Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §8.3
ing fruitfully with a realistic conceptualisation of oral tradition and how it functioned
were more or less strangled at birth by several assumptions which distorted
Bultmann's reconstruction of the oral traditioning processes.
Two in particular are worth noting. (1) Bultmann focused on the forms and
assumed that certain 'laws of style' determined the transmission of the forms.
These laws, apparently drawn from some acquaintance with studies in folklore
elsewhere, 112 included the further assumptions of a 'pure' form, 113 of a natural
progression in the course of transmission from purity and simplicity towards
greater complexity, 114 and of a development in the tradition determined by form
rather than content. 115 (2) More significant was Bultmann's assumption of a literary
model to explain the process of transmission. This becomes most evident
in his conceptualisation of the whole tradition about Jesus as 'composed of a series
of layers'. 116 The imagined process is one where each layer is laid or builds
upon another. Bultmann made such play with it because, apart from anything
else, he was confident that he could strip off later (Hellenistic) layers to expose
the earlier (Palestinian) layers. 117 The image itself, however, is drawn from the
112. History 6-7; though note the criticism of E. P. Sanders, The Tendencies of the Synoptic
Tradition (SNTSMS 9; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1969) 18 n. 4.
113. 'The "pure form" (reine Gattung) represents a mixture of linguistic and history-oflanguage
categories, which is to be assigned to an out-of-date conception of language development'
(eine Vermischung linguistischer und sprachhistorischer Kategorien . . . die einer heute
überholten Auffassung der Sprachentwicklung zuzuweisen ist) (Schröter, Erinnerung 59; also
141-42). See also G. Strecker, 'Schriftlichkeit oder Mündlichkeit der synoptischen Tradition?',
in F. van Segbroeck, et al., eds., The Four Gospels 1992, Festschrift Frans Neirynck (Leuven:
Leuven University, 1992) 159-72 (here 161-62, with other bibliography in n. 6).
114. But see Sanders' critique in Tendencies, in summary: 'There are no hard and fast
laws of the development of the Synoptic tradition. On all counts the tradition developed in opposite
directions. It became both longer and shorter, both more and less detailed, and both more
and less Semitic . . .' (272).
115. See, e.g., his assertions in 'New Approach' 45-47 and 'Study' 29, and the fuller
analysis of History; and critique of the assumption by W. H. Kelber, The Oral and the Written
Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983) 2-8. G. Theissen, Miracle Stories of the Early Christian
Tradition (1974; ET Edinburgh: Clark, 1983) 1-24, illustrates well how classical form criticism
merges into literary criticism (genre, structural, and narrative criticism), but his own awareness
of the dynamic of the traditioning process (also in reaction to the model of archaeological strata
in a text) depends too much on an ideal(isation) of 'genre' ('actualisations of structurally predetermined
possibilities'), not dissimilar to the early form critics' ideal(isation) of 'form' (17-22,
172).
116. Bultmann, Jesus 12-13 (see above §5.3 at n. 38). The persistence of the imagery is
indicated in Funk: 'the narrative gospels are made up of layered traditions, some oral, some
written, piled on top of each other. At the bottom — in the earliest stratum . . .' (Acts of Jesus
24).
117. Ibid.
194