Jesus in Memory: Traditions in Oral and Scribal Perspectives

2-The Jesus Tradition as Oral Tradition

39 Terence C. Mournet The Jesus Tradition as Oral Tradition Chapter 2 Birger Gerhardsson has made an inestimable impact on the field of New Testament studies. Our collective knowledge and understanding of the shape and texture of the Jesus tradition has been forever changed by his groundbreaking work which has deeply influenced countless colleagues through his forty-plus years of research, teaching, and graduate supervision. Not often does one individual make such a valuable and long-lasting contribution to a discipline. Memory and Manuscript remains a key work in the area of the transmission of tradition within both New Testament and rabbinical contexts.1 Despite being written over forty-five years ago, Memory and Manuscript remains on the required reading list for all serious students of the New Testament, and every monograph and article written on the subject of the earliest stages of the Jesus tradition must, at the very least, engage thoughtfully the foundational work of this respected academician. Gerhardsson’s former students have continued in his footsteps and their respective works reflect their ongoing indebtedness to their Doktorvater. As such, it is with great pleasure that I offer this work as a small token of gratitude for what Gerhardsson has already given us throughout his career. There have been many summaries of Gerhardsson’s work over the years, and no attempt will be made here to repeat in detail that journey undertaken in greater depth by others. Rather, we will first explore the 40 B Terence C. Mournet character of the Jesus tradition as evidenced in the Synoptic Gospels. Second, we will summarize three major schools of thought in the area of the formation and transmission of the Jesus tradition and focus in more detail on the concept of oral tradition derived from the “orality model” with particular reference to research which has been built upon the work of Kenneth Bailey. Lastly, it is the aim of this current contribution to clarify some of the issues at stake in the discussion of the earliest stages of the Jesus tradition. While there are clear differences between the model of tradition transmission proposed by Gerhardsson and that forwarded below, there are also strong points of resonance which, through the process of clarification and refinement, might come to the fore and facilitate ongoing dialogue and continued synergy. In assessing the work of Gerhardsson it is necessary to place his work within both its original and current academic context. When he wrote his Memory and Manuscript there were not as many potential models of the formation and transmission of the Jesus tradition to which one could appeal in comparison to today. At the time, the form-critical model dominated the academic landscape and its paradigm was widely used to frame the questions regarding the transmission of Jesus tradition. For Rudolf Bultmann, the starting point for understanding the Gospels rests in the distinction between Kleinliteratur and Hochliteratur.2 The labeling of the Gospels as Kleinliteratur carried with it a series of unvoiced and unjustified assumptions about the process of tradition transmission.3 His assumed model of tradition transmission, which formed the basis for subsequent form-critical work, ran counter to the model which flowed from the historical context envisioned by Gerhardsson . While the form-critical model was, in theory, one built upon insights derived from various disciplines, it suffered from its alienation from the rich cultural and religious milieu in which Jesus the Jew lived and died. The form-critical work on the Gospels was informed by the texts and traditions of the Greco-Roman world apart from any meaningful interaction with the primary context of Jesus and his earliest disciples. While form critics such as Bultmann appealed, if in an indirect manner, to other disciplines to elucidate the Jesus tradition, the number of formal models to which one could appeal was limited at the time. Contrast this to today, where there are many diverse approaches to studying the Jesus tradition, some of which are themselves derivative of the form-critical model of tradition transmission. It is admittedly difficult, if not impossible, to utilize entirely objective labels to describe each of these models. However, for our purpose, The Jesus Tradition as Oral Tradition B 41 we will use the terms “literary model,” “rabbinical model,” and “orality model” to delineate three different perspectives on the Jesus tradition and their respective understanding of the process of tradition formation and transmission. While there is...