Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

CHAPTER 8
The Tradition
Few if any today assume that the written sources take the reader back directly to
the Jesus who worked and taught in Galilee three or more decades earlier. But
equally, few if any doubt that behind the written sources there was earlier tradition.
1 The question is whether this earlier tradition fully or only partially bridges
the period between Jesus and our present sources. Form criticism provided a partial
answer, but, as we saw, its early thrust seems to have been redirected into an
unending debate about criteria. And the neo-Liberal quest for new sources seems
to be falling into the old trap of thinking in terms only of written sources. But
what of the earlier tradition? As David Du Toit observes, there are both 'a complete
lack of consensus on one of the most fundamental questions of the whole
enterprise, namely on the question of the process of transmission of the Jesus traditions',
and an 'urgent need to develop a comprehensive theory of the process of
transmission of tradition in early Christianity' . 2 In fact, however, there are a perspective
on the Jesus tradition which has only recently been properly recognized,
and a rich potential in a fresh understanding of the Jesus tradition as orally transmitted
which has hardly begun to be fully tapped. In this chapter I want to take
the first steps towards developing a theory of transmission which would meet the
need indicated by Du Toit.
1. Since I make considerable use of this term ('tradition'), I should define how I am using
it. Expressed in very general terms, 'tradition' denotes both content and mode of transmission:
the content is typically beliefs and customs which are regarded as stemming from the past
and which have become authoritative; the mode is informal, typically word of mouth. At one
end of its spectrum of usage 'tradition' has to be distinguished from individual memory, though
it could be described as corporate memory giving identity to the group which thus remembers.
At the other end it has to be distinguished from formal rules and written law, though its being
written down need not change its character, initially at any rate.
2. Du Toit, 'Redefining Jesus' 123-24.
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