Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§8.3 The Tradition
literary process of editing, where each successive edition (layer) is an edited version
(for Bultmann, an elaborated and expanded version) of the previous edition
(layer). But is such a conceptualisation really appropriate to a process of oral
retellings of traditional material? Bultmann never really addressed the question,
despite its obvious relevance. 118
Here again, then, we have to speak of form criticism's missed opportunity
(as in §6.5c). The main body of discussion following Bultmann stayed with the
literary model, and the focus shifted more to the communities which shaped the
tradition or to the easier question of its later shaping in redaction criticism. 119
There were three main exceptions.
c. C. F. D. Moule
Moule did not focus his attention on the character or processes of oral tradition,
so his contribution is somewhat tangential to the present concerns. Nevertheless,
his insights into the formation of the Gospels are of considerable relevance —
two in particular.
First, he observed that the Gospels retain a clear distinction between pre-
Easter and post-Easter perceptions of Jesus. 120 His pupil, Eugene Lemcio, has
elaborated the point. The Synoptic Gospels particularly retain a clear sense of
before and after Easter in the content of the Jesus tradition which they retell. The
context of the retelling everywhere implies a post-Easter perspective. But only
occasionally is this perspective evident in the content of the tradition as such. So,
for example, the call for faith in or assumption of the story-teller's faith in Jesus
is implicit in the context of the retelling, but is not interjected into the Jesus tradition
itself. 121 If this is indeed the case for the much retold and developed retelling
118. In his current research at Durham University on oral tradition and the Gospels,
Terence Mournet notes that the same assumption of exclusively literary dependence between
the different strands of the Synoptic tradition vitiates Farmer's Synoptic Problem attempt to
overthrow the two-document hypothesis and Sanders' Tendencies critique of Bultmann and
Dibelius. The same criticism could be levelled at the attempt by M. Goulder, Luke: A New Paradigm
(2 vols; JSNTS 20; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1989) to dispense with Q (particularly
ch. 2).
119. The most successful and influential was H. Conzelmann, Die Mitte der Zeit
(Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1953, 2 1957, 5 1964; ET The Theology of St. Luke (London: Faber
and Faber, 1961).
120. C. F. D. Moule, 'The Intention of the Evangelists' (1959), The Phenomenon of the
New Testament (London: SCM, 1967) 100-114.
121. E. E. Lemcio, The Past of Jesus in the Gospels (SNTSMS 68; Cambridge: Cambridge
University, 1991); see particularly 8-18, 109-14.1 restate Lemcio's argument in my own
terms. Cf. Schürmann cited above chapter 6 n. 108.
195