Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §10.3
which have been used before, where agreement denotes merely literary dependence
and 'multiple attestation' of some features in a pericope reduces to the single
attestation of the literarily prior version.
It is precisely this mindset that I wish to challenge. 23 My plea is that readers
consciously change the 'default setting' of the literary paradigm, the 'pre-set
preference' built into a centuries-old literary mindset, and allow the likelihood
that such a paradigm is far too limited to explain the complexities of the Jesus
tradition. 24 In particular, I wish to press the case: (a) that individual traditions
and groups of traditions were almost certainly initially formulated and circulated
in oral mode, (b) that most of them were given the shape which has endured into
the Synoptic Gospels during that oral phase, and (c) that the Evangelists, including
Matthew and Luke, would probably have known many of these oral traditions
independently of their knowledge of written collections, including Mark and Q.
Moreover, I believe (d) that in the stabilities and diversities of the tradition we
can trace the continuities and variations in the performances/retellings of the tradition
and not simply the literary dependence and redaction of the subsequent
writers-down of the tradition. In the stabilities we see the identity of the tradition;
in the diversities its vitality.
, In thus throwing down the gauntlet I do not pretend that I can offer proof
positive of my thesis. But in dealing with Synoptic traditions, who can realistically
hope for proof positive of any thesis? I ask simply that the same judgment
of plausibility which convinces most scholars of the priority of Mark and the existence
of Q be exercised in relation to Synoptic texts where literary dependence
is less obvious and is at least arguably less plausible. I ask simply that the spectacles
of the literary mindset be removed and that over the following chapters the
texts displayed synoptically be looked at afresh with the dynamics of oral performance
and transmission in mind.
In short, my conviction remains that the shape and verbal variations of
most of the Synoptic traditions are better explained by such an oral hypothesis
than exclusively in terms of literary dependence. I suspect that the success or
failure of this thesis will depend in large part on the degree to which readers have
been able to change the default settings of their own personal 'onboard computers'
from 'literary' to 'oral'.
23.1 am grateful to Scot McKnight for bringing home to me the need to be more explicit
on this point.
24. I develop the point in my 'Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early
Transmission of the Jesus Tradition', MS 49 (2003).
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