Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §8.1
Apocryphon of James (Cameron's main focus) was an attempt to manipulate a
well-established and deeply rooted concern (to remember Jesus' teaching) by using
it to commend a sayings tradition laced with 'secret' (Gnostic) elements. 40
In short, the witnessing and remembering motifs strengthen the impression
that more or less from the first those who established new churches would
have taken care to provide and build a foundation of Jesus tradition. Particularly
important for Gentiles taking on a wholly new life-style and social identity
would be guidelines and models for the different character of conduct now expected
from them. Such guidelines and models were evidently provided by a
solid basis of Jesus tradition which they were expected to remember, to take in
and live out.
d. Apostolic Custodians
The idea of the 'apostles' as themselves the foundation of the church, or of the
new Jerusalem, appears already in Eph. 2.20 and Rev. 21.14. More striking is the
fact that a clear emphasis of the early chapters of Acts is the role of the apostles
as ensuring continuity between what Jesus had taught and the expanding mission
of the movement reinvigorated afresh at Pentecost. The implication of the opening
words is that Acts is a continuation of 'all that Jesus began to do and teach' as
recorded in 'the first part of his work', the Gospel of Luke (Acts 1.1). The instruction
given to the apostles (1.2), the implication continues, had just the same
continuity in view. 41 Hence, when the traitor Judas is replaced by a new twelfth
apostle, the criterion for his election is that he should have been one of their number
throughout the ministry of Jesus, 'beginning from the baptism of John' (1.21-
22). Hence also the emphasis in 2.42, where the first mark of the new post-
Pentecost community is its continuation in and firm attachment to (proskartereo)
'the teaching of the apostles'.
Such an emphasis might be regarded as a late perspective, when, arguably,
continuity questions would have become (more) important. But there are indications
that such continuity was seen as important from the first. These indications
focus on the importance of Peter, James, and John to which our texts testify.
They were evidently reckoned as the first men among the leaders of the initial Jerusalem
community (Acts 1.13) — Peter certainly (1.15; 2.14; 5.1-10, 15, 29),
40. 'Now the twelve disciples [were] sitting all together at [the same time], and remembering
what the Savior had said to each one of them, whether secretly or openly, they were setting
it down in books' (Apoc. Jas. 2.1 Cameron).
41. More than any other Evangelist, Luke emphasizes the role of the disciples as 'apostles'
(Luke 6.13; 9.10; 17.5; 22.14; 24.10).
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