Scribner, 1952), 3; similarly his Primitive Christianity in Its Contemporary Setting (ET: London: Thames & Hudson, 1956), 71–79.

[10]. See C. Klein, Anti-Judaism in Christian Theology (1975; ET: London: SPCK; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), here ch. 2; still in F. Hahn, Christologische Hoheitstitel, 5th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1995), 133, 351; J. Becker, Jesus of Nazareth (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998), e.g., 88, 224n146.

[11]. See, e.g., W. Pannenberg, Jesus, God and Man (ET: London: SCM, 1968), 255; L. Goppelt, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1, The Ministry of Jesus in Its Theological Significance (1975; ET: Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 97 (“Jesus actually superseded Judaism at its very roots through a new dimension”). See further J. T. Pawlikowski, Christ in the Light of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue (New York: Paulist, 1982), 37–47.

[12]. So, particularly, B. L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 73: “One seeks in vain (in original Jesus’ teaching), a direct engagement of specifically Jewish concerns”; the Jewish apocalyptic prophet is replaced by the Hellenized Cynic teacher.

[13]. J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 85–86 and n100.

[14]. Acts 24:5, 14; 28:22.

[15]. M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 2 vols. (ET: London: SCM, 1974).

[16]. The many works of J. Neusner have been important here; see particularly The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1971); also From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Rabbinic Judaism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973); and Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); see also on the one hand P. S. Alexander, “Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 74 (1983): 237–46; and on the other hand C. A. Evans, “Early Rabbinic Sources and Jesus Research,” in Jesus in Context: Temple, Purity and Restoration, ed. B. Chilton and C. A. Evans (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 27–57.

[17]. See particularly J. H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983–85); H. F. D. Sparks, ed., The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984).

[18]. See particularly J. H. Charlesworth, Jesus within Judaism: New Light from Exciting Archaeological Discoveries (New York: Doubleday, 1988); also Jesus and Archaeology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming); J. L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2000).

[19]. N. A. Dahl, “The Problem of the Historical Jesus” (1962), in Jesus the Christ: The Historical Origins of Christological Doctrine (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 81–111, here 96.

[20]. G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew (London: Collins, 1973); also The Religion of Jesus the Jew (London: SCM, 1993); E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (London: SCM, 1985); also The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993).

[21]. Cf. D. A. Hagner, The Jewish Reclamation of Jesus: An Analysis and Critique of the Modern Jewish Study of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), who argues that “the Jewish reclamation of Jesus has been possible only by being unfair to the Gospels” (14); “it is always Jesus the Jew they are interested in and not the Jesus of Christianity” (38). Even N. T. Wright’s reappraisal of Jesus’ mission (Jesus and the Victory of God), while thoroughly “third quest” in character, leaves something of an awkward gap between the climax that he portrays Jesus as expecting and the outcome that follows, which his further volume in the series (The Resurrection of the Son of God [London: SPCK, 2003]) fails adequately to bridge.

[22]. Sanders, Jesus, 11, 17, 321, 326; also Historical Figure, 10–11.

[23]. N. Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (London: SCM, 1967), 39.

[24]. R. S. Barbour, Traditio-Historical Criticism of the Gospels (London: SPCK, 1972).

[25]. Perrin, Rediscovering, 43.

[26]. Ibid., 45.

[27]. J. Jeremias, New Testament Theology, vol. 1, The Proclamation of Jesus (ET: London: SCM, 1971), part 1. See also M. Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, SNTSMS 102 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); also An Aramaic Approach to Q, SNTSMS 122 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

[28]. J. P. Meier, The Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 168–71.

[29]. G. Theissen and D. Winter, The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria (ET: Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 172–225.

[30]. Sanders, Jesus, 4–5, and ch. 1: “Jesus and the Temple” (61–76).

[31]. E. Käsemann, “The Problem of the Historical Jesus,” in Essays on New Testament Themes (ET: London: SCM, 1964), 15–47, here 37–45.

[32]. G. Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth (1956; ET: London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1960), 67.

[33]. W. G. Kümmel, “Eschatological Expectation in the Proclamation of Jesus,” in The Future of Our Religious Past: Essays in Honour of Rudolf Bultmann, ed. J. M. Robinson (ET: London: SCM, 1971), 29–48, here 39–41.

[34]. H. Schürmann, Gottes Reich—Jesu Geschick: Jesu ureigener Tod im Licht seiner Basileia-Verkündigung (Freiburg: Herder, 1983), 135, 144.

[35]. E.g., W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Clark, 1991): “one of the assured results of modern criticism” (239).

[36]. See, e.g., the brief review of options in Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 734–36.

[37]. Sanders, Jesus, 131.

[38]. A. Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906; London: SCM, 2000), 299.

[39]. L. E. Keck, A Future for the Historical Jesus (Nashville: Abingdon, 1971), 33 (my emphasis).

[40]. H. Strasburger, “Die Bibel in der Sicht eines Althistorikers,” in Studien zur alten Geschichte (Hildesheim: Olms, 1990), 317–39, here 336–37, cited by M. Reiser, “Eschatology in the Proclamation of Jesus,” in Jesus, Mark and Q: The Teaching of Jesus and Its Earliest Records, ed. M. Labahn and A. Schmidt (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 216–38, here 223 (my italics).

[41]. As R. W. Funk notes, “distinctive” is a better historical category than “dissimilar” (Honest to Jesus [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996], 145).

[42]. E.g., Matt. 5:17–48; Mark 2:23–3:5; 7:1–23; Luke 4:16; 19:45–48.

[43]. We need only compare the different ways in which Mark and Matthew portray Jesus’ attitude to the law, as exemplified by the contrast between Mark 7:15, 19 and Matt. 15:11; see further Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 563–83.

[44]. Details in my “The Question of Anti-Semitism in the New Testament Writings of the Period,” in Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways, A.D. 70 to 135; The Second Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium on Earliest Christianity and Judaism, Durham, September 1989, ed. J. D. G. Dunn (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 177–211, here 205.

[45]. See, e.g., S. Freyne, “Jesus and the Urban Culture of Galilee,” in Galilee and Gospel, WUNT 125 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 183–207, here 195–96, 205–6; and further S. Freyne, Galilee, Jesus and the Gospels (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1988).

[46]. For details, see Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 383–87.

[47]. Details in ibid., 384n8.

[48]. Full documentation can be found in ibid., ch. 12.

[49]. For what follows see the detailed discussion in ibid., 724–61, 798–802, 806–7.

[50]. It appears as a title elsewhere in the NT only in Acts 7:56. In Heb. 2:6; Rev. 1:13; and 14:14, it is not a title but a reference to the OT passages Ps. 8:4 and Dan. 7:13.

[51]. Bibliography in Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 736nn128, 131.

[52]. Bibliography again in ibid., 734–36.

[53]. Ibid., 670–77.

[54]. Details in ibid., 700–701.

[55]. J. Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (ET: London: SCM, 1967), 112–15: “It has been pointed out almost ad nauseam that a new use of the word amen emerged in the four gospels which is without analogy in the whole of Jewish literature and in the rest of the New Testament” (112).

[56]. Of some thirty other examples in the NT, 1 Cor. 14:16 is the most interesting; otherwise it is characteristically attached to the end of a doxology.

[57]. See those cited in Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 421n207.

[58]. Ibid., 468n397.

[59]. C. H. Dodd, The Founder of Christianity (London: Collins, 1971), 21–22.

APPENDIX

ALTERING THE DEFAULT SETTING

The presidential address at the 57th Annual Meeting of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas at the University of Durham, August 6–10, 2002. I wish to acknowledge my debt to Annekie Joubert for advice on current research into oral culture in southern Africa, and to Werner Kelber for several helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper, but particularly also to Terence Mournet, who for nearly three years worked closely with me on the theme of oral tradition in the Gospels. Not only has he provided invaluable advice on bibliography and the PowerPoint oral presentation of the “live” paper, but also several of the insights and observations developed in the paper are the outcome of our joint deliberations over the past two years. An earlier version of this essay appeared in New Testament Studies 49 (2003): 139–75, and is used by permission.

[1]. On a computer, of course, the experienced operator can easily alter the default setting. My point is that it is much more difficult to alter the default setting of the “onboard mental computer.” The analogy is not precise!

[2]. The Macpherson Report on The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (London: Stationery Office, 1999) identifies “institutional racism” in “processes, attitudes and behavior which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantages minority ethnic people” (28).

[3]. For details, see my Romans, WBC 38 (Dallas: Word, 1988), 888–89, 894–95.

[4]. Of the various reviews and analyses, I found the following most helpful: T. Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1909), 2:400–427; J. Moffatt, An Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament (Edinburgh: Clark, 1911; 3rd ed., 1918), 179–217; W. G. Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament (1973; ET: London: SCM, 1975), 44–80; B. Reicke, The Roots of the Synoptic Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), ch. 1; E. P. Sanders and M. Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (London: SCM, 1989), 51–162; U. Schnelle, The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings (ET: London: SCM, 1998), 162–97; J. S. Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 271–408.

[5]. For G. E. Lessing, see his “Neue Hypothese über die Evangelisten,” in Theologiekritische Schriften I und II, vol. 7 of Werke (Munich: Hanser, 1976), 614–36; ET: Theological Writings: Selections in Translation, with introductory essay by H. Chadwick (London: Black, [1956]). W. G. Kümmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems (2nd ed., 1970; ET: Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), provides extensive excerpts from both Lessing and Eichhorn (76–79). See also Zahn, Introduction, 2:403–4; Schnelle, History, 162–63.

[6]. Reicke, Roots, 12–13, refers to F. Schleiermacher, Über die Schriften des Lukas: Ein kritischer Versuch (Berlin: Reimer, 1817), fifteen years before the better known “Über die Zeugnisse des Papias von unseren beiden ersten Evangelien,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken 5 (1832): 738–58.

[7]. J. G. Herder, “Vom Erlöser der Menschen,” Herder Werke: Theologische Schriften 9/1 (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker, 1994), particularly 671–87, here 679; see also Reicke, Roots, 9–12.

[8]. I echo Zahn’s description (Introduction, 2:409).

[9]. Moffatt, Introduction, 180.

[10]. There is no need to rehearse the usual litany of Lachmann, Weisse, et al.; for details, see, e.g., Kümmel, New Testament, 146–51; Kloppenborg Verbin, Excavating Q, 295–309.

[11]. On Ur-Markus, see, e.g., Kümmel, Introduction, 61–63; and Proto-Luke, particularly V. Taylor, Behind the Third Gospel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1926).

[12]. B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (London: Macmillan, 1924), ch. 9, quotations from 229.

[13]. J. Wellhausen, Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1905), 43; English translation on 39, above.

[14]. R. Bultmann (with K. Kundsin), Form Criticism (1934; ET: New York: Harper Torchbook, 1962), 1.

[15]. Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1921; ET: Oxford: Blackwell, 1963).

[16]. R. Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (1926; ET: New York: Scribners, 1935), 12–13.

[17]. Ibid.

[18]. Kümmel, Introduction, particularly 76–79; Schnelle’s acknowledgment of the role of oral tradition is cursory (History, 174).

[19]. Sanders and Davies, Studying, 141. Sanders and Davies, and Reicke (Roots), are fairly exceptional in the importance they have accorded to oral tradition in the development of the Jesus tradition.

[20]. “. . . those fragments of tradition that bear the imprint of orality: short, provocative, memorable, oft-repeated phrases, sentences, and stories” (R. W. Funk and R. W. Hoover, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus [New York: Macmillan/Polebridge, 1993], 4).

[21]. “Even now, when we have come to affirm that behind some or many of the literary works we deal with there is an oral tradition, we still manipulate such traditions as though they too were ‘literary’ works” (W. H. Silberman, “‘Habent Sua Fata Libelli’: The Role of Wandering Themes in Some Hellenistic Jewish and Rabbinic Literature,” in The Relationships among the Gospels, ed. W. O. Walker [San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1978], 195–218, here 215).

[22]. W. R. Farmer, The Synoptic Problem (New York: Macmillan, 1964), ch. 6.

[23]. E. P. Sanders, The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition, SNTSMS 9 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

[24]. M.-É. Boismard, “The Two-Source Theory at an Impasse,” New Testament Studies 26 (1979): 261–73; also “Théorie des niveaux multiples,” in The Interrelations of the Gospels: A Symposium Led by M.-É. Boismard, W. R. Farmer, F. Neirynck, Jerusalem 1984, ed. D. L. Dungan, BETL 95 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990), 231–43. See also the discussion in Sanders and Davies, Studying, 105–11.

[25]. M. Goulder, Luke: A New Paradigm, 2 vols., JSNTSup 20 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), in his attempt to dispense with Q (particularly vol. 1, ch. 2).

[26]. M. Goodacre, The Case against Q (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2002), 56–59, 89–90 (despite 64–66, 188).

[27]. E.g., Schnelle, History, 187.

[28]. J. S. Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987).

[29]. Kloppenborg does not explicitly address the issue of whether Q1 was also a document, but he does assume it (Excavating Q, 159, 197, 200, 208–9); see also 154–59 on the genre of Q1.

[30]. Notably F. Neirynck, “Paul and the Sayings of Jesus,” in L’Apôtre Paul, ed. A. Vanhoye, BETL 73 (Leuven: Peeters, 1986), 265–321; reprinted in Evangelica, vol. 2, ed. F. van Segbroeck (Leuven: Peeters, 1991), 511–68. Neirynck’s many and valuable contributions on the Gospels well illustrate the dominance of the literary paradigm.

[31]. I of course except H. Koester, Synoptische Überlieferung bei den apostolischen Vätern (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1957); also Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (London: SCM, 1980), 49–75; though Koester has not attempted to develop a model of oral transmission.

[32]. W. J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982; London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 12–13. See also M. McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962); and E. A. Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), where Havelock sums up a scholarly lifetime of reflection on the transition from orality to literacy.

[33]. W. H. Kelber, The Oral and the Written Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983; reprinted, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), begins with a similar protest (xv–xvi).

[34]. Recent estimates are of less than 10 percent literacy in the Roman Empire under the principate, falling to perhaps as low as 3 percent literacy in Roman Palestine; see particularly W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989); M. Bar-Ilan, “Illiteracy in the Land of Israel in the First Centuries CE,” in Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society, ed. S. Fishbane and S. Schoenfeld (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1992), 46–61; C. Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001).

[35]. Kloppenborg Verbin properly reminds us that “ ‘literacy’ itself admits of various levels: signature-literacy; the ability to read simple contracts, invoices and receipts; full reading literacy; the ability to take dictation; and scribal literacy—the ability to compose” (Excavating Q, 167).

[36]. J. D. Crossan, The Birth of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), has little doubt that Jesus was illiterate (235); similarly, B. Chilton, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 99.

[37]. See, particularly, A. Millard, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus, Biblical Seminar 69 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 223–29; also E. E. Ellis, The Making of the New Testament Documents (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 24, 32, 352.

[38]. Pace W. Schmithals, “Vom Ursprung der synoptischen Tradition,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 94 (1997): 288–316, who continues to argue that the Synoptic tradition was literary from the first. Ellis, Christ and the Future in New Testament History, NovTSup 97 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 13–14, also queries whether there was an initial oral stage of transmission.

[39]. See D. R. Edwards and C. T. McCollough, eds., Archaeology and the Galilee, South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 143 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1997); and particularly J. L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 2000).

[40]. K. E. Bailey, “Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels,” Asia Journal of Theology 5 (1991): 34–54; also “Middle Eastern Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels,” ExpTim 106 (1995): 363–67.

[41]. Sanders and Davies, Studying, 141; ironically, in the same volume Sanders has demonstrated that there is an equal problem, too little recognized, of “imagining the literary period.”

[42]. The work of A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), has been seminal, here especially ch. 5.

[43]. I refer particularly to J. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), a revision of his earlier Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965); R. Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970); and I. Okpewho, African Oral Literature: Backgrounds, Character and Continuity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). Annekie Joubert notes that a paradigm shift took place in folklore studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a new emphasis on performance directed attention away from the study of the formal patterning and symbolic content of the texts to the emergence of verbal art in the social interaction between performers and audiences—quoting from R. Bauman and C. L. Briggs, “Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life,” Annual Review of Anthropology 19 (1990): 59–88, here 59–60.

[44]. See above, n40.

[45]. See, e.g., Finnegan, Oral Literature, 2–7.

[46]. The point is well made by W. Dabourne, Purpose and Cause in Pauline Exegesis, SNTSMS 104 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), ch. 8. See further P. J. Achtemeier, “Omne verbum sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity,” Journal of Biblical Literature 109 (1990): 3–27.

[47]. The point was never adequately worked through by the early form critics. The model of “oral history” drawn into the discussion by S. Byrskog, Story as History—History as Story: The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History, WUNT 123 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), while valuable in other aspects, also fails at this point. Oral history envisages tradition as elicited from eyewitnesses by a historian some years or decades later, tradition that might have been latent or only casually exchanged in the meantime. But the oral tradition model put forward here, in contrast, envisages a tradition that sustained a community through its regular performance. Byrskog, in fact, has no real conception of or indeed role for oral transmission as itself a bridging factor between past and present.

[48]. J. M. Foley, Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), chs. 1 and 2 (particularly 6–13 and 42–45); he is drawing on the language of H. R. Jauss and W. Iser. The argument is developed in J. M. Foley, The Singer of Tales in Performance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), chs. 1–3. Foley’s observation is also taken up by R. A. Horsley and J. A. Draper, Whoever Hears You Hears Me: Prophets, Performance, and Tradition in Q (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 1999), chs. 7–8. Annekie Joubert notes that “the use of allusion is normally an appeal to the audience to link the references, and the audience will have to draw on extra-performance/extra-textual information in order to interpret and to understand the web of allusive communication” (private correspondence).

[49]. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, 37; similarly Havelock speaks of an oral “encyclopedia” of social habit and custom-law and convention (Muse, 57–58).

[50]. As in 1 Cor. 11:2, 23; 15:1–3; Phil. 4:9; Col. 2:6–7; 1 Thess. 4:1; 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6.

[51]. Acts 13:1; Rom. 12:7; 1 Cor. 12:28–29; Gal. 6:6; Eph. 4:11; Heb. 5:12; James 3:1; Didache 13.2; 15.1–2.

[52]. From what we know of more formal teaching in the schools, we can be sure that oral instruction was the predominant means: “It is the ‘living voice’ of the teacher that has priority” (L. C. A. Alexander, “The Living Voice: Scepticism towards the Written Word in Early Christianity and in Graeco-Roman Texts,” in The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield, ed. D. J. A. Clines et al. [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990], 221–47, here 244).

[53]. A. B. Lord, “The Gospels as Oral Traditional Literature,” in Relationships, ed. Walker, 33–91, here 59.

[54]. A fuller listing of such groupings of tradition would include the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3, 4, 6, 11, 12//Luke 6:20b, 21b, 21a, 22, 23), the sequence of mini-parables in Mark 2:18–22 (followed by Matt. 9:14–17 and Luke 5:33–39), Jesus’ responses to would-be disciples (Matt. 8:19–22//Luke 9:57–62), the cost of discipleship and danger of loss (Mark 8:34–38; again followed by Matt. 16:24–27 and Luke 9:23–26), the sayings about light and judgment in Mark 4:21–25 (followed by Luke 8:16–18), the “parables of crisis” (Matt. 24:42–25:13 pars.), Jesus and the Baptist (Matt. 11:2–19 par.), Jesus’ teaching on his exorcisms (Matt. 12:24–45 pars.), and the sending out of the disciples on mission (Mark 6:7–13; Matt. 9:37–10:1, 7–16; Luke 9:1–6; 10:1–12).

[55]. “In a sense each performance is ‘an’ original, if not ‘the’ original. The truth of the matter is that our concept of ‘the original,’ of ‘the song,’ simply makes no sense in oral tradition” (Lord, Singer, 100–101). R. Finnegan, Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), also glosses Lord—“There is no correct text, no idea that one version is more ‘authentic’ than another: each performance is a unique and original creation with its own validity” (65)—and credits Lord with bringing this point home most convincingly (79). Kelber already took up the point: “Each oral performance is an irreducibly unique creation”; if Jesus said something more than once there is no “original” (Oral, 29, also 59, 62).

[56]. Funk and Hoover, The Five Gospels; also R. W. Funk, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper/Polebridge, 1998). To recognize that variation is integral to orality likewise undercuts much of the critical criteria (particularly “contradiction with other accounts”), used by H. Reimarus, D. F. Strauss, and their successors.

[57]. A. Dundes, Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), insists “upon ‘multiple existence’ and ‘variation’ as the two most salient characteristics of folklore” (18–19). The problem of deriving a text from the recollections of a performance is well illustrated by the play Pericles, attributed to Shakespeare (S. Wells and G. Taylor, eds., The Oxford Shakespeare [Oxford: Clarendon, 1988], 1037); see further J. Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare (London: Picador, 1997), 75–87 (I owe the latter reference to H. D. Betz). Nor should it be forgotten that NT textual criticism has to take account of the diverse ways in which the text was performed/used, read/heard in different churches; see particularly B. D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); D. C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); E. J. Epp, “The Multivalence of the Term ‘Original Text’ in New Testament Textual Criticism,” Harvard Theological Review 92 (1999): 245–81.

[58]. Kelber, Oral, 33, 54; quoting E. A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 92, 147, 184, passim.

[59]. “Das . . . Kriterium der ‘reinen Gattung’ stellt eine Vermischung linguistischer und sprachhistorischer Kategorien dar, die einer heute überholten Auffassung der Sprachentwicklung zuzuweisen ist”—J. Schröter, Erinnerung an Jesu Worte, Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 76 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1997), 59, also 141–42. See also G. Strecker, “Schriftlichkeit oder Mündlichkeit der synoptischen Tradition?” in The Four Gospels, 1992: Festschrift Frans Neirynck, ed. F. van Segbroeck et al., BETL 100 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), 1:159–72, here 161–62, with other bibliography in n6.

[60]. Bultmann, History, 127–28: “In the primitive community at Jerusalem the spirit of Jesus continued to be active, and his ethical teaching was progressively elaborated and expressed in utterances which were then transmitted as the sayings of Jesus himself” (“The New Approach to the Synoptic Problem” [1926]; ET: Existence and Faith [London: Collins Fontana, 1964], 42); E. Käsemann, “Is the Gospel Objective?” Essays on New Testament Themes (London: SCM, 1964), 48–62.

[61]. See further Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), #8.2.

[62]. B. Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity (Lund: Gleerup, 1961).

[63]. Finnegan critiques Lord in pointing out that memorization also plays a part in oral tradition (Oral Poetry, 79, 86).

[64]. E.g., “The general attitude was that words and items of knowledge must be memorized: tantum scimus, quantum memoria tenemus” (Gerhardsson, Memory, 124); “Cicero’s saying was applied to its fullest extent in Rabbinic Judaism: repetitio est mater studiorum. Knowledge is gained by repetition, passed on by repetition, kept alive by repetition. A Rabbi’s life is one continual repetition” (Memory, 168). Sanders and Davies rightly observe that Gerhardsson tries to allow for the flexibility of verbal tradition (citing Gerhardsson, The Gospel Tradition, Coniectanea biblica: New Testament Series 15 [Lund: Gleerup, 1986], 39–40), but that even so the Synoptic data do not fit well with the model (Studying, 129–32). R. Riesner, Jesus als Lehrer: Eine Untersuchung zum Ursprung der Evangelien-Überlieferung, WUNT 7/2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), 65–67, 440–53, also emphasizes the role of learning by heart (Auswendiglernen) in Jesus’ teaching. D. L. Balch, “The Canon: Adaptable and Stable, Oral and Written: Critical Questions for Kelber and Riesner,” Forum 7.3–4 (1991): 183–205, criticizes Riesner for assuming “a print mentality” that was not true of “passing on tradition of great philosophers’ teachings” (196–99). See also 44n31, above.

[65]. I might simply add that the appeal sometimes made, by Horsley in particular (Whoever Hears You, 98–103; also Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001], 157–59), to James C. Scott’s use of the distinction between the “great tradition” and the “little tradition” in a community—the great tradition as expressing the dominant and dominating ruling power, the little tradition as expressing the hidden but continuing values and concerns of the oppressed community—is of little relevance for us. It is used by Scott in reference to a colonialist situation in Southeast Asia, which has little bearing on a Jewish Galilee ruled by a client Jewish king. And in the Jesus tradition, we have not so much the persistence of old tradition but the emergence of new tradition (even if much of it can be regarded as a reconfiguration of older tradition).

[66]. I recall that my doctor-father, C. F. D. Moule, in the mid-1960s challenged his Cambridge Seminar to produce such a knockdown example in regard to any solution of the Synoptic Problem; no example went unquestioned.

[67]. Note the conclusion of the symposium on Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition, ed. H. Wansbrough, JSNTSup 64 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991): “We have been unable to deduce or derive any marks which distinguish clearly between an oral and a written transmission process. Each can show a similar degree of fixity and variability” (12). Strecker rightly emphasizes the continuity in transmission of the tradition from oral to written (“Schriftlichkeit,” 164–65). Cf. Schröter, Erinnerung, 55, 60.

[68]. See above, n38.

[69]. B. W. Henaut, Oral Tradition and the Gospels: The Problem of Mark 4, JSNTSup 82 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1993), is tendentiously concerned to argue the virtual impossibility of recovering any oral tradition behind the Gospels: all differences, no matter how great, can be explained in terms of literary redaction; and oral tradition was wholly fluid and contingent on the particularities of each performance. But his conception of the oral tradition process is questionable—as though it was a matter of recovering a history of tradition through a set of sequential performances (e.g., 118). And he gives too little thought to what the stabilities of oral remembrances of Jesus might be as distinct from those in the epics and sagas studied by Parry and Lord. H. W. Hollander, “The Words of Jesus: From Oral Tradition to Written Record in Paul and Q,” Novum Testamentum 42 (2000): 340–57, follows Henaut uncritically (351–55): he has no conception of tradition as reflecting/embodying the impact of anything Jesus said or did; and he thinks of oral tradition as essentially casual, without any conception that tradition could have a role in forming community identity and thus be important to such communities. Similarly, Crossan seems to think of oral tradition principally in terms of individuals’ casual recollection (Birth of Christianity, 49–93).

[70]. Full statistics in R. Morgenthaler, Statistische Synopse (Zürich and Stuttgart: Gotthelf, 1971), 239–43.

[71]. Full statistics in ibid., 258–61.

[72]. See Kloppenborg Verbin’s summary of Morgenthaler’s data (Excavating Q, 63). In such cases, Kloppenborg Verbin defends a literary dependence by pointing out that Matthew and Luke show equal freedom in their use of Mark (64). But he does not consider the obvious alternative noted above, that such divergences of Matthew and Luke from Mark may indicate rather that Matthew and Luke knew and preferred to use other oral versions of the tradition, or to retell Mark’s version in oral mode.

[73]. My distinguished predecessor, C. K. Barrett, was asking the same question sixty years ago in his “Q: A Re-examination,” ExpTim 54 (1942–43): 320–23.

[74]. As Streeter recognized (Four Gospels, 184–86, 229).

[75]. Contrast D. E. Oakman, “The Lord’s Prayer in Social Perspective,” in Authenticating of the Words of Jesus, ed. B. Chilton and C. A. Evans (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 137–86: “The differences in form are best accounted for by differing scribal traditions and interests” (151–52); with the sounder judgment of H. D. Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 370–71: “It is characteristic of liturgical material in general that textual fixation occurs at a later stage in the transmission of these texts, while in the oral stage variability within limits is the rule. These characteristics also apply to the Lord’s Prayer. The three recensions, therefore, represent variations of the prayer in the oral tradition. . . . There was never only one original written Lord’s Prayer. . . . The oral tradition continued to exert an influence on the written text of the New Testament well into later times” (370). Goulder, “The Composition of the Lord’s Prayer,” Journal of Theological Studies 14 (1963): 32–45, argues that the prayer was written by Matthew from hints found in Mark, and that Luke was dependent on Matthew’s version.

[76]. “One law of narrative in oral poetry, noted by specialists, takes the form of parataxis: the language is additive, as image is connected to image by ‘and’ rather than subordinated in some thoughtful relationship” (Havelock, Muse, 76).

[77]. Havelock, Muse, 70–71. Here the examples from the Jesus tradition produced by J. Jeremias, New Testament Theology, part 1, The Proclamation of Jesus (London: SCM, 1971), are very much to the point (20–27).

[78]. Achtemeier, “Omne verbum sonat,” 23–24.

[79]. See above, n57.

[80]. See particularly J. Dewey, “Oral Methods of Structuring Narrative in Mark,” Interpretation 43 (1989): 32–44; also “The Gospel of Mark as an Oral-Aural Event: Implications for Interpretation,” in The New Literary Criticism and the New Testament, ed. E. S. Malbon and E. V. McKnight, JSNTSup 109 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 145–63; Horsley, Hearing the Whole Story, ch. 3.

[81]. Note that in Gospel of Thomas 64, the performance variation runs to four different excuses.

[82]. I may refer here simply to my earlier attempts to develop this theme—“Jesus Tradition in Paul,” in Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research, ed. B. Chilton and C. A. Evans (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 155–78, particularly 176–78; also Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Edinburgh: Clark, 1998), 651–53.

[83]. At this point I would wish to take issue with a central thrust of Koester’s magisterial contribution, Ancient Christian Gospels.

[84]. See particularly H. Schürmann, “Die vorösterlichen Anfänge der Logientradition: Versuch eines formgeschichtlichen Zugangs zum Leben Jesu,” in Der historische Jesus und der kerygmatische Christus, ed. H. Ristow and K. Matthiae (Berlin: Evangelische Verlag, 1961), 342–70; also idem, Jesus: Gestalt und Geheimnis (Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1994), 85–104, 380–97.

[85]. See again n80, above.

[86]. J. M. Robinson et al., eds., The Critical Edition of Q (Minneapolis: Fortress; Leuven: Peeters, 2000).

[87]. The spate of recent work on Q has provoked several vigorous responses, particularly C. S. Rodd, “The End of the Theology of Q?” ExpTim 113 (2001–2): 5–12; and Goodacre, Case against Q. The case against Q is only as strong as it is because the case for Q has been overstated.

[88]. Cf. F. G. Downing, “Word-Processing in the Ancient World: The Social Production and Performance of Q,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 64 (1996): 29–48, reprinted in his Doing Things with Words in the First Christian Century, JSNTSup 200 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 75–94, especially 92–93.

[89]. But it is a double-edged razor, since both Farmer (Synoptic Problem, 203) and Goodacre (Case against Q, 18, 77) can use it to excise one of “the two documents” (Q). It is a fallacy to assume that elegance of solution can be achieved simply by restricting the range of options that the character of the evidence invites.

[90]. Streeter had already noted the danger of imposing an oversimplified solution on more complex data (Four Gospels, 229).

[91]. Above, nn53–54.

[92]. Pace Funk and Hoover (n20, above), who would regard their observation as form-critical orthodoxy.

[93]. C. H. Dodd, “The Framework of the Gospel Narrative,” New Testament Studies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953), 1–11. See further also Reicke, Roots; S. Hultgren, Narrative Elements in the Double Tradition: A Study of Their Place within the Framework of the Gospel Narrative, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 113 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002).

[94]. See also N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK, 1992), 442; Schröter, Erinnerung, 439–51.

[95]. This in response to Goodacre, Case against Q, 172n6.