Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §8.6
back to in each case. 277 The remembered Jesus may be a synthesis of the several
impacts made on and disciple responses made by Jesus' earliest witnesses, but
the synthesis was already firm in the first flowering of the tradition. 278
Third, it follows also and is perhaps worth repeating that the traditioning
process should not be conceived of as initially casual and only taken seriously by
the first disciples in the post-Easter situation. As just implied, community formation
was already at an embryonic stage from the first call of Jesus' immediate circle
of disciples; 'formative tradition' would have had an indispensable part in
that process. 279 To the extent that the shared impact of Jesus, the shared discipleresponse,
bonded into groups of disciples or adherents those thus responsive to
Jesus' mission, to that extent the dynamics of group formation would be operative.
In that process it is scarcely conceivable that the shared memories of what
Jesus had said and done (already 'Jesus tradition'!) did not play an important
part, both in constituting the groups' identity (what other distinguishing features
had they?), and in outlining the boundaries which marked them off as groups
(however informal) from their fellow Jews (here, no doubt, the pronouncement
and controversy stories had an early, even pre-Easter role; why not?).
Nor should we forget the continuing role of eyewitness tradents, of those rec-
form or selbständige Traditionsstücke 'as if one could pinpoint elements in the synoptic tradition
which were originally created to exist in and for themselves' (432-48). He also challenges
the 'dictum in New Testament scholarship that the first transmitters of these stories [parables]
were unable to understand them and therefore almost by necessity had to change them in order
to make them intelligible for themselves and/or their readers/listeners' (82). But he does not
give enough weight to the degree to which parables' narrative structure and context of use (as
well as what he calls their 'generic-level structures') evidently functioned to limit their
polyvalency and to provide the communities with guidelines on how the parable should be
heard (cf. particularly 445-46, 499-503).
277. Kloppenborg speaks appropriately of the 'performative diversity at the earliest
stages of the Jesus tradition' ('Sayings Gospel Q' 334).
278. A. Goshen-Gottstein, 'Hillel and Jesus: Are Comparisons Possible?', in J. H.
Charlesworth and L. L. Johns, eds., Hillel and Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997) 31-55, notes
the lack of biographical interest in rabbinic tradition in regard to the rabbis (cf. the Teacher of
Righteousness at n. 15 above), who were not remembered for their lives or example, and whose
teaching was remembered only as part of a much larger, collective enterprise. In contrast, it is
evident that Jesus was remembered as the beginning of a new line of tradition (not just as one
sage among others), and the impact of his life as well as his teaching resulted in his actions as
well as his words being remembered and gave the Jesus tradition a biographical dimension
from the start (see also §8.If above).
279. Cf. the picture which P. S. Alexander, 'Orality in Pharisaic-Rabbinic Judaism at the
Turn of the Eras', in Wansbrough, ed., Jesus 159-84, adduces for the disciple-circle round a
rabbi in the early tannaitic period forming a small, quasi-religious community, eating communally,
sharing a common purse, and being taught by the rabbi (166-67), a picture which may not
be as anachronistic as might at first appear (182-84).
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