Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §8.6
lier, smaller groupings. The point is that we should not assume that such compositional
procedures came into the process only at a later stage of the process or
only when the tradition was written down.
c. Not Layers but Performances
One of the most important conclusions to emerge from this review of the oral
character of so much of the Jesus tradition, and of the likely processes of oral
transmission, is that the perspective which has dominated the study of the history
of Synoptic tradition is simply wrong-headed. Bultmann laid out the playing
field by conceiving of the Jesus tradition as 'composed of a series of layers'. 301
The consequence of this literary paradigm was that each retelling of episodes or
parts of the Jesus tradition was bound to be conceived on the analogy of an editor
editing a literary text. Each retelling was like a new (edited) edition. And so the
impression of each retelling as another layer superimposed upon earlier layers
became almost inescapable, especially when the literary imagery was integrated
with the archaeological image of the ancient tell, where research proceeds by
digging down through the historical layers. 302 The consequence has been widespread
disillusion at the prospect of ever being able successfully to strip off the
successive layers of editing to leave some primary layer exposed clearly to view.
Equally inevitable from such a perspective were the suspicion and scepticism
met by any bold enough to claim that they had been successful in their literary archaeology
and had actually uncovered a large area of Jesus' bedrock teaching.
But the imagery is simply inappropriate. 303 An oral retelling of a tradition
is not at all like a new literary edition. It has not worked on or from a previous retelling.
How could it? The previous retelling was not 'there' as a text to be consulted.
And in the retelling the retold tradition did not come into existence as a
kind of artefact, to be examined as by an editor and re-edited for the next retell-
301. Bultmann, Jesus 12-13.
302. As again by Crossan in his talk of 'scientific stratigraphy' (Historical Jesus xxviii,
xxxi-xxxii). See also above chapter 6 n. 95. Bruce Chilton made an earlier protest against this
'literary fallacy' — The Temple of Jesus: His Sacrificial Program within a Cultural History of
Sacrifice (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1992) 114-15, 120, referring to his
Profiles of a Rabbi: Synoptic Opportunities in Reading about Jesus (BJS 177; Atlanta:
Scholars, 1989).
303. Cf. Liebenberg: 'Although it is true that all one has to work with are the canonical
and non-canonical gospel texts, it remains methodologically unsound to work with a theory of
the gospel tradition which gives pride of place to these texts, when it is known that they came
into being in a predominantly oral milieu, and more significantly, that the first twenty to thirty
years after the life of Jesus the stories and aphorisms attributed to him were transmitted and
performed orally' {Language 518).
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