Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §8.6
This is not to accept Theissen's thesis that the Jesus tradition was the preserve
of wandering charismatics, and that they were primarily responsible for
maintaining and circulating it. As already observed, community formation and
tradition formation go hand in hand. And the Q material, on which the thesis is
principally based, itself betrays settings for the tradition in towns and villages. 285
In this particular phase of discussion, there is a danger of thinking of the tradition
in effect simply as 'gospel' and of its transmission simply in terms of evangelistic
preaching. 286 But as early form critics recognized, the Jesus traditions are traditions
which have come down to us because they were in regular and repeated
use. That is, the principal conduit for their transmission was not a single, onceonly
proclamation by evangelists in missionary situations, but the communities
which had been called into existence by such preaching, which identified themselves
by reference to such tradition, and which referred to the tradition in their
regular gatherings to inform and guide their common life and in relation to their
neighbours. It was this breadth of tradition which provided the context of reception
for individual performances of items of the tradition, shaping the congregation's
'horizon of expectation' and enabling them to fill in the 'gaps of indeterminacy'
. 287 This I believe is a fair statement of what must have been the case, which
remains persuasive even if we do not know how extensive was the body of Jesus
tradition held by individual communities; the influx of new converts, the reception
of further tradition and the creative reworking of the tradition already received
need not modify the basic picture to any significant extent.
Did Easter and the transition from Galilean village to Hellenistic city, from
served as sources for Mark (223-29); though he also observes that Paul shows no awareness of
any written records of Jesus' mission (211). Ellis's conception of oral transmission is very restricted
to a choice between 'folkloric origin' and the 'controlled and cultivated process' of the
rabbinic schools (Christ 14-15; cf. Millard, Reading and Writing 185-92); and neither seems to
be aware of Bailey's contribution. See also n. 264 above. I have already pointed out (n. 138
above) that Byrskog's use of 'oral history' as an analogy to the process resulting in the Gospels
seems effectively to ignore the likelihood or character of an oral stage such as is envisaged
here.
285. Peter Richardson concludes his study of 'First-Century Houses and Q's Setting', in
D. G. Horrell and C. M. Tuckett, eds., Christology, Controversy and Community, D. R.
Catchpole FS (NovTSup 99; Brill: Leiden, 2000) 63-83: 'Q was set naturally in towns [and cities?],
not within the activities of wandering charismatics' (83).
286. To be fair, Crossan in particular sees 'the primary crucible for the tradition of Jesus
sayings' in 'the delicate interaction between itinerant and householder' ('Itinerants and Householders'
24); but insofar as the thesis applies to Q, the hypothesized tension between itinerants
and householders is provided more by the hypothesis than by the text.
287. See also Vouga, 'Mündliche Tradition' 198-202, who draws particularly on Vansina's
Oral Tradition as History. Liebenberg consistently speaks of different 'performances' of
the parables — e.g., of the sower (Language 350-414).
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