Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§8.1 The Tradition
Only occasionally is Jesus cited as the authority for the sayings quoted. 50 Usually
the teaching which echoes the Jesus tradition is simply part of more extensive
paraenesis, without explicit attribution to Jesus.
What are we to make of this? Given that James and 1 Peter probably take
us into the second generation of Christianity, when the Synoptic tradition and the
Synoptic Gospels themselves would be becoming known, it is very unlikely that
in every case the authors were unaware that the teaching originated with Jesus.
More plausible is the suggestion I have made elsewhere, 51 that we see in these
data one of the ways the Jesus tradition was remembered and used. It is generally
recognized that when groups become established over a lengthy period they develop
in effect their own identity- and boundary-forming language, that is, at the
very least, the use of abbreviations, a kind of shorthand and code words which
help bond them as a group and distinguish insiders from outsiders (who do not
know the language). 52 The whole point is that in in-group dialogue such inreferences
are not explained; on the contrary, it is the recognition of the code
word or allusion which gives the insider-language its bonding effect; to unpack
the reference or allusion (for a stranger) in effect breaks the bond and lets the
outsider into the group's inner world. 53 My suggestion, then, is that the Jesus tradition
formed such an insider's language among the earliest Christian communities;
Paul's use of it in Romans (to a church he had never visited) implies his confidence
that this language was a language common to all Christian churches,
given by the founding apostle when he/she passed on the Jesus tradition to the
new foundation (§§8. la and b above). 54 In terms of the argument to be developed
know it from 1 John itself! On 'The Sayings of Jesus in the Letter of James' see W. H. Wachob
and L. T. Johnson in Chilton and Evans, eds., Authenticating the Words of Jesus 431-50.
50. Acts 20.35; 1 Clem. 13.1-2; 46.7-8.
51. See my 'Jesus Tradition in Paul', in Chilton and Evans, Studying the Historical Jesus
155-78 (particularly 176-78); also Theology of Paul 651-53.
52. This would fit with the suggestions that the writers were able to draw on collections
of sayings like those in the Lukan 'Sermon on the Plain' used for catechetical purposes (cf.
D. C. Allison, 'The Pauline Epistles and the Synoptic Gospels: The Pattern of the Parallels',
NTS 28 [1982] 1-32; Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels 54, 65-68). Didache perhaps indicates
a pattern more widely followed: under the heading of 'the Lord's teaching' (1.1) extensive
teaching is then given with only occasional reference to Jesus as its source; see also
W. Rordorf, 'Does the Didache Contain Jesus Tradition Independently of the Synoptic Gospels?',
in Wansbrough, ed., Jesus 394-423; I. Henderson, 'Didache and Orality in Synoptic
Comparison', JBL 111 (1992) 283-306; J. A. Draper, 'The Jesus Tradition in the Didache', in
J. A. Draper, ed., The Didache in Modern Research (Leiden: Brill, 1996) 72-91; also Crossan's
analysis in Birth 387-95.
53. See also Allison, Jesus Tradition in Q 111-19.
54. In the treatments cited above (n. 51) I also observe that in the only two passages
where Paul cites the authority of Jesus in paraenesis (1 Cor. 7.10-11; 9.14) he goes on to qualify
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