Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§17.1 Crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato
Within the larger framework (Mark 11-15 pars.) there was plenty of room
for significant performance variants. The likelihood that the eschatological discourse
in Mark 13 is the product of significant elaboration has already been
noted. 10 Matthew includes several parables, some of which Luke has in his much
longer journey to Jerusalem. 11 And John ventures substantial variation, not least
in adding a whole raft of teaching to the sequence, the 'farewell discourses' (John
14-17).
As usual, the attempt to explain the more detailed variations has focused
on the possibility of detectable (written) sources. The debate has centred particularly
on the questions of a pre-Markan Passion narrative and a Lukan special
source. 12 But no consensus has been achieved, or is achievable, since the criteria
for distinguishing Markan and Lukan redaction from putative literary sources are
at best indecisive. 13 The hypotheses both of recoverable written sources and of a
narrative wholly created by Mark 14 are incapable of substantive demonstration. 15
Here again we need to be more open to the reality of oral tradition, including the
use of written sources in oral mode. 16 That is to say, the reality of Mark 11-15
10. See above, §12.4(1.
11. Particularly Matt. 22.1-14/Luke 14.15-24; Matt. 24.45-51/Luke 12.41-46; Matt.
25.14-30/Luke 19.11-27; also Matt. 23.37-39/Luke 13.34-35; Matt. 24.37-42/Luke 17.26-35.
Had there been a more extensive pre-Markan Passion narrative (n. 2 above), then Luke's extended
journey to Jerusalem (Luke 9.51-18.14) has cut right across it.
12. Discussion in Brown, Death 53-57, 64-75. Other bibliography in J. T. Carroll and
J. B. Green, 'The Gospels and the Death of Jesus in Recent Study', The Death of Jesus in Early
Christianity (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995) 5-9, 17-19, who reflect also the recent trend to concentrate
more on the function of the Passion narrative within each Gospel (7-16 and chs. 2-5).
13. M. L. Soards has provided a thorough analysis of the attempts to reconstruct a pre-
Markan Passion narrative (in Brown, Death 1492-1524, tabulation 1502-17); Brown notes in
reference to the thirty-four scholars' views surveyed, that 'there is scarcely one verse that all
would assign to the same kind of source or tradition' (55). On the question of a special Lukan
source, scholars are more or less equally divided {Death 66-67 nn. 70,72); Brown notes that he,
like Hawkins and G. Schneider, began with the hypothesis of a special Lukan Passion narrative,
but subsequently abandoned the hypothesis (67).
14. The case that Mark edited and unified individual traditions, composed new material
and thus created the Passion narrative sequence as a narrative has been argued particularly by
the contributors to W. H. Kelber, ed., The Passion in Mark (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976); see
also Funk, Acts of Jesus 23.
15. Brown observes that some of the episodes in Mark's narrative 'cannot have circulated
independently without a connection to the passion' (Death 54) and goes on to summarize
the inadequacy of the criteria for discerning redaction in a case like the Markan Passion narrative
(55-57).
16. Crossan (Birth 562-63) notes that Koester has moved from the assumption of a single
written source for the Passion narrative to the recognition of 'different versions of the passion
narrative . . . owing to the oral performances of the story in ritual celebrations, ever enriched
by new references to the scriptures of Israel' (citing 'The Historical Jesus and the Cult of
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