At the same time, teachings could be condensed and abridged,151 and the very emphasis on the tradition could lead rabbis to portray their teaching as merely amplifying what preceded,152 or to attempt harmonizations of earlier contradictory opinions attributed to a given rabbi.153 Among Gentiles, standard rhetorical practice included paraphrasing sayings, as evidenced by the rhetorical exercises in which it features prominently.154 (It is thus not surprising that a writer would praise a sophist who both “received” disciple-instruction accurately and “passed it on” eloquently.)155 The standard of accuracy for ancient memory was the “gist”;156 memory often preserves the gist of matters even when details remain more obscure or inaccurate.157
Thus both faithfulness to and adaptation of oral sources characterize early rabbinic use of earlier tradition,158 and the exact wording of Jesus’ sayings could vary, for instance, from Matthew to Luke to the Didache.159 E. P. Sanders concludes that “The gospel writers did not wildly invent material,” though “they developed it, shaped it and directed it in the ways they wished.”160
Implications
In light of the foregoing discussion, our starting assumption should be that disciples of Jesus would have learned and transmitted his teachings no less carefully than most ancient disciples transmitted the wisdom of their mentors.161 If we must start with assumptions either way, should not the burden of proof rest on the assumptions of the radical skeptics, rather than on the assumption that Jesus’ disciples were like other disciples in antiquity and hence sought to transmit their master’s sayings accurately?
The views of the more extreme form critics that seem to presume that the church created rather than submitted to the substance of his teaching contrasts with our evidence, including our limited evidence about ancient Jewish traditioning. Birger Gerhardsson’s initial work published in 1961 may have overstated his case,162 but many now recognize that his severest critics have done the same.163 As we have noted, memorization and transmission of famous teachers’ sayings was not only a later rabbinic practice; it characterized elementary education throughout the Mediterranean. Further, most of the forms of traditions passed on in the Synoptic Gospels are the sort that would be passed on in circles less formal than Gerhardsson suggested yet more controlled than Bultmann suggested.164 Studies of oral tradition suggest that the form of news and jokes was highly flexible; that of parables and narratives was somewhat flexible; and that of proverbs and poems allowed virtually no flexibility.165 Most of Jesus’ sayings would thus be conveyed with either some or virtually no flexibility, not with maximal flexibility.
Examining the early Christian data supports this likelihood that Jesus’ teachings would have been transmitted substantially accurately. Paul, our earliest extant Christian source, attests even many of the purportedly “latest” developments of first-century Christian thought (such as wisdom Christology) within the first generation.166 He attests even some elements of the Jesus sayings tradition in occasional letters like 1 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians (though such attestation was plainly not his purpose).167 In some of these cases, his language suggests that he was passing on to his many readers what he had received.168 Paul seems to have known and expected his audience to recognize that he knew the Jesus tradition;169 he explicitly distinguishes his teaching from that of Jesus (1 Cor 7:10, 12, 25).170 Communities already schooled in the oral tradition would catch subtler allusions to that tradition than modern hearers who demand a greater degree of verbatim correspondence.171
Indeed, to assume from silence that Paul did not know the Jesus tradition because he does not cite it more explicitly and more often is almost analogous to assuming that the writer of 1 John was unaware of the Johannine Jesus tradition because the document presupposes rather than cites that tradition.172 Despite clear differences in terms of target audience, Bultmann’s radical dichotomy between Paul’s Diaspora perspectives and Palestinian Jewish material in the Gospels is read into the evidence.173 The writer of a probably post-70 Diaspora Gospel from the Pauline circle shows awareness of many earlier sources that he insists go back to the eyewitnesses (Lk 1:1-2); and he was probably in a position to know (Lk 1:3-4). The exclusively oral stage of the Jesus tradition, before the written sources of Lk 1:1, could not have been more than three or at most four decades,174 and occurred while the eyewitnesses maintained a dominant position in early Christianity.175
As we shall note later, these eyewitnesses included the “twelve,” a group that most scholars date to Jesus’ lifetime.176 Few scholars would question that Jesus had disciples, or that at least some of those most intimate followers (like Peter) rose to prominence in the early Jesus movement. Revolutionaries had followers without having disciples, but prophets could have both;177 even eccentric wilderness ascetics could have disciples.178 But most importantly, teachers and sages almost by definition had disciples; and whatever else Jesus was, he was surely a teacher (see ch. 13). Our extant first-century sources about the early Jesus movement emphasize continuity of testimony (cf. Acts 1:21-22),179 with the “twelve” apparently maintaining a dominant position in the decades following Jesus’ mission to Jerusalem (Gal 2:9; cf. 1 Cor 15:5).
The witnesses include also many others from the early period, including other apostles (1 Cor 15:7), Jesus’ relatives (1 Cor 15:7),180 a number of women prominent enough to be named (Mk 15:40-41),181 and at least 500 others (1 Cor 15:6). The sources repeatedly emphasize the importance of witnesses for the tradition;182 plenty of persons are named in the Gospels who could be sources and guarantors of the tradition.183 Even the tradition in the Fourth Gospel, which we are not engaging much in this book, rests on the testimony of the “beloved disciple” (who claims to be an eyewitness of at least some of the key events; Jn 13:23; 19:26-27, 35; 21:24).184
