Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §8.1
name to the movement he initiated, whereas the first Christians could explain
themselves only by reference to him whom they called '(the) Christ'. But if the
Gospels tell us anything they surely tell us that the first Christians felt the need to
explain themselves by telling stories about Jesus, what he said and what he did. 16
b. Teachers and Tradition
This a priori logic is supported by the evidence that the passing on of tradition
was part of church founding from the first. Paul was careful to refer his churches
back to such foundation traditions on several occasions; 17 the evidence is hardly
to be explained as references solely to kerygmatic or confessional formulae.
Rather, we find that it includes community tradition (1 Cor. 11.2, 23), teaching
on how the new converts should live (e.g., Phil. 4.9; 1 Thess. 4.1; 2 Thess. 3.6),
and traditions of Jesus in accordance with which they should conduct their lives
(Col. 2.6-7; kata Christon in 2.8). 18
If further confirmation is needed, it is provided by the prominence of
teachers within the earliest Christian churches. 19 Teachers, indeed, seem to have
been the first regularly paid ministry within the earliest Christian movement
(Gal. 6.6; Did. 13.2). Why teachers? Why else than to serve as the congregation's
repository of oral tradition? What else would Christian teachers teach? A Christian
interpretation of the Scriptures, no doubt. But also, we can surely safely assume,
the traditions which distinguished house churches from local house synagogues
or other religious, trade, or burial societies. 20
We should pause at this point to recall just how crucial teachers were to ancient
communities. All who read these pages will have been bred to a society
16. Moule is one of remarkably few who recognized this fundamental (human) need in
his Birth of the New Testament; chs. 3-6, each entitled 'The Church Explains Itself in different
ways.
17. 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.
18. See my Colossians and Philemon (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996) 138-41,
151; and further my Theology of Paul 194-95.
19. Acts 13.1; Rom. 12.7; 1 Cor. 12.28-29; Eph. 4.11; Heb. 5.12; Jas 3.1; Did. 15.1-2.
20. See also A. F. Zimmermann, Die urchristlichen Lehrer (WUNT 2.12; Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 1984), though he pushes too hard his thesis that in the early community
(Urgemeinde) the teachers formed a Jewish-Christian-Pharisaic circle. 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 D. J. A. Clines, et al., eds., The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of
Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic,
1990] 221-47 [here 244]).
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