Posts by yaddayadda

33

Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!

by yaddayadda in

another eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.

richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.

jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.

yaddayadda

Hi Veradico: Just getting back to you on some of the points you made in your last post.

I just want to first explain my statement that ‘traditional form-criticism is now obsolete’ – certainly it sounds rather dramatic and a big claim to make, but it is for all intents and purposes true, at least the kind of form criticism that predominantly started with Bultmann about 85 years ago.

The basic reason for this claim is because of the increasingly compelling body of evidence and scholarship that lays waste to nearly all of the fundamental assumptions of the form critics. I have touched on some of this in my earlier threads, but particularly that evidence relates to the new understandings and insights gained relatively recently about the nature of oral societies and how they remember traditions, especially through the work of Kenneth Bailey. Along with that, is the fact that the current position of folklore scholars have also made many of form criticisms assumptions untenable (the currently accepted time-frame for the oral period is now much shorter than was believed in Bultmann's time - and folklore spans much longer periods of time.) Plus, the very recent research being done into ancient historiographic practices and how the gospels compare with them is the latest stream of evidence to augment this shift in gospel scholarship, a shift that is unearthing new insights into the oral tradition and leading to eminent scholars (ridiculing them as 'evangelistic scholars' simply won't do!) such as Dunn and Bauckham to ‘shake the foundations of a century of scholarly study of the gospels’ (Graham Stanton, University of Cambridge)

James Dunn, for example, notes the following ‘striking…major flaws’ of the traditional quest for Jesus: The quest has been trapped in a literary paradigm, having ‘little or no idea what it would have been like to live in an oral culture’. The earlier questers failed to appreciate ‘how incapable the literary mindset is to appreciate the way in which the Jesus tradition came to be formulated in the first place and the failure to take seriously and make sustained inquiry into what transmission of such tradition would have involved in first century Palestine.’ ‘….Bultmann could not escape from the literary mind-set, his own literary default setting; he could not conceive of the process of transmission except in literary terms. This becomes most evident in his conceptualization of the whole tradition about Jesus as “composed of a series of layers.” It is the same with the recent focus on Q material. The focus is now on whether different compositional layers can be distinguished within Q! There is an explicit assumption that each layer is to be conceived as a written document, and the process of development conceived in terms of editing and redaction. Kloppenberg, for example, envisages his investigation of Q in terms of an archaeological dig, as Excavating Q, where, as with Bultmann, the process is visualized as striping away successive layers to reach the bottom layer, or as removing the redactional elements of successive editions to recover the original edition. This literary paradigm predominates, but Dunn exposes how this literary paradigm is entirely inappropriate to a predominantly oral society. He states “But to treat the history of the Jesus tradition as though it were a matter of recovering some original version of the tradition is to conceptualize the transmission of the Jesus tradition at best misleadingly. This is one of the points on which the Jesus Seminar completely misjudged the character of the Jesus tradition.” He then draws on Bailey’s work and other recent insights in ancient orality, compares the model to the gospels, and presents a new paradigm for how the gospels should be assessed in light of these new insights.

Dunn sums it up like this:

“In these chapters I have been arguing that the quest of the historical Jesus has been largely unsuccessful because the earlier questers started from the wrong place, began with the wrong assumptions, and viewed the relevant data from the wrong perspective. In each case they forgot what should have been more obvious than it evidently has been and so lost the way almost from the beginning.
The first of these mistakes was to assume that faith was a hindrance to the quest, something that had to be stripped away I the quester was to gain a clear view of the historical Jesus. My response is that, on the contrary, the quest should start from the historical a priori that Jesus made a faith impact on his disciples, and that the only way to approach Jesus historically is to do so through that faith impact. In contrast to the older questers, the faith of the first disciples, not yet Easter faith, should not be stripped away, indeed cannot be stripped away, without throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
The second mistake has been to assume that the transmission of the Jesus tradition can be understood effectively only in literary terms, as a process of copying or editing earlier written sources. There has been a willing recognition on the part of most that the earliest Jesus tradition and earliest period of transmission of that tradition must have been oral in character. But there has been an almost complete failure to appreciate that such transmission could not have been like the literary process. There has been a consequent failure to take seriously the challenge to investigate how that tradition functioned in the oral period, and to ask whether the oral character of the earliest tradition could help us better understand the lasting and present form of the Jesus tradition. In contrast, it is my thesis that such an investigation can give us a clearer idea both of how the Jesus tradition first emerged and of its enduring character. That is, the character of the Synoptic Gospel tradition may have already been determined in large part during the oral period and before it was written down extensively in Mark and Q.
The third failure of previous quests has been the mistake of looking for a distinctive Jesus, distinctive in the sense of a Jesus different from his environment. This failure also has a twin aspect: first, the determination to find a non-Jewish Jesus; and second, the methodological assumption that the search should be directed toward identifying the particular saying or action that made Jesus stand out from his context most clearly.”

Dunn concludes by calling for a complete altering of the default setting from the deeply ingrained literary mindset that has dominated form criticism for so long, to ‘recognise that the early transmission of the Jesus tradition took place in an oral culture and as oral tradition requires us consciously resist the involuntary predisposition to conceive that process in literary terms and consciously to re-envisage that process in oral terms.

Also emphasizing these serious flaws in most form criticism, Bauckham states (2006):

“It is a curious fact that nearly all the contentions of the early form critics have now been convincingly refuted, but the general picture of the process of oral transmission that the form critics pioneered still governs the way most New Testament scholars think.”

“Virtually every element in this construction [from criticism] has been questioned and rejected by some or even most scholars. Much of these criticism are rooted in the much better and fuller information that is now available about the way oral traditions operate in predominantly oral societies.”

Bauckham then notes four points of criticism that “effectively demolish the whole edifice of tradition history erected on the basis of form criticism….since these points are widely admitted, the inability of form criticsm to tell ushow the gospel traditions were transmitted between the eyewitnesses and Gospel texts should be generally agreed. But there is more:”

He then outlines five more criticisms and in conclusion states that “Even a few of these criticisms would be sufficient to undermine the whole form-critical enterprise. There is not reason to believe that the oral transmission of Jesus traditions in the early church was at all as Bultmann envisaged it. It is remarkable that this is not more widely acknowledge explicitly, though, once one is aware of it, it is not difficult to see that many contemporary Gospels scholars acknowledge it implicitly by ignoring from criticism in its classical form. But what form criticism has bequeathed as a long enduring legacy is the largely unexamined impression that many scholars – and probably even more students – still entertain: the impression of a long period of creative development of the traditions before they attained written form in the Gospels. The retention of such an impression is not defensible unless it is justified afresh, for the arguments of the form critics no longer hold water.”

So I hope you can see why I made the statement that traditional form criticism is now 'obsolete'.

To explain my statement that the "ancient oral storytelling" is an "area of study that has not been adequately treated", from some of the comments above it is evident that classic form criticism relied on many assumptions about the oral tradition that suffered from not adequately inquiring into ancient orality. But recently many insights and new understandings have been made that have shed much light on this neglected area, resulting in the discarding of many of the old assumptions. To underscore how much neglect there has been in this area, Dunn (2005) gives a bit of a summary as follows:

“As E.P. Sanders points out, the problem is “that we do not know how to imagine the oral period.” However, the problem has been and is being addressed – in two ways in particular:
One has stemmed from the fundamental research into folklore, particularly the research into the Homeric and Yugoslavian sags, carried out by Milman Parry and Albert Lord. This line of inquiry has generally been regarded as irrelevant to an understanding of the Gospel tradition. Folktales and sags, often of considerable length and transmitted through generations of trained and dedicated poets and singers, cannot be expected to provide much of a guide to Jesus tradition of the Synoptic Gospels, where the teaching is characteristically aphoristic or in short stories (parables) and the period of transmission to be allowed for is no more than about fifty or sixty ears or less. The study of oral tradition in different parts of Africa is largely subject to the same critique. And anyway, it is becoming less relevant to our concerns since a paradigm shift took place in such folklore studies in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, when a new emphasis on performance and the social interaction between performers and audiences directed attention away from the study of the transmission of oral tradition.
The other line of research is ore current – into the way memory works. Unfortunately, much of the research is flawed. Some scholars are content to think of memory only as it functions in regard to casual gossip of individuals and the serendipitous reminiscences of college reunions (Eg, Crossan seems to think of oral tradition principally in terms of individuals’ casual recollection – Birth of Christianity, 49-93)…”

Dunn also refers to the influential theories of ‘social memory’ and ‘cultural memory’ of Maurice Halbwachs and Jan Assman older research, which tended to support one of the big assumptions of form criticism that the original eyewitness testimonies got rapidly subsumed into anonymous community traditions that were constantly changing to meet the theologial agenda of the group (homeostatis). But Dunn notes problems with Halbwacs theories in light of new thinking on the gospels. He then examines Kenneth Bailey’s 30 years of research on oral societies and considers Bailey's 'informal, controlled' model to be the best to date.

Bauckham similarly notes that researchers into how memory works have refuted much of Halbwachs’ theories. These other theories show that, far from individual memory being completely subsumed into an evolving group memory, as if individuals are mere automatons, individual memory is often very resistant to change, there are often very powerful dissenting forces against changes to group memory, and that the latest evidence of the characteristics and process of remembering in oral societies shows that there is always a substantial original core that didn’t change. Thus Bauckham also affirms Bailey's model, however, Bauckham parts way with Dunn at this point by making the case that the eyewitnesses factor plays a more significant role in the gospels than the 'community' factor.

Bauckham’s new book is especially good for its chapter on eyewitness memory, noting that ‘New Testament scholars have rarely made any use of these resources [psychologists studies of recollective memory for well over a century]”. His chapter here is a 'first attempt' to examine this area of research as applied to the gospels.

So I think my statement is a fair one. While it is true that there are different streams of form criticism that have all made different contributions to the whole puzzle, on the whole, they have operated from many of the same old assumptions that are now being soundly refuted.

Veradico, on your point here: When the oral tradition (as well as literary sources) are converted by an author into a fixed literary text, redactional criticism becomes quite useful and valid. The author will choose to convey his message in a particular literary genre. Thus, one must look at how the author fits into the characteristics typical of that genre during his general time period. That's why I mentioned the biography of Apollonius of Tyana.”

This outlook is largely from the ‘non-historical genre’ school of criticism, ie, that the gospels are really just another type of literary genre of the time with little, if any, historical basis. There is, however, much scholarly weight to make the case that is objection is overstated, that the editing and ordering of the material by the gospel writers is a lot less than the form critics believed. Unless someone can rebut Bauckham's tome (time will tell), the gospel writers are a lot more faithful to the eyewitness reports than was imagined and the role of the writers was more to assemble the kerygmas in a readable fashion, giving it a logical, chronological, narrative effect. There is no real evidence that the gospel writers imposed any significant personal style or freely created agenda.

Veradico, on your claim here: “Within the community of the Beloved Disciple, we can see the way a group of Jewish Christians slowly became alienated from the Jewish community as a whole (cf. John 9:22) and developed an elevated Christology which explained the Jews' rejection of Jesus and his followers as a rejection of God Himself.”

To say the community of the ‘beloved disciple’ slowly became alienated from the Jewish community is really nothing but an assumption. It’s from a popular and longstanding theory that all the traditions evolved separately and anonymously from one another. Although this view is still predominant in gospel scholarship, I would really encourage you to read Bauckham’s book as he deals specifically with this theory and presents a formidable challenge to it.

Also, Veradico, you say: “I would prefer that people would trust their own experience and rational abilities, rather than turning from one authoritarian system of belief to another. To accept the tradition of a church or the text of a book wholesale strikes me as a dangerous gamble. The holy books of the world and the doctrines of the various faiths that produced them depend, very often, on authority, not reason, and speak of events that do not correspond to experience of most of us.”

I agree, however, we are ALL the product of all manner of authority structures and belief systems, religious or not. Everyone has accepted the ‘text of a book’ to some degree or other, whether it’s the Bible or The Origin of the Species. No matter how much we think we can trust our ‘own experience and rational abilities’ no one is without bias or influence from whatever sources they have derived their particularly worldview from. Sceptics and atheists are as guilty of this as Christians. Atheists and those who reject religion can just as easily be accused of coming under the ‘authority’ of post-modernism and materialistic views of the universe as Christians are of following alleged myths and fairytales. The modern critics are simply influenced by the ‘authority’ of new norms and schools of thought as much as Christians are of older norms and schools of thought. But newer does not mean truer. What is often viewed as correct today is soon discarded a few decades or centuries later, and many old-fashioned ideas that were pooh-poohed are later vindicated. While many Christians are guilty of not adequately testing the foundations of their faith (which I am on a journey of doing), many in fact have; and they have made a rational decision to adhere to the Christian worldview based on their research of the available evidence as it currently stands. Atheists and skeptics are often just as guilty of jumping on popular, trendy, politically correct bandwagons without really testing the evidence and making an objective rational choice as Christians are of staying on there more traditional bandwagons.

I think at this point I will leave this thread for now. It is requiring too much of my time and it seems no one except a very few individuals on this forum are interested in this fascinating subject anyway.

I’ll wind up my imput by saying that anyone seriously interested in getting a balanced view of this field of scholarship simply must read Dunn and Bauckham’s works. It was most refreshing to see that Leolaia is presently reading Bauckham’s book and it would be interesting to hopefully get her thoughts on it later. She at least acknowledges that she has found Bauckham’s scholarship is very good. Although I’ve been critical of what I see as Leolaia’s heavy emphasis on intertextuality, effectively portraying the gospels as not much more than some kind of complicated, sophisticated, works of plagiarized fiction, I think her admission about the quality of Bauckham’s scholar is telling in comparison to Narkissos’ ad hominem dismissal of it.

The bottom line is that, no matter what our personal view is about God and miracles, there is clearly a growing body of evidence that is weighing in favour of the overall reliability of the oral tradition behind the gospels. It will be interesting to see what the scholarly response is to Bauckham’s work and I look forward to reading that very much in due course. No doubt there will be some criticisms and it will beimportant to analyse that.

However, there is clearly a paradigm shift occurring in modern gospel scholarship that is having the effect of narrowing the window through which the skeptics can continue to object to the gospels as nothing by mythology and folklore. Many years ago the reliability of the textual transmission was largely doubted, but new textual discoveries, particularly since the discovery of the dead sea scrolls, means that now hardly any reputable scholar seriously questions that the textual transmission is 99% accurate or thereabouts. New evidence about ancient orality is causing a similar phenomenon in the world of NT scholarship. The same shift appears to be occurring with the oral transmission process.

33

Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!

by yaddayadda in

another eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.

richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.

jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.

yaddayadda

Terry, I don't disagree with some of the things you say, particularly about the relationship of the Pharisees to Jesus and the early Christians. Some of them did secretly believe in Jesus and later converted, and Jesus never explicitly attacked their teachings, rather he was concerned to slam their gross hypocrisy. There are, however, many points you make that are easily refuted by simply referring to a few scriptures, for example, Mark 10:2 and 12:13 gives the lie to your claim that it is only in the later gospels that the Pharisees are portrayed as trying to trick Jesus. But all this is a separate issue from that intended for discussion by this thread. You're very welcome to start a new thread on this area if you like.

I will only add that your claim that Paul was likely not a Pharisee is at complete odds with the scriptural evidence, as follows:

Paul notes his affiliation with the Pharisees in several places. In Acts 22:3, He states that he was a Jew brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel, a leading Pharisee (Acts 5:33-39). In Acts 23:6, Paul states, "I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee" (Acts 23:6). In Philippians 3:5, Paul states that he was "concerning the law, a Pharisee."

Regarding Paul's statement about blamelessness in relation to the law in Phil 3:6, the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters says:

"As a further cause for boasting in Philippians, Paul claims to be a Pharisee. Here the term was defined with precision. The expression 'as to the Law a Pharisee' refers to the oral Law. . . . Paul thereby understood himself as a member of the scholarly class who taught the twofold Law. By saying that the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat (Mt 23:2), Jesus was indicating they were authoritative teachers of the Law. . . . In summary, Paul was saying that he was a Hebrew-speaking interpreter and teacher of the oral and written Law. (p. 504, "Jew, Paul the")

33

Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!

by yaddayadda in

another eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.

richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.

jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.

yaddayadda

Veradico, thanks for your post. (A bit of tech help: To preserve the paragraph formatting all you have to do is untick the little box on the left 'Check here to use HTML formatting' and tick the right box 'Automatic Cr/Lf' before posting replies.)

Your raise some interesting points and I will respond to them soon.

Terry, you said "Paul, on the other hand, is little concerned about the particulars of quoting Jesus or his apostles. Paul introduces themes which hybridize Judaism onto something entirely Platonic and pagan which involves a transformation of first, Judaism and secondly, the world at large."

Firstly, you havn't addressed the clear evidence presented in my earlier reply to you which shows how Paul was in fact most concerned with correct transmission of the traditions and to preserve unanimity with the apostolic tradition. Secondly, there is no basis at all to your statement that Paul 'hybridised Judaism into something entirely Platonic and Pagan'. Paul was a zealous Pharisee before his conversion, more zealous for the Jewish tradition than most of his Jewish colleagues - this obvious fact alone flatly contradicts any suggestion that suddenly Paul started absorbing wholesale 'platonic' and 'pagan' themes simply because of his revelatory experience on the road to Damascus.

If Paul is alleged to have introduced platonic and pagan themes, then all the other apostles and many hundreds of other first-hand disciples of Jesus must be accused of exactly the same thing because it is the synoptic and Johannine gospels that are full of miraculous deeds, not Paul's writings. Paul's letters are notably absent of this kind of material, so if anyone is going to be accused of paganism it has to be the other apostles rather than Paul's writings. Now how likely is this given that all the apostles and Jesus followers were Jews, who were strictly monotheistic, at pains to avoid contamination through contact with pagan, and there is an almost complete lack of evidence of syncretism in early first century Jewish palestine.

The obvious reason for the lack of allusions to Jesus' miracles and sayings in Paul's writings is because the apostolic oral tradition was already well established and circulating in the Christian communities. Paul realises it is unnecessary for him to repeat these first-hand biographic reports about Jesus that are already circulating and well known; rather, he is concerned in his letters to expound upon, not replace, the good news in the specific context of congregational teaching. Paul was not an original follower of Jesus and therefore not a firsthand eyewitness, so he knows it is superflous to repeat all the traditions already formulated by the apostles who personally knew Jesus and followed him during his ministry. In fact, Paul's disinclination to regurgitate the material found in the gospels itself indicates how highly only original eyewitness testimony was regarded in ancient times - the original apostles had that eyewitness status, not Paul, so they are respected by Paul as the ones with the authority to corroborate the traditions about what Jesus actually said and did.

Paul was certainly the main force for helping the congregations move away from adherence to the law code, but the occasional spat with Jerusalem based elders is hardly sufficient to indicate some kind of wide divergence of theology on his part and the other apostles. This theory has been overblown. A cursory reading of Acts shows that this new teaching was hardly unique to Paul(Acts chps 10, 11, 15) and there is nothing to show that Paul and the others irreconcialably parted ways at this point. Paul, with his legendary zealousness, intrepidness and literary/scholarly background, naturally assumes the role of being the main enforcer of an already well established teaching, a teaching that some of the elders in Jerusalem struggled to deal with because of how deeply ingrained the Mosaic traditions were and their tendency to suffer from fear of man.

It goes without saying the folly of relying on Wikipaedia as a source of reputable scholarship. Anyway, this thread is dealing with the reliability of the oral tradition, not Pauline theology per se. Suffice to say that the summary on Wikipaedia that you've pasted is taken from quite critical streams of thought and is only showing one side of the coin. It is not balanced, failing to bring in some of the most recent scholarship on Pauline theology.

33

Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!

by yaddayadda in

another eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.

richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.

jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.

yaddayadda

Hamsterbait, the reputed miracles of Buddha were very late additions to the accounts about him. They evolved over a number of generations, ie, over a much longer span of time than between Jesus and the writing of the gospels. Hence, they are folklore. For example, one of the first biographies of Buddha was the 28-chapter Buddhacharitra (Acts, or Deeds of Buddha) by the Sanskrit poet, Ashvaghosha -- 1st century CE, some 500 years after the death of the Buddha.

Most alleged similarities between Buddha and Christ are easily refuted, or very weak. You can be better informed on the subject by reading this article http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/buddha02.html (Yes, an 'apologist' website).

Same goes for any alleged borrowing by Christianity from Hinduism.

33

Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!

by yaddayadda in

another eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.

richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.

jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.

yaddayadda

Terry: “To accept the theology of Paul you have to accept that his superficial "meeting" with Jesus trumps Apostolic one-on-one facetime. There is actually very little of Jesus per se in Paul's writing, and yet, he is explicting like crazy the "meaning" of Jesus in terms of Jewish Theology.”

Terry, please explain exactly how Paul’s theology trumps apostolic one-on-one face-time. Exactly what new things did Paul invent? On the contrary, Paul received and in turn passed on to others the traditions he had himself received.

Bauckham (2006, p 265 onwards) specifically comments on this as follows: “Paul certainly included “kerygmatic summaries” of the gospel story and message in what he communicated to his churches, for which the best evidence is 1 Corinthians 15: 1-8. It is clear that the traditions Paul envisages require an authorized tradent to teach them, such as he considered himself to be. In one case where Paul speaks of traditions, he makes clear that his authority for transmitting at least some of them to his churches was not his apostolic status as such, but the fact that he himself had received them from competent authorities (1 Cor 15:3). He thus places himself in a chain of transmission.

Also, “from whom did Paul receive traditions? In 1 Cor 15: 3, where Paul claims to have received the tradition (including the list of resurrection appearances) that he rehearses in verses 3-7, some scholars have held that the source of this tradition must have been the “Hellenistic” church in Damascus rather than the Jerusalem apostles. This view is designed to maintain the idea of a separation between “Hellenistic Jewish” Christianity, to which Paul is supposed to have belonged, and the Palestinian Jewish Christianity of the Jerusalem church. But such a separation is hardly compatible with the role Paul gives to the Jerusalem apostles precisely here in 1 Cor 16: 5,7. Moreover, when Paul claims his own apostleship despite its anomalous character (v v. 9-11), he asserts the unanimity between himself and the other apostles on the key matters he has just rehearsed (v.11). This unanimity existed because he had received the tradition in questions from the Jerusalem apostles.”

Three years after his conversion, Paul also visited Jerusalem and spent two weeks with Peter (Gal 1:18). This was to become thoroughly informed of the Jesus traditions as formulated by the twelve. Yes, Paul claimed to have apostolic authority and to preach on the strength of his personal revelation by Christ, but he lacked detail about the words and deeds of Jesus, and he may have come to see the need for this during his perioe of mission in Nabatea (Arabia: v.17). As James Dunn puts it, “we must allow that his early encounters with those in the new movement before him had a fairly substantive level of ‘information content’, to supplement or correct the picture he had gained as a persecutor.”

Allusions to Jesus traditions in Paul’s writings are in fact quite numerous. 1 Cor 11: 23 -32 is the most noteworthy example, where Paul states he “received from the Lord what I handed on to you.” Paul is not meaning he received this tradition by immediate revelation from the resurrected Jesus; rather he knew it as a unit of Jesus tradition, perhaps already part of a passion narrative. He cites it in a form that is close to the Lukan version (Luke 22:19-20) and that diverges generally in the same way as Luke’s from the version in Mark and Matthew (Mark 14:22-24; Matt 26: 26-28). Paul’s version is verbally so close to Luke’s that, since literary dependence in either direction is very unlikely, Paul must be dependent either on a written text or, more likely, an oral text that has been quite closely memorized. Paul thus provides perhaps the earliest evidence of narratives about Jesus transmitted in a way that involved, while not wholly verbatim reproduction, certainly a considerable degree of precise memorization.

Frankiespeakin: “Surely a God that demands beleif for salvation would provide more substancial proof than a ancient document, if he were a god of love and reasonableness, and people everlasting welfare are hanging in the balance of beleif in said miracles.”

I agree. It is difficult to believe in reputed miracles from many hundreds of years ago. I don’t blame the skeptics at all. A Christian would say that the ‘substantial proof’ you feel God should furnish will be provided when Christ returns in a miraculous display, which is the hope of Christians. However, the difference is that Christians simply feel there is enough evidence to have faith in the meantime. They have faith in something invisible that can’t be explicitly seen or demonstrated; but so do evolutionists. Christians do not demand that God repeat miracles for them personally year after year for them to believe, just like evolutionists believe that all life came about by random chance but without being able to reproduce it in a laboratory or pointing to cut-and-dry examples. Everything is a matter of faith to some degree. One could say that belief in all ancient history is a matter of faith.

33

Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!

by yaddayadda in

another eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.

richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.

jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.

yaddayadda

Kid-A, Ok yes I've been a bit snarky in this thread as I have an aggressive dispostion but I apologise for this, and I agree that such an attitude is unchristian. I accept that counsel, thank you.

However, I certainly have engaged in meaningful debate on the subject, something you don't seem prepared to do. Why don't you offer something meaningful to the discussion instead of just hurling hostile abuse at me. Calling me a 'prick' is just childish and pathetic and far exceeds any insults I may have made on this thread. That makes you more obnoxious than you accuse me of, and a hypocrite.

I make no apologies for posting this kind of subject material on this forum. This board is headed 'bible research and study articles'; obviously that means more than just constantly trashing the bible. There are many ex-JW's who are struggling with their Christian faith after leaving the organisation. Like Ray Franz states so eloquently in the latter chapters of In Search of Christian Freedom, the real challenge is not to let the massive dissillusionment of the JW experience completely destroy our faith, but to adapt, find a balance, and move on as a Christian without the shackles of the organisation. Many, many persons on this forum have done that and would no doubt find this kind of bible research faith-strengthening. I must admit I find it amazing and disturbing just how much bible and God-bashing occurs on this website; it seems the agenda of many is not so much to denounce the JW organisation (and I am just as ready to denounce the org as anyone) so much as savagely tearing down JW's faith in God and the Bible. I think its only fair that someone provides a bit of balance to all the anti-Christian diatribes on this forum, so that those JW's who would like to continue on the Christian path apart from the organisation can find very good reason to do just that.

33

Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!

by yaddayadda in

another eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.

richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.

jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.

yaddayadda

Leolaia, you will probably be disappointed by Bauckham’s book if you are expecting him to have analysed all these alleged 'intertextual' relationships between the gospels and other ancient documents. This is obviously a pet method for you (its an understandable mindest for a person schooled for so many years in the academic method of having to support everything they say by referring to something else similar), but it is problematic as a proper way of treating the gospels on a number of fronts, only a few of which I'll touch on below.

For instance, most, if not all, of the examples you given are later than the gospels, some much later, particularly “the third and fourth generations of tannaim (c. AD 130-160 and 160-200, respectively) in the Mishnah (c. AD 200), including stories of demon exorcisms ( b. Me'ilah 17 ) and resurrections ( b. 'Abodah Zarah 10b ), again displaying similar time depths as the NT gospels.”

This is anachronism; they are not appropriate as reliable comparisons for measuring the gospels against. They are broadly in the same boat as the Gnostic gospels, all written long after the canon gospels (with the exception perhaps of the gospel of Thomas) and they all contain a lot of what is clearly fiction.

As for this: “The healing stories concerning Emperor Vespasian (dated to his accession year in AD 69) related by Tacitus ( Historia 4.81 ) and Suetonius ( Vespasian 8.7 ) have the same "shallow" time depth attributed by Bauckham to the canonical gospels (i.e. 36 years for Tacitus and 50 years for Suetonius ) and were written by historiographers who had much opportunity and motive to consult eyewitnesses.“ The difference with Emperor Vespasian of course is that he was a pagan, and the pagans had no inhibitions about deifying and mythologizing their heroes, such as Roman emperors. The pagan world was rife with this kind of thing, but the early first century Jewish world had contempt for this practice. The hundreds of earliest disciples who knew Jesus were all Jews, and the Jewish mindset was against this kind of wholesale mythologizing and deifying of humans. This is one of the reasons why it is so remarkable that Christianity got a foothold in early first century Jewish Society; it is why many scholars find it incredulous to believe that Jesus was simply some kind of wise teacher – he must have done much more than just utter a few wise sayings to have such a profound impact on so many Jews.

The other significant difference is that the apostles and other early Jewish disciples acted as a controlling influence on the messages about Jesus. The Jerusalem church particularly had a dominant role and authoritative influence. The apostles, particularly Paul, emphasized that the congregations were following the traditions as handed on to them. Fidelity to the apostolic tradition was stressed. There is not the slightest hint of anything new being created or tolerated. In fact, following strange new teachings and pagan ideas was roundly condemned. Congregations authorized teachers also, as noted in a number of places in Paul’s letters. Unless you can show that the examples you've furnished did in fact originate from actual eyewitnesses (as opposed to being mere 'urban legends' from the start), were repeated by employing deliberate memorization techniques, and were constantly repeated in group settings, thus establishing a corporate accountability to the fidelity of the tradition, then they are clearly not in the same ballpark as the gospels.

It is inconceivable that a young Jewish Rabbi with a few new, pithy teachings could have been so rapidly mythologised within one Jewish generation, within religious groups where there was a strong emphasize on truth, where so many original Jewish eyewitnesses circulated for so many years. It is especially bizarre given that pretty much the majority of the content of the gospels is about miracles. If you take away all the miracles from them you are left with practically nothing. This kind of radical mythologizing takes many generations to occur, and it is only then that it becomes folklore. The gospels were written within a single generation.

Dismissing the gospels as nothing more than rehashed OT intertextualisations is a tempting notion, but it doesn't square with the facts.

I'm sure you'll find Bauckham's book fascinating and no doubt highly provocative.

33

Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!

by yaddayadda in

another eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.

richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.

jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.

yaddayadda

Narkisso: "Little to add, except that Bauckham was even more expected than Dunn to jump on this boat..."

Is that all you have to say Narkissos? Resorting to a cheap ad hominem shot. Most disappointing.

33

Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!

by yaddayadda in

another eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.

richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.

jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.

yaddayadda

Elsewhere: "Imagine if no one wrote down anything about WWII, the Holocaust and the use of two nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then today, using only word-of-mouth information, someone started trying to write the history of those events. I guarantee you the result would be terribly in error when compared to what actually happened. Hell, even with written accounts, Nazi documents, photographs and videos, people still try to deny the Holocaust ever even happened. If history can be warped that much in less than 60 years with so much documentation, how can we possibly trust what is in the gospels from over 2000 years ago that were penned at least 80 years after the actual events occurred and then were translated through multiple languages?"

You guarantee that do you Elsewhere? You are completely wrong. If there were no written records of WW2 the many millions of persons who personally experienced it would be able to provide a formidably accurate account of what happened. In fact, a lot of research has been done on the accuracy of peoples memories of events going back to WW2, and it flat contradicts what you. Bauckham touches on this in his book.

What history has been 'warped'? No one but radical fringe groups deny that the holocaust was real. Of course, some people still fervently believe the earth is flat, but that hardly means this fact has been 'warped'.

Like I said, most NT scholars now accept that the gap was only 30 - 60 years, not 'at least 80'. One of the very reasons why nothing was put down in writing for so long was because there were so many eyewitnesses still living who could corrobate the tradition; that along with the oral memorization culture of ancient Palestine.

Why don't you do yourself a favour and read some real scholarship instead of relying on corny websites for your beliefs.

Veradico, your post looks interesting but I found it incoherent and rambling thus difficult to follow. Can you redo it?

33

Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!

by yaddayadda in

another eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.

richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.

jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.

yaddayadda

Another eminent New Testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.

Richard Bauckham’s 2006 book ‘Jesus and the Eyewitnesses – The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony’ is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary British gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.

Bauckham, professor of New Testament studies at the University of Scotland and a fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, has joined fellow British heavyweight scholar James D G Dunn in recently noting major flaws and faulty assumptions of the last 80 or so years of traditional form criticism. Relatively recent research and insights that have shed much light on the nature of ancient oral storytelling - a difficult area of study that has not been adequately treated - has led these British heavyweight scholars to come to some conclusions that will infuriate sceptics.

James D G Dunn’s conclusions have been published in his Book ‘Jesus Remembered’ (2003) and ‘A New Perspective on Jesus – What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed’ (2005). He argues that the form-critical conception of oral tradition operating like successive editions of a literary text suffers from major flaws. It has utterly failed to properly take into account how ancient oral societies worked. Rather, each performance of a tradition is a performance of the tradition as such, not a further development away from the last performance. There are no layers of tradition, only various performances, differing with strict limits where there was a balance between continuity and flexibility. Specific aspects of the oral tradition were considered inviolable, while other specific aspects can be varied to a degree. This means the story cannot change into another. It’s basic features are fixed. Although there is clearly a literary interdependency between the gospels, the relatively minor variations and ‘contradictons’ between them are a reflection of the natural variation of oral story-telling. I outlined some highlights from Dunn’s 2005 book in an earlier thread on this forum, which can be found here.

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/120128/1.ashx [could someone kindly make this clickable]

In his latest book, Bauckham emulates Dunn by giving the subject of the oral tradition a thorough going over that similarly purges certain erroneous views about the oral tradition. He draws on a vast body of academic research to distil the conclusions of recent scholarship and presents a new paradigm for treating the gospels.

Expanding on the recent research of Swedish NT scholar Samuel Byrskorg that examines the gospels in light of ancient oral history, Bauckham comes up with conclusions that echo Dunn but that even more forcefully argue in favour of the essential reliability of the gospels. Here are some of Bauckham’s main conclusions:

· The form critics viewed the gospels as a kind of folklore that developed over many generations. This is no longer tenable. Even the folklorists themselves have abandoned the ‘romantic’ idea of the folk as collectively the creator of folk traditions in favour of recognizing the roles of authoritative individuals in interaction with the community.

A. The many original disciples (and especially the apostles), together with authorized ‘tradents’ in the congregations, acted to preserve the essential accuracy of the tradition in the network of congregations during the formative years of Christianity.

B. The time span between Jesus and the gospels is much shorter than the periods of time spanned by the traditions studied by folklorists. It is now accepted by most scholars that the gospels were written within one generation following Christ’s death. This fact alone seriously undermines the form critics prime assumptions.

C. The form critics assumed that the Jesus traditions quickly lost their link with the original eyewitness testimonies. They felt that the original accounts were soon absorbed into a collective and changing tradition. This view is no longer tenable given the growing body of new research into the nature and characteristics of oral communities. The upshot of this research into ancient orality is that oral community storytelling was a lot more fixed and stable than was previously assumed.

D· Ancient historians sought out and valued eyewitness testimony above all other sources and were convinced that true history could be written only while events were still within living memory. The gospels bear all the hallmarks of the writers having used this same historiographic ‘best practice’.

E. The form critics (mainly from Bultmann onwards) assumed that the tradition was freely created and modified according to the needs of the community and that the gospels represent the end product of an anonymous community tradition. This is soundly refuted by Bauckham (drawing on a wide range of work by other contemporary scholars). The evidence supports Luke’s (Luke 1: 1-3) and Papias’ declarations that they were recording what they had received from first-hand eyewitness testimony. Viewing the gospels as largely ‘eyewitness testimony’ (as opposed to anonymous evolving community traditions), and acknowledging that they were recognized by the early Christians as such, must now be accepted as the correct model for considering the gospels.

Bauckham’s new book is essential reading for anyone interested in leading edge research into the origins of the gospels.

The following is a brief essay style outline on the oral tradition in light of some recent scholarship.

Many liberal scholars maintain that in the decades between the death of Jesus (approximately 33 A.D.) and when the bible books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (“the gospels”) were written (considered by most modern scholars to be between 60 - 90 A.D), the truth about Jesus became corrupted. They claim that in this period of about 30 to 60 years, when the stories were passed on verbally, the ‘historical’ Jesus disappeared under a quagmire of elaboration and myth. The Jesus Seminar, a recent forum of many liberal scholars that received much media attention, put it this way: “Much of the lore recorded in the gospels and elsewhere in the Bible is folklore, which means that it is wrapped in memories that have been edited, deleted, augmented, and combined many times over many years.” If they’re right, then perhaps most of what we read in the gospels never happened and Christianity has no sound historical basis. Just how carefully, then, was the oral tradition about the words and deeds of Jesus transmitted in the early church? Does the evidence indicate whether or not it was corrupted before the Gospels were written? I will outline some reasons, particularly in light of some recent conclusions by scholars in this field, for contending that the original oral accounts about the person, deeds and words of Jesus (the ‘oral tradition’) did not become substantially corrupted in the period before the gospels were written.

Something that gives credence to the claim that the accounts about Jesus remained true during the oral transmission process is the extent and nature of the predominantly oral, memorizing culture that the early disciples lived in. Some prominent New Testament scholars, such as emeritus lightfoot professor of Divinity James D.G Dunn (2003, 2005) and professor of New Testament studies and a fellow of the British Academy, Richard Bauckham (2006) have recently argued that the oral dimension behind the gospels has not been treated adequately by most twentieth century scholars and as a result the last eighty five years of traditional form criticism (the method of analyzing the gospels by deconstructing them in an attempt to rediscover the original kernel of meaning) has suffered from significant flaws (Dunn, 2005, p 35, 42) and is now effectively destroyed (Bauckham, 2006, p 246- 249). But what new insights have led such scholars to these provocative conclusions? I will outline just a few:

Showing how extensive was the scope of the oral culture the earliest disciples lived in, research professor of New Testament studies Darrell Bock states: “If the role of oral tradition was important to the ancients in general, it was especially important to Jewish culture” (1995, p.79). As products of an oral culture, the disciples would have been adept at hearing, remembering, and passing on stories accurately, as distinguished professor of the New Testament Craig Blomberg confirms: “the almost universal method of education in antiquity, and especially in Israel, was rote memorization, which enabled people accurately to recount quantities of material far greater than all of the Gospels put together” (1992, p. 294). Jesus was regarded as a Rabbi and as such it would have been natural for his disciples to memorize their master’s words (Gerhardsson, 1998, 134-135). But oral memorisation techniques were not just limited to Rabbi/disciple relationships, as Bauckham emphasizes: “the actual methods of oral transmission used by the rabbis were not peculiar to them, but were in fact the common educational methods, even at elementary level, of the ancient world. Rainer Riesner’s work has particularly made this apparent.” (2006, p251). This means it wasn’t only the eyewitness disciples of Jesus who employed memorising techniques, but those persons who converted in large numbers after Pentecost (33A.D) and formed congregations would also have been concerned to accurately recall and transmit what they heard in the decades before the gospels were written. Furthermore, some of the traditions about Jesus were evidently passed on in forms that made them especially easy to remember and accurately recount. Australian academic, Dr Paul Barnett, states that “Much of [Jesus’] teaching is cast in poetic form, employing alliteration, paronomasia, assonance, parallelism and rhyme. According to R.Riesner, 80 percent of Jesus’ teaching is cast in poetic form.” (2005, p113-114). Some of Jesus’ disciples may also have written private notes during his lifetime, a practice found in some Jewish religious groups of the time. (Bauckham, 2006, p252; Gerhardsson, 1998, p195).

In addition to the oral, memorization culture the early disciples lived in, another important factor is that the recollections about Jesus were repeated in large group (community) settings where the original, eye-witness apostles and disciples were active. Firstly, a foremost characteristic of ancient oral ‘communal memory’ is that it was not prone to radical change, as in a game of ‘Chinese whispers’. New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey (1991 & 1995), who spent thirty years researching Middle Eastern oral societies, proposed what he called an “informal controlled” (1991, p34-54) model as the best explanation for how the process of oral transmission would have worked amongst the early Christian communities. In this process, there was some flexibility (informal aspect) in the retelling of oral stories but a stable core (controlled aspect) was always repeated. Bauckham notes that “in this model it is the community that exercises control to ensure that the traditions are preserved faithfully.” and “What is important here is…that specific aspects of the tradition are considered inviolable, while other specific aspects can be varied to a degree. This means that the story cannot change into another. Its basic features are fixed.” (2006, p.255 -256). The significance of this in assessing the historicity of the gospels is summed up by Dunn as follows: “Its variability, the oral principle of “variation within the same,” is not a sign of degeneration or corruption. Rather, it puts us directly in touch with the tradition in its living character, as it was heard in the earliest Christian groups and churches...” (2005, p.125). The oral accounts about the words and deeds of Jesus would also have been etched into the hearers’ memories through repeated retellings, providing a kind of collective recollection and accountability that would have made it difficult for substantial departures from the original to later creep in. In this regard, Bauckham notes “frequent rehearsal…is an important element in the preservation of memories” (2006, p.323).

Additionally, there were numerous eyewitnesses circulating in the earliest church groups who would have acted to preserve the faithfulness of the original messages. This was strongly emphasized by British scholar Vincent Taylor as far back as 1933:

“…the influence of eyewitnesses on the formation of the tradition cannot possibly be ignored. The one hundred and twenty at Pentecost did not go into permanent retreat; for at least a generation they moved among the young Palestinian communities, and through preaching and fellowship their recollections were at the disposal of those who sought information...” (Taylor, 1933, p.41-43).

Dunn echoes the same point: “Nor should we forget the continuing role of eyewitness tradents, of those recognized from the first as apostles or otherwise authoritative bearers of the Jesus tradition” (2003, p.173). Bauckham puts it even more forcefully: “…the traditions were originated and formulated by named eyewitnesses, in whose name they were transmitted and who remained the living and active guarantors of the traditions.” (2006, p.290). Furthermore, Swedish scholar Samuel Byrskog, in his book ‘Story as History – History as Story’, forcefully argues that the writers of the gospels used the same historiographic best practices employed by ancient historians such as Thucydides, Polybius, Josephus and Tacitus, particularly in how they relied on the living testimony of eyewitnesses above all other sources. Bauckham concurs with Byrskog, noting that these ancient historians considered that “good history had to be contemporary history, written in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses” (Bauckham, 2006, p.310).

If the conclusions of these scholars are correct, this ‘eyewitness’ factor presents a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to those who maintain that the gospels represent a hopelessly corrupted version of the real Jesus.

References

Bailey, K. (1991 & 1995) Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels, ARTICLE Asia Journal of Theology 5 (1991), and Middle Eastern Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels, (Expository Times 106 (1995).

Blomberg, C.L. (1992). Gospels (Historical Reliability), in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, eds. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press.

Bock, D.L. (1995). The Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex? in Jesus Under Fire, eds. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.

Barnett, P. (2005). The Birth of Christianity; The First Twenty Years, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Byrskog. S. (2002), Story as History – History as Story, WUNT 123; Tubingen: Mohr, 2000; reprinted Leiden: Brill, 2002.

Dunn, J.D.G, (2003). Jesus Remembered, Grand Rapids; Eerdmans.

Dunn, J.D.G (2005). A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed, Grand Rapids: Baker.

Funk, R. and the Jesus Seminar (19980, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

Gerhardsson, B. (1998). Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, Grant Rapids: Eerdmans.

Miztal, B.A. (2003). Theories of Social Remembering. Philadelphia: Open University.

Tayor, V. (1933). The Formation of the Gospel Tradition,. London: Macmillan.